Penn State University Press has announced AFRICANAS, a new book series that centers books that transgress and collapse geographical, chronological and disciplinary boundaries and upend expectations for the field.
About AFRICANAS
Africana identities, histories and cultural productions have never been singular. Intentionally broad and multidisciplinary in its shape and scope, the series interrogates African and African-diasporic histories, lived experiences and potential futures, and it creates space for new methodologies and genres of writing. Emphasizing often-overlooked Africana experiences and their historical and contemporary implications, books in the series seek to disrupt default notions of "Africanness" and complicate the way Africana geographies are mapped.
Acquisitions editor Archna Patel and executive editor Eleanor H. Goodman said, "The series is grounded in multiplicities - hence the series name! - with the goal of disrupting boundaries of all sorts. Consequently, the books themselves may also look very different from one another. We're excited to create a welcoming space for new approaches to writing and methodology that showcase a different genre of scholarly book."
AFRICANAS welcomes books that range in chronology from the medieval to the contemporary, written by scholars working in, among, and across an array of disciplines, including, but not limited to, art and architecture, history, communication studies and rhetoric, gender and sexuality studies, environmental studies, science and technology studies, and Indigenous studies. Projects that focus on a range of geographies, including, but not limited to, West Asia, Sub-Saharan and North Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Caribbean, the Americas and the Pacific are encouraged.
"We aim to provide a platform that shows the full breadth of what Africana studies can do, what it is and whom it includes," said the acquisitions editors. "AFRICANAS offers a space for scholars doing cutting-edge work that may not 'fit' into one established category or another, or those whose scholarship sits uneasily within or across two or more fields. Innovative scholarship that prompts uneasiness is just the kind of work we're hoping to showcase and support."
The inaugural volume, "Opacity: Blackness and the Art of the Dutch Republic," by Angela Vanhaelen, was published in October 2025. The book proposes new ways of looking at Dutch paintings that do not equate Blackness with enslavement. Vanhaelen reframes the conversation on Netherlandish art by placing 17th-century domestic scenes and portraits in dialogue with images of trading forts, markets and plantations in West Africa and Brazil. "Opacity" leads readers to grapple with difficult and complex questions: How do we reconcile images of peace and prosperity with the horror of the slave trade? How do we teach imagery of Black people as enslaved without reinforcing anti-Black racism? Can we interpret dehumanizing imagery in ways that consider the complexities of enslavement?
The second volume in the series, "Black & Gold: Transmutations of Metal and Modernity," by W. Ian Bourland, will be published in February 2026. Featuring the work of acclaimed contemporary artists such as Yinka Shonibare, Theaster Gates, Wangechi Mutu, El Anatsui, Chris Ofili and Kerry James Marshall, this book unearths a series of historical and ecological connections - the mining of gold on the continent and its relationship to the diaspora, "Black gold" as a colloquialism for oil, and Blackness as a form of cultural "gold." By bringing early modern histories of alchemy, art and colonial contact into the present, Bourland tells a multifaceted story about the fetishization of gold, driven by an impulse to extract Blackness and refine people and matter into ever greater forms of abstraction with devastating consequences for the environment and humanity.
About Penn State University Press
Penn State University Press reflects many of the University's academic strengths in the liberal arts. Overall, the press publishes about 90 books and 80 journal titles - approximately 175 issues - annually. Titles published under the Penn State University Press imprint include academic publications by researchers around the world in a number of fields and disciplines for a global readership. Those under the Eisenbrauns imprint include academic books about the languages, archaeology and history of the ancient Near East. The Graphic Mundi imprint includes graphic novels for popular audiences that speak to social, environmental and contemporary cultural issues.
The press also develops publications about Pennsylvania, both scholarly and popular, that enhance interest in the region and spread awareness of the commonwealth's history, culture and environment.
