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In the nineteenth century, global systems of capitalism and empire knit the North Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds into international networks in contest over the meanings of slavery and freedom. Sojourners, Sultans, and Slaves: America and the Indian Ocean in the Age of Abolition and Empire (U California Press, 2023) mines multinational archives; profiles transnational human rights campaigns; shows how the discourses of poverty, kinship, and care could be adapted to defend servitude in different parts of the world; and reveals the tenuous boundaries that such discourses shared with Whiggish contractual notions of freedom. An intercontinental cast of empire builders and émigrés, slavers and reformers, a "cotton queen" and courtesans, and fugitive "slaves" and concubines populate the pages, fleshing out on a granular level the interface between the personal, domestic, and international politics of "slavery in the East," and in the age of empire. By extending the transnational framework of U.S. slavery and abolition histories beyond the Atlantic, Gunja SenGupta and Awam Amkpa recover vivid stories and prompt reflections on the comparative workings of subaltern agency. 

Gunja SenGupta: Professor of History at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and currently visiting at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). Her work places nineteenth-century United States history in global contexts of slavery, abolition, empire, race, gender, and poverty. She is also the author of From Slavery to Poverty and For God and Mammon

Awam Amkpa: Vice Provost for the Arts and Dean of Arts and Humanities at New York University Abu Dhabi, and a professor of drama and social and cultural analysis at New York University. A theater scholar, filmmaker, and curator, he is the author of Theatre and Postcolonial Desires.

Ahmed Y. AlMaazmi: Assistant Professor of History at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD). A historian, academic, and translator, he focuses on the history of science, empire, law, and everyday life in the Arabian Peninsula and the wider Indian Ocean world.

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This vivid reconstruction of one man’s life reveals the harsh realities and moral ambiguities of colonial power.

The Jew Who Would Be King: A True Story of Shipwreck, Survival, and Scandal in Victorian Africa (U California Press, 2025) tells the story of Nathaniel Isaacs—a nineteenth-century British Jew who helped establish the Zulu kingdom only to become a ruthless warlord and slaveholder. Isaacs’ thrilling journey begins with his shipwreck on the shores of Zululand and proceeds to ports across West Africa, including Freetown, Sierra Leone. There, tasked by the colonial governor to end the local slave trade, Isaacs brokered deals that reinforced his own power.

Adam Rovner’s meticulous archival research in England, Sierra Leone, South Africa, and St. Helena, coupled with his own travels to the remnants of Isaacs’ island stronghold in Guinea, brings this complex figure to life. Through Isaacs’ story, Rovner exposes the entangled forces of Jewish emancipation and antisemitism, slavery and abolition, the stark dichotomies of civilization and “savagery,” and the creation of whiteness versus Blackness.

Adam Rovner is Associate Professor of English and Jewish Literature at the University of Denver. He is the author of In the Shadow of Zion: Promised Lands Before Israel (New York University Press, 2014).

Geraldine Gudefin is a modern Jewish historian researching Jewish migrations, family life, and legal pluralism. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore, and is completing a book titled An Impossible Divorce? East European Jews and the Limits of Legal Pluralism in France, 1900-1939.

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In this episode, Lilyanna D'Amato speaks with Rahim Kurwa about his book Indefensible Spaces: Policing and the Struggle for Housing (U California Press, 2025), which examines the policing of housing in Los Angeles' northernmost suburb, Antelope Valley. Kurwa traces the suburbs' relationship with Los Angeles from post WWII to the early 2000s and 2010s, when the region saw increased Black migration as result of the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program, the largest rental assistance program for low-income families in the nation. Kurwa contextualizes the adoption and reception of the voucher system in Los Angeles at the end of the 20th century, and explores the participatory policing and criminalization practices used to evict Black residents and re-segregate the region.

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In this episode, the editors of the Journal of Autoethnography offer an inside look at the journal, discussing its origin and revisiting notable articles that have contributed to the practice of autoethnography.

The Journal of Autoethnography is published four times a year by the University of California Press. For more information about the journal, including subscription and submission information, please visit here. If you are interested in supporting the work of UC Press and its Journals Program, please consider making a charitable donation to the UC Press Foundation.

To learn more about the UC Press Foundation and how to contribute, please visit here.

Articles mentioned:

1. Matthew S. Johnston; Through Madness and Back Again: An Autoethnography of Psychosis. Journal of Autoethnography 11 May 2020; 1 (2): 137–155. doi: here
2. Jessica Smartt Gullion; The Mayhill Project. Journal of Autoethnography 1 January 2025; 6 (1): 37–49. doi: here
3. Elizabeth Stephens; Homicide by Police: Coping with Traumatic Death. Journal of Autoethnography 11 May 2020; 1 (2): 111–121. doi: here
4. Anonymous Author; Highlighting Numbers: Students Stalking Faculty and the Lasting Impacts of a Flawed System. Journal of Autoethnography 1 April 2021; 2 (2): 143–160. doi: here
5. Arthur P. Bochner; Autoethnography as a Way of Life: Listening to Tinnitus Teach. Journal of Autoethnography 7 January 2020; 1 (1): 81–92. doi: here
6. Csaba Osvath; Writing With and Against the Machine: Autoethnographic Reflections on AI, VR, and Narrative Becoming. Journal of Autoethnography 1 July 2026; 7 (3): 346–358. doi: here
7. Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir on the Craft. 2000. Simon & Schuster.
8. Goodall, H. Lloyd. A need to know: The clandestine history of a CIA family. Left Coast Press, 2006.
9. Robin M. Boylorn, Sweetwater: Black Women and Narratives of Resilience (Revised Edition, 2017). Peter Lang.
10. Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. 2019, Penguin.
11. Ellis, Carolyn. Revision: Autoethnographic reflections on life and work. 2019. Routledge.
12. A complete list of University of California Press journals is available at UC Press Journals

Tony Adams is Caterpillar Professor of Communication at Bradley University.

Andrew F. Herrmann is CEO of Applicable Consulting LLC. 

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