
Marissa Moorman is a professor in the Department of African Cultural Studies, and she has been a member of the African Studies Program since she joined UW-Madison in 2021. She has national and international reputation as a leader in Angolan Studies, Southern African History, and African media studies. She has published two important books with a top university press (Ohio), numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals that shape African cultural studies, as well as book chapters and other shorter pieces. Her work on music, radio, and urban culture in contemporary Africa and Angola is one that no scholar in modern African history can ignore. Like her first book, Intonations: A Social History of Music and Nation in Luanda, Angola, from 1945 to Recent Times! (2008), her second monograph, Powerful Frequencies: Radio, State Power, and the Cold War in Angola, 1933-2002 (2019), published in the highly regarded series “New African Histories,” makes a valuable contribution to the social and political history of Angola and Southern Africa. The book demonstrates how communication technologies and the media informed politics and social innovations.