African History
MSU’s History Department has had an African field for over forty years. Under the direction of Harold Marcus and David Robinson, the doctoral program in African History emerged as one of the premier programs in the nation, most recently ranking in the top ten in US News & World Report. We have now renewed the field with the appointment of five new faculty: Nwando Achebe, Peter Alegi, Walter Hawthorne, and Laura Fair. Each has a long publishing record and years of researching and teaching experience. We specialize in West, East and South African History, and in the study of gender, leisure, religion, slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. Faculty in African-American, Comparative Black, Atlantic, Latin American, Caribbean, and World History also engage with the African diaspora. In addition, the department and university have special relationships with universities in Senegal, Nigeria, Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa. They involve the regular movement of faculty and students in both directions, and generate joint research and teaching projects.
Over the years about sixty graduate students have completed their doctorates here; about twenty of those were from the African continent We intend to maintain that combination of African, native-born American and other students, as we renew the program Our graduates are competitive with the best and are now teaching at UCLA, the University of Kansas, Ohio University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Maryland and many other places. Some also choose to go into work in development and other international arenas. MSU graduate students can obtain funding from a number of department and university sources.
In addition to department resources and offerings, African history graduate students benefit from the university’s National Resource Center on Africa. The center is one of nine designated centers funded through the Title VI program of the US Department of Education. Some 150 faculty at MSU are associated with the center, meaning that their research, teaching and/or service have some relation to the center. Through the center instruction has been offered in about 30 African languages, and in a typical year we would offer instruction in about 10 languages. The Title VI program called FLAS (Foreign Language Area Studies) supports this work, and some of our graduate students in history usually have FLAS fellowships.
Further, African History graduate students benefit from offerings by leading scholars in related and nationally-ranked fields, including Comparative Black, Atlantic, Migration, Latin American, and World History.
The university’s commitment to African studies is also evidenced by its Africana library collection. At MSU, African studies librarians, both with Ph.D.s in African History, Joseph J. Lauer and Peter Limb, staff the third largest Africana library collection in the U.S. Further, MATRIX, MSU’s award winning humanities and technology research center, has important Africa-related data-gathering and digitalization projects.
Graduate Study in African History
Anyone interested in applying for graduate studies in African History at MSU should complete the university on-line graduate application, which can be accessed through the History Department’s website.
On a competitive basis, the History Department provides funding in the form of research assistantships and teaching assistantships. All applicants for graduate studies in African History are also encouraged to apply for a FLAS award, if they are eligible to do so.
The African History Program’s requirements are an extension of the History Department’s
The African History Program is divided into course work, comprehensive exams, research in the field, and writing and defending the dissertation. Students usually form a doctoral committee in their second semester, consisting of a dissertation director, a second Africanist, and one faculty member for each of two minor fields. One minor field can be outside of the department (e.g. anthropology, sociology, political science). Students take at least four graduate courses in their major field (Africa) and two in each minor field. Students must demonstrate proficiency in two languages, at least one of which should be an African language related to their dissertation research.
We expect students to complete the doctoral program in six years. Normally, students would move through the program at more or less the following pace:
1st year
- 2-3 courses per semester including:
- the African history seminar (830) and/or graduate seminars in historiography (803).
- language courses and certification of proficiency
- 2nd semester: formation of the doctoral committee, in consultation with its members and the graduate director.
2nd year
- 2-3 courses per semester, including:
- Language courses and certification of proficiency.
- Begin comprehensive exams: (4th semester)
- Preparation of the dissertation proposal
3rd year
- finish comprehensive exams
- submission of proposals for dissertation funding, outside and inside the university
4th year
- dissertation research in the field
5th year
- returning from the field, beginning write-up
6th year
- completion of writing and defense of the dissertation
Fellowships & Awards
Pre-dissertation
History Department
FLAS
MSU
Dissertation
Fulbright-Hays
Fulbright IIE
SSRC
IDRF
Compton Peace Fellows Program
Recent Graduates
2000, Ghislaine Lydon, On Trans-Saharan Trails: Trading Networks and Commercial Strategies in Western Africa, 1840s-1950s. Assistant professor, UCLA. Lydon deals with trading networks across the expanse from southern Morocco to Senegal, using a combination of French and Arabic archives, testaments and trading logs in Arabic, and a variety of oral testimony. She features the Awlad Bu Sba and Beyrouk family firms that operated in the whole region.
2001, Kevin Brown, The impact of military service on Tanganyikan communities, 1919-61. Assistant professor at Lansing Community College. Brown focuses on soldiers and their families who were conscripted or enlisted in World Wars I and II or for service in the interwar period, on the basis of German and British archives and oral testimony collected among veterans and their families in Tanzania.
2001, Liz Macgonagle, A mixed pot: history and identity in the Ndau region of Mozambique and Zimbabwe, 1500-1900. Assistant professor, University of Kansas. Macgonagle uses Portuguese and British archives and a variety of oral testimony to look at language and material culture across time, and to compare the profiles of the Ndau in the two areas.
2001, Tim Carmichael, Ethiopian ideology and praxis: national policy in Addis Ababa and local governance in Harer, 1910s-c. 1950. Assistant professor, College of Charleston. Carmichael examines law, social history and questions of national integration of this ancient Muslim culture into the state and empire which Haile Sellassie was attempting to create in Ethiopia.
2001, Fikru Gebrekidan, Bond without Blood. A Study of Ethiopian-Caribbean ties, 1935-91. Assistant professor, West Virginia University, now university in Nova Scotia. Fikru looks at the Pan-Africanism, Pan-Ethiopianism, and the influence of Ethiopia among English-speaking inhabitants of the Caribbean, including the Rastafarians, at emigration to Ethiopia, and at the trip of Haile Sellassie to Jamaica and other islands in 1966.
2002, Heran Sereke-brhan, Building bridges, drying bad blood: elite marriages, politics and ethnicity in 19th and 20th c imperial Ethiopia. Smithsonian, African Art Museum; postdoctoral fellowship, George Mason University, now working at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies, Addis. Heran looks at elite women in the Ethiopian royal families from the late 19th to the late 20th century, on the basis of extensive interviews, archival and other written sources.
2002, Nick Creary, Domesticating a foreign import: African cultures and the Catholic Church at Jesuit missions in Zimbabwe, 1879-1980. Assistant professor at Ohio University. African priests, catechists, nuns and parishioners in relation to Jesuit and other Catholic missions over the history of Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, on the basis of state and church archives and interviews.
2002, Tim Geysbeek, The Southern Mandinka and the history of Musadu. Archivist at the SIM archives, Charlotte, NC. Using oral material, Geysbeek examines the southern Mandinka traditions centering around the town of Musadu, close to the Guinea - Liberia border, beginning with the images of Sundiata.
2002, Cheikh Babou, Ahmadu Bamba and the Foundation of the Muridiyya: The History of a Muslim Brotherhood in Senegal, mid 19th to the early 20th century. Asst prof of History, University of Pennsylvania. On the basis of the written and especially the oral record, from many informants who have never been interviewed before, Babou shows the gradual development of the sense of mission of Bamba and the development of his pedagogy for Muslims in the colonial era.
2003, Hilary Jones, Citizens and subjects; metis society, identity and the struggle over colonial politics in Saint-Louis, Senegal,1870-1920. Asst prof of History, Macalester College. Jones, on the basis of interviews and the written record, examines the small but significant mulatto community of the largest and most influential of the Republican communes of Senegal, in terms of their political influence and material culture.
2004, Jonathan Miran, Facing the Mountain, Facing the Sea: The Making of a Cross-Cultural Red Sea Urban Mercantile Community in Nineteenth-Century Massawa. January 2004. Asst prof, Liberal Studies Department, Western Washington U. Miran, using Italian and Arabic materials and interviews in the local languages of Eritrea, examines the networks of Massawa, linking it to the hinterland and to communities around the Red Sea.
2004, Getnet Bekele, Knowledge, power and a region: the making of Ethiopia’s South Central Rift Valley: Agricultural Environment and Society, 1892-1974. Assistant Professor, Oakland University. Using local and national archives and a variety of farmer informants, Getnet tracks the choices of local farmers in the rapidly changing Rift Valley south of Addis Ababa over the 20th century, amid the limitations of the environment and state interventions.
2004, Solomon Addis Getahun, Ethiopia and Ethiopian-American relations, 1941-2000. Assistant Professor, Central Michigan University, starting Fall 2005. Solomon examines the parallel histories of Ethiopia and Ethiopian-Americans in the late 20th century, with an emphasis on migration and flight from the old country and the forms of organization and conflict among Ethiopians in the United States.
2005, Mary Mwiandi, The Jeanes School in Kenya: the role of the Jeanes teachers and their wives in the >social transformation= of rural colonial Kenya, 1925-61. On the basis of a rich archive and extensive interviews, Mwiandi examines the Jeanes experiment in Western education through the pedagogy, male teachers, the wives, and the very strong expectations of both groups in rural areas of Kenya. Her work has important lessons for “black education” as practiced in the United States and Africa in the early and mid 20th century.
2005, Tibebe Eshete, Growing through the storms: the history of the Evangelical movement in Ethiopia, 1941-91. Tibebe, through a vast group of testimonies and a variety of written records, traces the remarkable growth of the evangelical movement over against the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the regimes of Haile Sellassie and the Derg.
2005, Dawne Curry, Alexandra, SA: a history of resistance, 1912-85. Assistant prof at the U of Nebraska, Lincoln. Curry, using written records and oral testimonies, traces the reactions of African inhabitants of this township close to Johannesburg. The strategies of resistance match the change from relative autonomy to oppressive apartheid.
2006, Nokuthula Cele, A diasporan community on the Zulu frontier: the history of the Machi chieftaincy from the early 19th to the mid 20th century. Visiting professor, Hope College, spring 2006. Cele, using government and mission records and extensive interviews, plots the history of a frontier community set between Natal and the Eastern Cape, and subject in recent decades to a “Zulu” identity that does not fit the consciousness of the Machi.
Current Graduate Students
Mikelle Antoine. Mikelle is an ABD currently conducting research in Ghana on the conversion of Asante women to Islam.
Marieme Diawara. Marieme is completing her dissertation research in Senegal on the social and medical dimensions of the Muslim pilgrimage, thanks to a Compton Peace Fellowship.
Danson Esese. Danson is returning from his dissertation research in western Kenya on agricultural development, land use and government intervention, thanks to a Compton Peace Fellowship.
Leslie Hadfield. (FLAS recipient) Leslie is completing course work and planning a dissertation on aspects of the community development programs of the Black Consciousness Movement in King William's Town, South Africa, 1969-1977.
Getahun Haile Mesfin. Getahun is currently completing his doctoral exams and preparing to do a dissertation on the Ethiopian Parliament under Haile Sellassie.
Mona Jackson. Mona has recently returned from her Fulbright in South Africa. She is writing a dissertation on the role of Adams College (KwaZulu-Natal) in molding an African middle class (1909-1948).
Jill Kelly. (FLAS recipient) Jill is currently completing course work and planning a dissertation in South African history.
Tamba Mbayo. Tamba, originally from Sierra Leone, is completing the writing of his dissertation on the interpreters in colonial Senegal, where he was funded by a Compton Peace Fellowship. He has accepted a tenure track position at Hope College Fall 2006.
Assan Sarr. Assan is completing course work and planning a dissertation focused on The Gambia.
Ibra Sene. Ibra is currently completing his research in Senegal and France on the prison of Saint-Louis and the penitentiary system under the French colonial regime, thanks to an SSRC fellowship.
Shannon Vance. Shannon is currently teaching at King College in Bristol, Tennessee, while writing up her dissertation on Galandou Diouf and the town of Rufisque in Senegal.