Recent African History Alumni
2009, Danson Esese, Land Ownership and its Socio-economic Effects in Lugari Division, Western Province of Kenya, c.1880-2000. Esese explores how the system of land ownership in Western Kenya evolved through different historical phases from the precolonial through the colonial and into the post-colonial periods.
2009, Shannon V. Harris, Politics, Discourses and Contradictions: Galandou Diouf in French Colonial Senegal, 1890-1941. Harris is an assistant professor at the King College in Tennessee. Harris has compiled the only book-length study of Galandou Diouf, who served in a number of elected positions in colonial Senegal before being elected to the French National Assembly in 1934.
2008, Ibra Sene, Crime, Punishment and Colonization: A History of the Prison of Saint-Louis and the Development of the Penitentiary System in Senegal, ca. 1830-1940. Assistant professor at College of Wooster in Ohio. Using oral histories and a range of archival sources from Senegal and France, Sene explores the development and transformation of a prison system in Saint-Louis, Senegal, in a late nineteenth and early twentieth-century colonial setting. Sene sees prisons not as places in isolation from society, but as places that both inform and are informed by broad, colonial trends.
2007, Tamba Mbayo. African Interpreters, Mediation, and the Production of Knowledge in Colonial Senegal: The Lower and Middle Senegal Valley, ca. 1850s to ca. 1920s. Assistant Professor, Hope College, Fall 2006. Using oral interviews and records from Senegalese and French archives, he describes the role of African "middle figures"--interpreters and clerks--in the formative years of the French colonial administration.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.