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Department of History
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Home > Graduate Studies > Areas of Graduate Study : African History

African History

Joyce Chadya: The University of Minnesota offers one of the best African history programs in the country. It is such an honor to work with such distinguished and experienced faculty, including those outside African history. Not only are the faculty passionate about their work but they also motivate us and they care. They make us feel at home far away from home.

African history is a new and dynamic field dating back to the 1960s. It was linked to the decolonization of Africa and the need for new national states to have a usable past. During the next four decades the field of African history has moved away from colonial and Eurocentric formulations to stressing African agency and creative adaptations and representations. It relies on innovative fieldwork as well as more traditional archival research.

Minnesota has one of the leading programs in African social history in the country. Our overarching concern is to put African women and men—in their classes, families, communities, and workplaces—firmly into our scholarship. In our courses we challenge old analytical categories and artificial temporal or spatial divides to examine dynamic relations of power, and conflict and negotiations at the local, national, and transnational levels.

Participating Faculty

  • Allen Isaacman's research has focused on the social history of peasants and slaves in Mozambique as well as anti-colonial struggles in that country. He offers courses in historical methodology and historiography, Southern African history, and agrarian history.

  • Michele Wagner has worked in the precolonial and colonial history of the Great Lakes region (Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania), focusing on questions of conflict and the meaning of justice in a historical context. She teaches the African survey and courses in Central and Eastern African history, contemporary human rights issues, and colonial and postcolonial representations of Africa.

  • Tamara Giles-Vernick’s research focuses on issues of environmental history and public health, including her current project on the history of knowledge about malaria in colonial Mali. She teaches courses in these areas, on western and equatorial African history, and on the family and gender.

Affiliated Faculty

  • Keletso Atkins (Department of African American and African Studies) specializes in the history of South Africa and issues of the African diaspora and offers graduate courses in both areas.
  • Victoria Coifman’s (Department of African American and African Studies) research has been primarily in Senegal. She teaches courses in West African history and oral methodology.

Additionally, students are also encouraged to take courses from Africanists in other departments including:

Graduate Features

Graduate Studies
Rachel Ayers
1130 Heller Hall
271 19th Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55455

Phone: 612-624-5840
Email: histdgs@umn.edu

  • 'Best Dissertation' Arts and Humanities

    Congratulations to Nicole Phelps for winning this year's 'Best Dissertation" Award in the Arts and Humanities for her dissertation, "Sovereignty, Citizenship, and the New Liberal Order: US-Habsburg Relations and the Transformation of International Politics, 1880-1924."

    Nicole will receive an honorarium of $1,000 and a special certificate. She will also be honored during a luncheon and ceremony at the Campus Club in early June.

     May 14th, 2008

  • 2007-08 Fulbright Scholarships

    Tovah Bender (Italy), Aeleah Soine (Germany), and Elizabeth Swedo (Iceland) were awarded Fulbright scholarships to support their dissertation research abroad during this academic year. Congratulations!

    To read more, visit the Graduate School Announcement.

     January 25th, 2008

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