Courses Taught:

Histories of Disease and Healing

Experiences of disease and healing, as Covid-19 has shown, are inseparable from social, political, economic, and environmental circumstances. Taking a global historical approach, this course examines diverse human diseases (malaria, pellagra, influenza, HIV/AIDS) and one livestock disease (rinderpest) to better understand these circumstances. Two general inquiries guide our studies: 1) How have varied social groups such as rich and poor and men and women experienced disease and healing across time and space? 2) How have research, policies, and treatments been produced and circulated? Students explore different places and time periods, from rinderpest in 1890s Africa to the global AIDS pandemic. Materials include historical scholarship, medical and scientific reports, literature, and film.

Global Environmental History

This course introduces students to the field of environmental history, which explores how human society, non-human actors, and science and technology have shaped modern environments. Students focus on the late-nineteenth and twentieth century with special emphasis on Africa, Latin America, and South Asia. By interrogating the environmental concerns of our times, from changes in agriculture to climate change, from droughts to environmental justice, this course crosses established disciplinary and geographical boundaries. It is also a methodological introduction to doing history at a scale that is beyond the nation-state. To do history from a global perspective students learn to examine the changing relationship between humans, animals, plants, and other non-human things through categories of migration, colonialism, capitalism and geopolitics.

Gender and Power in African History

This course examines how relationships between women and men are central to the social, political, and economic history of Africa. Understanding how terms such as “woman” and “man” and ideas about sexuality are shaped by larger social forces – from the local to the global – sheds light on the history of politics, family life, religion, environment, and economic change. This course is thematic, focusing on various regions and emphasizing women in modern Africa. Students draw on varied materials to engage in critical discussion and to write a semester paper. Course materials include: a recent monograph by historian Nwando Achebe called Female Monarchs and Merchant Queens in Africa (2020); a seventeenth-century biography about the Ethiopian saint Walatta Petros (1672/2018); and Unbowed (2007), the memoir of the late Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai.

Environment, Health, and Justice

How is it that poor people, especially people of color, endure the worst effects of climate change, deforestation, and pollution? How has this situation of injustice developed over time? Moreover, how have people mobilized to change this situation? This research seminar probes these questions through case studies from Africa and the United States. Students examine, for instance, the social and ecological dimensions of mining, urban infrastructures, and industrial agriculture with special emphasis on how the injustices that emerge from such activities affect human health. Each case explores questions about power, race, gender, and class. Course materials will include Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement (2018) by sociologist Monica White; Unbowed (2006), the memoir of Kenyan activist Wangari Maathai; and Blood on the Mountain, a 2016 documentary film about coal mining in West Virginia.

Critical Perspectives on ‘Development’ in African History

What exactly is ‘development’? This seminar will probe this question in the context of African history by examining the ideas, institutions, and conflicts behind this concept. Case studies from different parts of the continent will be used to highlight the diversity of African experiences with ‘development’ from the late-1800s to the present. Students will study cases under four categories: Agriculture & Livestock; Human Health; Wildlife Conservation; and Big Dams. Important themes to be explored in each case are environmental change, colonialism, capitalism, international institutions, science, social inequality, race, and gender. Students will engage with readings in history and anthropology as well as a novel by Bessie Head, When Rain Clouds Gather (1968). Film will also be used too, such as the environmental historical documentary about Liberia and the Firestone Company called The Land Beneath Our Feet (2017). 

Reconstructing Africa’s Past to 1850

Students in this course will study African history and culture from earliest times to the eve of European imperial expansion in Africa. Important topics will be early patterns of settlement and cultural interaction; origins of African states; development of regional trading systems; and the nature and impact of Africa’s participation in global trade. Each week we will engage with new sources for examining early African history including archaeology, poetry, oral tradition, memoir, and fiction. Key texts will include Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali by D.T. Niane, and The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros by the Ethiopian writer, Galawdewos.

Modern African History: 1850 – Present

This course offers students an introduction to African history. In so doing, it provides historical context to (mis)representations of Africa and fosters understanding of the historical dimensions of contemporary problems on the continent. In other words, students will understand how present day Africa – its diversity, politics, problems, and culture – came to be. To accomplish this, we follow a chronological narrative that begins around the time of European colonization in the later 1800s and ends near the present day. Some important themes are the evolution of ethnic and national identities, the changing relationships between Africans and their environments, the experiences of different social groups (eg. women and men), “gatekeeper” politics, and the economies of the colonial and post-colonial periods. Secondary texts, primary sources, and film form the bulk of course materials. Readings include The Joys of Motherhood, a novel by Nigerian writer Buchi Emecheta, and King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild.

Sports, Society, and History

Few human activities have produced as much excitement as sports. We play, coach, cheer, officiate, and teach our children to play. These are a few ways that people across the world have participated in sports. Yet we seldom think about the historical, social, political, and economic dimensions of the sports that we love. Students  study sports in the past and present to explore how they shape, and are shaped by race, gender, class, migration, nationalism, capitalism, and colonialism. Focusing on all genders in sports, this class includes material about the Olympics, soccer, basketball, football, baseball, ice hockey, surfing, and more. Although emphasis is placed on North America, course materials take students to Africa, South America, Europe, and Oceania. Materials include students’ first-hand experiences, scholarly writing, music, films, podcasts, sports writing, and a trip to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Students conclude the course by researching a relevant topic of their choice and sharing that research in a final presentation that incorporates primary and secondary sources.

The Environment in Africa’s Past and Present

Students in this writing seminar learn to pose analytical questions, form arguments through research, and buttress claims with evidence. The course centers on three major papers and students submit multiple drafts for peer review and instructor feedback, which I provide during individual conferences. Class sessions blend writing workshops, group discussions, primary source analysis, and film. I also built an interactive course website using the platform called Digication where all materials are posted. As a final assignment, students generate their own digital portfolios that document their research and writing experiences. I taught this course as WR 100 in the Fall 2016 semester, and I am currently teaching it to a different group as WR 150, which is the second part of the freshman writing sequence at BU. WR 150 follows a similar curriculum but requires more independent work by students to frame their projects and conduct research. Using this structured writing curriculum has allowed me to hone my classroom methods for teaching the technical and theoretical aspects of research and writing as essential skills for participating in wider conversations.

World History since 1500

This course examines themes and problems in world history from the late-1400s to the present. The course is designed for students to understand processes of change that transcend time and space, rather than as a comprehensive survey of national histories around the world. Some processes to be addressed are economic integration, political transformation, industrialization, imperialism, social and environmental change, urbanization, migration, and the birth of secular nation states in Africa and Asia. To depart from Eurocentric approaches to world history, students will interact with diverse primary sources and varied genres of secondary material. We will enrich our study of the global past by thinking critically about two big and interrelated questions: 1) In what ways has the history of globalization contributed to both prosperity and poverty in the contemporary world? 2) How have relations between humans and the environment changed over the last 500 years and how has this shaped our world?