I was born and grew up in the US, but I spent the better part of 25 years after college, living and working in southern Africa. I lived in Zimbabwe and South Africa, where I discovered the "gravitational pull" of African history.

I have a joint appointment at UIUC in History and Gender/Women's Studies. Since August 2017, I have been the Director of the Center for African Studies at UIUC.

Political, gender and institutional histories of South African universities; Political history of Zimbabwe; Gender, memoir and autobiography

I'm trained as an historian of politics, gender and institutional culture in southern Africa, and lately my scholarship has taken a turn towards the personal. Deeply informed by research and experience in gender studies, especially proximity to projects concerned with recovering memories and the bodies of people who died under circumstances where their identities and stories were lost and/or hidden in southern Africa, I've undertaken an African-American family history project which has grown in several directions. Here are some of the topics I'm working on: 

"Mourning the 'Insane' Dead"

"Raising Hell: Rebellions of the Black 'Insane'"

"Other ways of writing history"

I've also been working on a novel! 

Earlier work and papers include:

"Exporting apartheid: a South African intellectual's incursions into pan-African politics, 1960-66" 

"Good liberals, bad liberals: a new theoretical framework in South African political history"

"Before, during or after revolution? Solidarity, Radical Women’s Health Activists  and the Zimbabwe African National Union in the United States, 1979"

"Solidarity Begins at Home: expatriate anti-apartheid activism  in Harare, Zimbabwe in the 1980s"

With Munyaradzi Nyakudya and Government Phiri: "Vacuum in the classroom? Recent Trends in High School History Teaching and Textbooks in Zimbabwe"

PhD, African Economic History, University of Zimbabwe, 1994
MA with distinction, African Economic History, University of Zimbabwe, 1987
BA, International Relations, Brown University, 1979

20th Century African Intellectual History
History of Southern Africa
Truth Commissions in Comparative Perspective
Memoir and Autobiography
Introduction to Gender & Women's Studies
Feminist Theories in the Humanities
Sexualities in African History
African Urban History

309 Gregory Hall MC-466