Academic Positions
Assistant Professor of History, UC Riverside
2016 - Present
Faculty Profile
Education
Ph.D., African and African American Studies, with a concentration in History
Harvard University, 2016
A.M., History
Harvard University, 2012
Link to Harvard Alumni Page
M.F.A., Non-Fiction Writing
Columbia University, 2005
B.A., Black Studies and French
Oberlin College
Fellowships and Awards
2019-2020
National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Research Award
#HB-263188. LINK
2018-19
UC Humanities Research Initiative Junior Faculty Manuscript Award. LINK
2017-18
Hellman Fellowship, University of California. LINK
Ruth and Lincoln Ekstrom Fellowship, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University. LINK
Publications
“Clothing as a Map to Senegambia’s Global Exchanges during the Late - Eighteenth Century” in Dressing Global Bodies: The Politics of Fashion in World History, 1600 - 2000, eds. Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello (Routledge, 2019) Link
“Historicizing Fashion in Western Africa: Regional Markets, Global Linkages and Local Tastes in the Early Modern Period, 1700 - 1850” in Creating African Fashion Histories, eds. JoAnne McGregor and Nicola Stylianou (Indiana University Press, accepted, forthcoming 2020)
“On Sartre’s Hegelian View of African History,” The Savannah Review, N.5, May, 2015, 21 - 38.
For more details, see the publications tab
Selected Talks and Presentations
Invited Talks
2018 “Interactions Complexes: Le Coton global, les indiennes et l’art d’autofaconner sur la Cote de Haute Guinee au debut du 19eme,” guest lecture at the Musee d’art et d’histoire de Neuchatel exhibit, “Made in Neuchatel: Deux Siecles d’Indiennes,” Neuchatel, Switzerland.
“Global Cotton and the Centripetal Pull of the Western African Sahel, 1740-1780,” presented at the African Studies Center Speaker Series, UCLA.
“Approaching Africa’s History through Cloth: Production, Commerce and Consumption” at the Creating African Fashion Histories Conference, Brighton Museum & Art Gallery, UK.
“The Concepts and Contours of Atlantic History” Guest lecture at the Julius Nyerere University of Kankan, Republic of Guinea.
Conferences
“The Politics of Dress: Habitants, Laptots and Marabouts in the Age of Islamic Revolutions in Saint Louis 1785-1817,” presented at Colonial Cities in Global Perspective conference in Saint Louis, Senegal.
“Textiles and Dress: Competing Masculinities and Self-Fashioning during the era of ‘Legitimate Commerce’ on the Upper Guinea Coast, 1800-1850, paper presented at Rethinking the Afropolitan: The Ethics of Black Atlantic Masculinities on Display, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA.
“Global Cotton, Cultural Encounter and Self-Fashioning on the Upper Guinea Coast, 1820-1850,” (Panel chair) Mande Studies Association conference, Grand Bassam, Cote d’Ivoire.
“Reading Cloth Consumption and Clothing Practices among the Enslaved in 18th Century Senegambia,” presented at “Dressing Global Bodies,” University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
Teaching
Undergraduate
History of ‘Medieval’ Africa circa 1000 C.E. to 1800 C.E
Africa and the French Atlantic 1650-1848
Dress, Cloth and History in Africa and the African Diaspora, 1800 to present
W.E.B. DuBois and Africa
Graduate
Africa in the Era of the Transatlantic Slave Trade
For more information, see the TEACHING tab