African History

MSU’s History Department has had an African field for over forty years. Under the direction of Harold Marcus and David Robinson, the doctoral program in African History emerged as one of the premier programs in the nation, most recently ranked among the top three in the US News & World Report. We have now renewed the field with the appointment of five new faculty: Nwando Achebe, Peter Alegi, Walter Hawthorne and Laura Fair. Each has a long publishing record and years of researching and teaching experience. We specialize in West, East and South African History, and in the study of gender, leisure, religion, slavery and the Atlantic slave trade. Peter Limb, a specialist in South African labor and political history, also works closely with Africanist graduate students, as do faculty engaged with the African diaspora in fields such as African-American, Comparative Black, Atlantic, Latin American, Caribbean, and World History. In addition, the department and university have special relationships with universities in Senegal, Nigeria, Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa. They involve the regular movement of faculty and students in both directions, and generate joint research and teaching projects.

Over the years about sixty graduate students have completed their doctorates here; about twenty of those were from the African continent We intend to maintain that combination of African, native-born American and other students, as we renew the program Our graduates are competitive with the best and are now teaching at UCLA, the University of Kansas, Ohio University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Maryland and many other places. Some also choose to go into work in development and other international arenas. MSU graduate students can obtain funding from a number of department and university sources.

In addition to department resources and offerings, African history graduate students benefit from the university’s African Studies Center . The center is one of nine designated centers funded through the Title VI program of the US Department of Education, and offers instruction in many African languages. The Title VI program called FLAS (Foreign Language Area Studies) often provides financial support for graduate students in the Department of History.

The university’s commitment to African studies is also evidenced by its Africana library collection. At MSU, African studies librarians, both with Ph.D.s in African History, Joseph J. Lauer and Peter Limb, staff the third largest Africana library collection in the U.S. Further, MATRIX, MSU’s award winning humanities and technology research center, has important Africa-related data-gathering and digitalization projects.