John Aerni-Flessner

Biography

I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and earned a bachelor’s degree in history with a secondary education certificate from Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa. I taught high school in Lesotho, Southern Africa and in Kwethluk, Alaska–a Yup’ik community–before going back to graduate school. Earning an MA and PhD from Washington University in St. Louis in African History, I first taught at SUNY Cortland in Upstate NY for three years before joining the Residential College in Arts and Humanities (RCAH) at MS