DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

Interests

Geographic Field(s):  African History

Thematic Field(s):  African Diaspora and African American History; Urban History; Legal and Criminal History

Principal Research Interest(s):  East Africa; Comparative Race and Slavery

Biography

Jonathon Glassman (Ph.D., Wisconsin, 1988) specializes in nineteenth and twentieth century East Africa and in comparative race and slavery. His first book, Feasts and Riot: Revelry, Rebellion, and Popular Consciousness on the Swahili Coast, 1856-1888, was awarded the African Studies Association’s Melville Herskovits Prize.  A free open-access electronic edition is now available as part of the Humanities Open Book project sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation.

Jonathon’s most recent book, War of Words, War of Stones: Racial Thought and Violence in Colonial Zanzibar, traces the emergence of racial discourse in modern East Africa and the ground-level processes by which it became transformed into popular violence. It won the 2012 Martin A. Klein Prize from the American Historical Association and was shortlisted for the Herskovits Prize.  Jonathon’s other awards have included a Guggenheim, two Fulbrights, two Social Science Research Council fellowships, a membership in the Institute for Advanced Studies, and a fellowship from the National Humanities Center.