Publications
- “‘Africa isn’t a testing lab’: Considering COVID Vaccine Trials in a History of Biomedical Experimentation and Abuse.” Journal of West African History, Vol 6, 2 (2020), 122-136.
- “African Women and Health: Evolving Challenges.” In Holding the World Together: African Women in Changing Perspective, eds. Claire Robertson and Nwando Achebe. Madison: Wisconsin Press, 2019.
- “Compounding Traditions: From “Untraditional” Healers to Modern Bioprospectors of South Africa’s Medicinal Plants.” In Theatrum Botanicum, eds. Uriel Orlow and Shela Sheikh. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2018.
- “Health and Medicine in African History.” In A Companion to African History, eds. William Worger, Charles Ambler, and Nwando Achebe. Hoboken: Blackwell Publishing, 2018.
- “Reinventing ‘Traditional’ Medicine in Post-apartheid South Africa.” In Indigenous Knowledge and the Environment in Africa and North America. Athens: Ohio Press, 2012.
- (with Bridget Teboh). “The Impact of Globalization on Health, Food Security, and Biomedicine in Africa.” In Globalization and the African Experience Durham: Carolina Academic Press: 2012.
- Healing Traditions: African Medicine, Cultural Exchange, and Competition in South Africa, 1820-1948. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008. (Melville J. Herskovits Finalist, 2009)
- (with Julie Parle) “Healers, Witchcraft, and Madness” in Zulu Identities: Being Zulu Past and Present. Pietermaritzburg: University of Natal Press: 2008.
- “Indian-African Encounters: Polyculturalism & African Therapeutics in Natal, South Africa, 1820-1948.” Journal of Southern African Studies. (32.2: June 2006)
- “Competition, Race and Professionalization: African Healers and White Medical Practitioners in Natal, South Africa in the Early Twentieth Century” Social History of Medicine vol. 14. No 2. August 2001.
Oral History Archives
- “Brooklyn Oral History Project,” this is a web-based archive of oral histories regarding urban renewal and Charlotte’s former Brooklyn (Second Ward) neighborhood. The webpage also includes a brief history, timeline, and bibliography.
- “The Queen’s Garden,” this archive of oral histories explores the stories of those who grow, cultivate, produce, and distribute fresh food in the greater Charlotte area.
Research Interests
Southern Africa; Science, Technology and Medicine; Indigenous Knowledges; Public History; Food and Agriculture; and Globalization.
Courses Taught
- HIST 1502 Food Fight: The History and Politics of What We Eat.
- HIST 2600 Comparative Slaveries in African History
- HIST 2211 Modern Africa
- HIST 2210 Precolonial Africa
- HIST 3003 History of Public Health
- HIST 3154 Africa & Globalization
- HIST 3155 Ancestors to Antibiotics: Health & Healing in Africa
- HIST 4002/5002 Great Debates in African History
- HIST 6000 Oral History and Memory
- HIST 6694 Seminar in Historical Writing
Biography
Education:
Ph.D. in History, University of California, Los Angeles, 2001. Post-Baccalaureate in African Studies, University of Cape Town. BA Sociology/Anthropology, Lawrence University.
Current Projects
I am currently working on a book-length project that examines how biomedicine and doctors both empowered and disrupted the system of South African indenture (1860-1911). Biomedicine was used and imagined as a tool of empire and industry, and also subject to the competing visions and responsibilities of various colonial forces, doctors, and the emergent field of public health. I am particularly interested in the international dimensions of this phenomenon, from negotiations between various colonial powers—Britain, India, and Natal—to evolving biomedical understandings of diseases like cholera and hookworm. In particular, I seek to determine the conditions, such as the rise of a public health administration, that emboldened whistle-blowers who nudged reform in a system overwhelmingly stacked in the favor of the rich and powerful.