Rocky Mountain Workshop on
AFRICAN HISTORY
Portland State University | Karl Miller Center | Room 460
Friday, September 12, 2025
10:00 am to 11:30 am
Words, Memory, and Power
Discussant: Daren Ray
Lanie Millar
African Decolonization and the African Past in Brazil
Leslie Hadfield
Adventures in African Oral History: A Debriefing
Julie Weiskopf
“First We Must Educate Adults”: Nationalist Goals in Tanzania’s Adult Literacy Campaign
1:15 pm to 2:45 pm
Crossings Over Land and Sea
Discussant: Adwoa Opong
Marie Stango
Jane Rose Waring Roberts:
Liberian Diplomacy and Black Internationalism in the Nineteenth Century
Trishula Patel
Diasporas, Imperialism, and Anticolonialism in the Indian Ocean World:
Hindu Political Thought in 20th Century Africa
Julie Weise
Citizenship and Solidarity:
Malawian Migrant Mineworker Politics in Global Context, 1941-75
3:15 pm to 4:45 pm
Histories of Environment and Health
Discussant: Brooke Bocast
Derrick Sarpong Owusu
Controlling Lunacy: Mental Healthcare in Ghana from 1888 to 1957–
A Case Study of Kumasi
Melissa Graboyes
Beginning and Ending the Global Malaria Eradication Campaign:
The Rockefeller Foundation, the World Health Organization, and the Place of Africa
David Bresnahan
Livingstone Died in Central Africa: A Corpse, Language, and an Imperial Watershed
6:00 pm
Dinner at Abyssinian Kitchen
2940 NE Alberta Street
Saturday, September 13, 2025
Remote Morning Panel
9:00 am to 10:30 am
Interpretations and Crises
Discussant: Jacque-Bethel Mougoué
Adewale Onagbesan
Neglected in Name and Practice: Lymphatic Filariasis and the Politics of Health Interventions in Twentieth-Century Nigeria
Doug Leonard
Reclaiming the Sahara: African and European Reimagining of the World’s Largest Desert
John Faulkner
A Path Forward: African Socialism in Post Colonial Africa and the Cases of Senegal, Ghana, and Tanzania
10:45 am to 12:15 pm
Local, Global, and Comparative Studies
Discussant: Lindsay Braun
David Morton
Local Governance in Zambezia During Mozambique’s Revolution, 1975–1981
Haruka Nagao, William Hatungimana, Rigao Liu
China in the Voce Populi: Africa–China Relations from the Bottom Up
Bryan Kauma
“Political Grains”: Bad Politics, Hunger and the Weaponization of Grain in Zimbabwe, c.2000-2010
1:30 pm to 3:00 pm
New Views of Social, Cultural, and Spatial Order
Discussant: Lynn Thomas
Stephen Dueppen
Blacksmith Kings in Medieval West Africa:
Archaeological Insights on Epic Narratives from the Time of Sunjata
Daniel J. Van Lehman
Southeast African Bantu Place Names in Somalia’s Gosha:
Toponymic Evidence of Ancestral Settlement and Contemporary Land Rights
Liz Timbs
Zulu Female Amabutho: Past and Present
3:30 pm to 5:00 pm
Histories of Gender and Generation
Discussant: Bright Alozie
Adwoa Opong
Making Modern Women: Nancy Tsiboe and the Happy Home Girls Institute, 1953-1960s
Jodie Marshall
Fatma and Saidi Dream of Oman: Two Microhistories of Gendered Transnationalism in Indian Ocean Tanzania
Lacy Ferrell
Learning to Labor?: Children’s Labor in Schools in Late Colonial Ghana