Nancy J. Jacobs
Associate Professor:
Africana Studies and History
Phone: 401-863-9342
Nancy_Jacobs@brown.edu
I am currently working on a book project titled Birders of a Feather: Stories of People, Birds, and Other People in Africa. The book probes the politics of knowing about and interacting with birds while exploring "traditional" African knowledge, interactions between colonial ornithologists and African assistants, the post-independence diversification of the field, historic environmental changes, and how relations of power and affection across species and cultures converge in recent conservation and ecotourism initiatives.
Biography
I hail from Holland, Michigan and received my BA from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the problems of apartheid South Africa captured my intellectual interest. I received an MA in African Studies from UCLA and a PhD in History from Indiana University. South African historiography had a strong tradition of social history, but looking at rural areas, I felt that a stronger consideration of environmental factors was necessary to understand the decline of food production and increase in dependence on wage labor among black South Africans. This was the subject of my dissertation research and of my subsequent monograph, Environment, Power, and Injustice: A South African History (Cambridge 2003). The common theme between my first book and my current research on people and birds is that both probe the nexus between environment, social division, and power.
Interests
In my research for the book, Birders of a Feather: Stories of People, Birds, and Other People in Africa, I am using people's interest in birds to examine race, gender, nationality, science, development, and conservation in sub-Saharan Africa. I am drawing on research in the U.S., the U.K., South Africa, and Zambia to encompass a range of topics: the impact on birds of human development in the past two centuries; traditional African relations with birds, both conceptual and material; ornithology conducted by white Euro-Americans in a colonial context; the participation of black collectors and taxidermists in ornithological research; and finally, the more recent attempts in conservation and ecotourist initiatives to integrate African and European ways of knowing about and relating to birds. This book is intended for a general readership in the United States, Europe, and Africa.
My long-term project is to continue development of curricular materials on the history of twentieth-century Africa. I have compiled a broad collection of obscure primary sources for an introductory lecture course (AF16). These include memoirs by "ordinary" Africans, interviews with illiterate people whose perspectives might otherwise be forgotten, writings of colonial officials, and commentary by elite politicians and intellectuals. I have also collected photographs, artistic representations, and music that offer windows in past decades. I will continue my search for useful documents and hope eventually to edit them for publication as a book. I am also continuing to develop a web-based reference tool, the Animated Atlas of African History (AAAH), which is publicly available at http://www.brown.edu/Research/AAAH/.
Degrees
M.A. in African Studies, University of California Los Angeles, 1987; Ph.D. in History, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1995
Awards
2005 Best of WebCT for AF16 "Twentieth-Century Africa" course website
2003, 04, 05 Brown University Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Departmental Research Award
2004 Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program at Brown University Outstanding Mentors Award
2003-04 Program in Agrarian Studies Fellowship, Yale University
2002 American Society for Environmental History Alice Hamilton Prize (Best article published outside the journal, Environmental History) for "The Great Bophuthatswana Donkey Massacre: Discourse on the Ass and Politics of Class and Grass"
2001 Wriston Grant from Brown University for course preparation
2000 Richard B. Salomon Faculty Research Award from Brown University
1997-98 American Council for Learned Societies/Social Science Research Council, International Postdoctoral Fellowship
1997 American Historical Association Bernadotte E. Schmitt Grant
1994 Indiana University College of Arts and Sciences Fellowship
1990-91 Fulbright-Hays Fellowship for dissertation research in Great Britain and South Africa
1990 Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, Title IV (FLAS), Yale University African Studies Center to study Zulu (summer)
1989-90 FLAS, Indiana University African Studies Center to study Tswana
1988-89 FLAS, Indiana University African Studies Center to study Tswana
1984-85 FLAS, University of California at Los Angeles African Studies Center to study Zulu
Affiliations
African Studies Association
American Society for Environmental History
American Historical Association
Teaching
Teaching is central to my intellectual growth and vitality. Brown students have prodded me into new directions and in nine years of teaching here I have become a different and more creative historian through their influences. At Brown, I have taught courses on Southern African History, West African History, Eastern African History, African Environmental History, African Women's History, South African Life Histories, Twentieth-Century Africa, and Africa Since 1950. My plans for future teaching and research are to continue to seek out intersections between environmental and social history and to deepen considerations of the more recent past in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to my research and teaching responsibilities, I have enjoyed serving as a concentration advisor in the history department and as a faculty fellow (with my husband Peter Heywood) for the Gregorian Quadrangle and Graduate Center.
Funded Research
N/A
Web Links
- Environment, Power, and Injustice: A South African History
- Brown group advocates for South African asbestos victims
- Animated Atlas of African History
