David Newbury (Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts )

Submitted: Wed, March 19, 2008


David Newbury          
Gwendolyn Carter Professor of African Studies
Department of History
Smith College
Northampton, Massachusetts  01063  USA

e-mail:  dnewbury@smith.edu


I teach on all areas of African history, and in addition offer courses on 
Environmental History.  Regional courses include:  East African History, 
West African History, Central African History, South African History.  I 
also teach both an introductory seminar on Biography in African History 
and a Five Colleges Capstone course in African Studies. Thematic courses 
include:  Environment and Imperialism in Africa, Decolonization in Africa, 
Labor in Colonial Africa; and Missions and Missionaries in Africa.

My research is on the social history of East and Central Africa, 
especially Rwanda, Burundi, and eastern Congo.


Recent Publications include:

"Contradictions at the Heart of the Canon:  Jan Vansina and the
Debate over Oral Historiography in Africa, 1960-1980," History in
Africa 34 (2007), 213-54.

"Returning Refugees:  Four Historical Patterns of 'Coming Home' to 
Rwanda," in Comparative studies in society and history 47, 2
(2005), 252-285.

"Precolonial Burundi and Rwanda:  Local Loyalties, Regional Royalties," 
International journal of African historical studies 34, 2 
(2001), 255-314.

"Bringing the Peasant Back In:  The Construction and Corrosion of
Statist Historiography in Rwanda," American historical review 
105, 3 (June 2000), 832-77.

"A Catholic Mass in Kigali:  Ethnicity and the Genocide in Rwanda,"
Canadian journal of African studies  32, 3 (1998), 292-328.

"Understanding Genocide," African studies review 41, 1 (1998),
73-97.

"Ecology and Political Violence: Rwanda 1994," Cultural survival
quarterly  XXII, 4 (Winter 1999), 32-36.

"Trick Cyclists? Recontextualizing Rwandan Dynastic Chronology,"
History in Africa  21 (1994), 191-217.


Books include:  

Kings and Clans: Ijwi Island and the Kivu Rift Valley, 1780-1840.
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993)

The Land Beyond the Mists: Essays on Identity and Authority in
Precolonial Congo and Rwanda.  (forthcoming with James Curry).