Steven Feierman, Ph.D., Professor
University of Pennsylvania
Department of History and Sociology of Science
Claudia Cohen Hall, 249 S. 36th Street, Room 322
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6304
Telephone: (215) 898-8423
E-mail
D.Phil., Oxford University
Ph.D. Northwestern University
Diploma in Social Anthropology, Oxford University
M.A., Northwestern University
B.A., Columbia University
Areas of Specialization:
History of health and healing in Africa, the content and uses of orally transmitted knowledge, and the place of knowledge about Africa in the social sciences.
Courses Taught:
Health and Healing in Modem Africa
Comparative Medicine
Symbolic Anthropology
History and Social Theory
Household and Gender in African History.
The Social Construction of Oral Tradition
History of Pre-Colonial Africa
Africa in World History
History of Modem Africa
History of East Africa (graduate research course)
History of Southern Africa
Numerous seminars on special topics on anthropology and history in African studies.
Laboratory Course in African History
Methods of Historical Research for Non-Literate Societies
Steven Feierman received a Ph.D. in African history from Northwestern University and a D.Phil. in social anthropology from Oxford. He has also studied with, and been apprenticed to, "traditional" healers in eastern Africa. His special areas of research include the history of health and healing in Africa, the content and uses of orally transmitted knowledge, and the place of knowledge about Africa in the social sciences. The best known of his books is Peasant Intellectuals.
CURRICULUM VITAE
Employment:
University of Wisconsin, Madison, Department of History:
instructor, January 1969-September 1970;
assistant professor, 1970-73;
associate professor, 1973-77;
professor, 1977-1989
University of Florida, Department of History:
professor, 1988-1995
University of Pennsylvania
professor of History and Sociology of Science and professor of History 1995
chair, History and Sociology of Science, 1996
Publications -- Books and Monographs:
African History. Second edition, fully revised. With Philip Curtin, Leonard Thompson, and Jan Vansina Longman, 1995.
The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa: Co-edited with John Janzen. University of California Press. 1992.
Peasant Intellectuals Anthropology and History in Tanzania: University of Wisconsin Press. 1990.
The Social History of Disease and Medicine in Africa:Co-edited with John Janzen. Special issue of Social Science and Medicine . 1979.
Health and Society in Africa: A Working Bibliography, Crossroads Press. 1978.
African History, with Philip Curtin, Jan Vansina and Leonard Thompson. Little Brown, 1978.
The Shambaa Kingdom.University of Wisconsin Press. 1974.
Publications -- Articles and Book Chapters:
"Reciprocity and Assistance fit Precolonial Africa." In press Philanthropy Culture in Comparative Perspective, Edward Queen (ed.), Indiana University Press.
"Colonizers, Scholars, and the Creation of Invisible Histories," in press, History After the Linguistic Turn, edited by Lynn Hunt.
"State Formation," in Encyclopedia of Sub-Saharan Africa. In press.
"Heading as Social Criticism in the Time of Colonial Conquest." African Studies (Johannesburg), 54 (1995).
"Africa in History: The End of the Universal Narrative." In After Colonialism, Imperialism and the Colonial Aftermath. edited by Gyan Prakash. Princeton University Press. 1995.
"African Histories and the Dissolution of World History." In Africa and the Disciplines, edited by Robert Bates, V.Y. Mudimbe, and Jean O'Barr Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
"Defending the Promise of Subsistence: Population Growth and Agriculture in the West Usambara Mountains, 1920-1980." In Population Growth and Agricultural Change in Africa edited by B.L. Turner II, Goran Hyden, and Robert Kates, Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1993.
"Popular Control over the Institutions of Health: A Historical Study," in The Professionalization of African Medicine edited by Murray Last and Gordon Chavunduka. Manchester: Manchester University Press in association with the International African Institute, 1986.
"Struggles for Control: The Social Roots of Health and Healing in Modem Africa," African Studies Review, 73-147, nos. 2/3, 1985.
"Therapy as a System-in-Action in Northeastern Tanzania." Social Science Medicine October 1981.
"Change in African Therapeutic Systems," Social Science and Medicine, 1979.
"The Shambaa," in Tanzania Before 1900, edited by Andrew Roberts. Dar es Salaam: East African Publishing House, 1968.
Grants and Awards:
Florida Endowment Fund/McKnight Foundation for African American Education in the State of Florida, William R. Jones Best Graduate Mentor, first place prize, 1993.
University of Florida, Department of History, Graduate Teaching Award, 1993.
Finalist, Herskovits Prize for the best scholarly book in English on Africa, for Peasant Intellectuals.
National Science Foundation
National Endowment for the Humanities
Social Science Research Council .
Fulbright
Ronmes Award, Graduate School, University of Wisconsin
Princeton University, Fellow of the Shelby Cullorn Davis Center
Professional Activities:
Founder, 1989, African History Doctoral Program, University of Florida.
Activities of the SSRC-ACLS Joint Committee on Africa:
Chairman, 1977-1979
Co-organizer, project on health and society in Africa, 1976-1983. Project activities included: (1) Sponsored panels on the Political Economy of Health in Africa, December 1983; (2) Conference on the Political Economy of Health in Africa and Latin America (planning meeting), New York 1981; (3) Conference on
Causality and Classification in African Medical Systems, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, June 1980. (4) Set of commissioned panels on the social history of disease and therapy in Africa, Baltimore, 1978, proceedings published. (5 )
Conference on African Cultural Transformations, Smithsonian Institution Center at Belmont, Maryland 1978. (6) Publication of Health and Society in Africa
Working Bibliography . (7) Publication of a special issue of Social Science Medicine 1979. (8) Publication of The Social Basis of Health and Healing in Africa, University of California Press.
Co-organizer with Prof Isaria Kimambo, University of Dar es Salaam, of Project on the History of the Pangani Valley Region of Tanzania, leading to numerous M.A. and Ph.D. theses by Tanzanian and American students.
Member, Social Science Research Council, International Pre-Dissertation Fellowship Committee, 1992.
Consulting Editor, Africa, Journal of the International African Institute, 1981-1983.
Member, Fulbright Panel on African History, 1981-1983.
Member, NEH panel on non-western history, 1976-1978.
Periods on the editorial boards of History in Africa and African Economic History
Member SSRC Foreign Area Fellowship Committee, 1973-1978.
Students Supervised to Completion of Ph.D.:
Claire Robertson, Associate Professor, Ohio State. Revised dissertation won the Herskovits Prize for the best scholarly book on Africa in the English language, published by the University of Indiana Press.
Thomas Spear, Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Revised dissertation published by the East African Publishing House.
Lee Cassanelli Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania. Revised dissertation published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Randall Packard, Am Griggs Candler Professor of African History, Emory University. Revised dissertation published by Indiana University Press.
Jeffrey Peires, Member of Parliament (African National Congress) Republic of South Africa. Former head, Department of History, University of the Transkei. Revised dissertation published by University of California Press and Ravan Press.
Kings Phiri Chancellor College, Malawi
Richard Sigwalt Voice of America.
David Sandgren, Associate Professor, Concordia College. Revised dissertation published by Peter Lang Press.
James Giblin, Associate Professor, University of Iowa. Revised dissertation published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Keletso Atkins, Associate Professor, University of Minnesota- Revised dissertation won the Herskovits Prize for the best scholarly book on Africa in the English language; published by Heinenmann.
John Berntsen, Senior Policy Analyst, U.S. Department of State.
Peter Koffsky, employed in a non-academic job.
Ismail Abdalla, Associate Professor, College of William and Mary.
David Anthony, Associate Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz.
Shirin Walji, Lecturer, University of Nairobi
Marc Dawson, Associate Professor, College of Western Massachusetts.
Carol Dickerman, Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Renee Tantala, Assistant Professor, Shippensburg State College
Joyce Kirk, Associate Professor, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.
Elizabeth Schmidt, Associate Professor, Loyola University. Revised dissertation (published by Heinemann) a Herskovits prize finalist and the winner of a Choice academic book of the year award.
Lynda Rose Day, Assistant Professor, Brooklyn College, CUNY
Jonathon Glassman, associate professor, Northwestern University. Revised dissertation won the Herskovits Prize for the best scholarly book on Africa in the English language, published by Heinemann.
Conference Papers and Book Reviews:
"Healing and Authority in the Age of Conquest," for the Oxford University Conference on Medicine in the Colonies, July 1996.
Review of Henrietta Moore and Megan Vaughan, Cutting Down Trees, Gender, Nutrition. and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia 1890-1990, Published in the Journal of African History. 1995, pp. 516-518.
"From Hidden Knowledge to Historical Text." Sponsored paper for Australian National University Conference on Texts in African History, July 3-6, 1995.
"Secrecy and the Transmission of Oral Knowledge." Paper for the Joint Seminar in African Studies of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. February 27, 1996.
"Colonizers, Scholars, and the Creation of Invisible Histories," conference on The Study of Culture After the Linguistic Turn, University of California, Berkeley, April 26-27, 1996.
Triennial History Workshop Conference, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Lecture to the plenary session on South African historical writing. July 1994.
Triennial History Workshop Conference, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Paper on "Heating, Civil Society, and Colonial Conquest."
University of Pennsylvania, Department of History and Sociology of Science, seminar. "The Meanings of Illness in Colonial Africa.'' March 1994.
University of Pennsylvania, African Studies Program, public lecture. "Colonial Conquest and the Politics of Survival." April 1994.
Leiden University, School of Non-Western Studies. Public lecture, "Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology, History, and Agency," April, 1993.
Leiden University, African Studies Program. Public lecture, "The Spirits of Capitalism and the Fetishisrn of Production: Gender and Misfortune in East Africa.'' April 1993.
Review of Valentin Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa, Journal of African History, 1991.
"African Histories and the Dissolution of World History," 1992. Presented at Princeton University (Davis Center Seminar), Johns Hopkins University (History Department Seminar), and the University of Pennsylvania (Ethnohistory Seminar).
"African Authenticity and Colonial Discourse." Paper for the Inaugural Year of the Agrarian Studies Seminar, Yale University, January 1992.
"The Spirits of Capitalism and the Fetishism of Production: Gender and Misfortune in East Africa." Public Lecture, Yale University Department of Anthropology, January 1992.
"The Making of Peasant Intellectuals." Public lecture, Duke University, the New School for Social Research, and the University of Pennsylvania, 1990 and 1991.
"African History and the Discipline of History" Paper for the African Studies Association, November 1991.
"African Health and the Social Sciences." Harvard University, Department of Community Medicine, April 12,1991.
"African Anthropology in History: The Question of Context." Public Lecture, Harvard University and Roston University, May 1991.
"Peasant Intellectuals and the History of Political Ideas in Tanzania " Invited paper for the American Ethnological Society, San Antonio, 1987.
'Indigenous Knowledge and Health in Africa." Commissioned report for the Rockefeller Foundation. 1987.
"Oral Traditions, Anthropology, and Sources for the History of Popular Culture in Tanzania " Public lecture sponsored by the Departments of History and Literature, University of Dar es Salaam, August 1986.
"Culture Wars in Modem Africa: The Survival of Popular Healers." Osler lecture, Madison General Hospital, October 24, 1985.
"Health, Production, and Struggles for Domestic Power in Africa." Northwestern University, May 1985.
"Political Symbols and Colonial Control: Continuity over the Long Term in Northern Tanzania " Paper for the Ethnohistory Workshop, University of Pennsylvania. 1985.
"Health Without Healers: Reciprocity and Hegemony in Modem Africa." Public Lecture, University of Pennsylvania, 1985.
"The Social Origins of Health and Healing in Africa." Paper commissioned by the SSRCACLS Joint Committee on Africa, distributed to members of the African Studies Association before the meeting at Los Angeles, October 1984.
"The Social Costs of Production hi Africa" Paper presented to the Inte national Conference on the Political Economy of Health in Africa and Latin America co-sponsored by El Colegio de Mexico an the SSRC. Toluca, January 1985.
"Village Healers, Specialized Healers, and Health in Tanzania.'' Paper presented to the International African Institute Conference on the Professionalization of African Medicine, Gaborone, Botswana, September 1983.
Review of D. McCarthy, Colonial Bureaucracy and Creating Underdevelopment: Tanganyika, 1919-1940, in History of Africa, 1983.
Review of Roy Willis, A State in the Making, for Journal of African History 1983.
Review of H. Kjekshus, Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African History, for Journal of Asian and African Studies, 1982.
"The Ideological Bases of British Rule in Tanganyika." Paper presented to the History Department, Harvard University, 1982.
"Production and Reproduction in Lushoto District." Paper presented to the faculty, University of Dar es Salaam, January 1982.
Review of M. Ylvisacker, Lamu in the Nineteenth Century, American Historical Review, 1982.
"Diaspora Studies Today." Paper presented for the Commemoration of One Hundred Yews of Black Presence at the University of Pennsylvania, 198 1.
"History of Therapy as History of Consciousness," Paper presented to the faculty Ethnohistory seminar, University of Pennsylvania, 198 1.
"Plural Therapeutic Traditions in Northeastern Tanzania " Paper presented to Conference on Causality and Classification in African Medical Systems, Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 1980.
"Medicine in Africa and the Study of Culture Change," Paper presented at the conference on Cultural Transformations in Africa, Belmont, Maryland, 1978.
Review of Gerald Hartwig, The Art of Survival in East Africa, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1979.
"Oral Tradition in African History," presentation at Princeton University, 1977.
Review of R. July, Pre-Colonial Africa, in American Historical Review, 1977.
Review of A.H.M. el Zein, The Sacred Meadows, in African Religious Research, 1975.
"Illusions of Continuity, Illusions of Change," Paper presented to the African Studies Association, 1975.
"The Kamba of Eastern Tanzania A Documentary History." Paper presented to the conference on the History of the East African Coast, Columbia University, December 1974.
"Royal Death and Accession, A Double Rite Passage," Third International Conference on the History of African Religion, Nairobi 1974.
"The Historical Development of Clans and Lineages," Paper delivered to the social science faculty seminar, University of Dar es Salaam, July 1974.
Paper delivered to Oxford University faculty seminar in African studies, on the Shambaa royal capital as a source for intellectual history Trinity terra, 1971.
