Office Location: History Dept, Durham, NC 27708
Email Address: bh71@duke.edu
Specialties:
Race and Ethnicity
Legal History
Intellectual History
Global Transnational History
Comparative Colonial Studies
African, Middle East and Asia
Global and Comparative
Research Description: My first book is about the development of ideas about racial difference along the West African Sahel. The research for this project was focused in and around the Malian town of Timbuktu. My current research centers on a nineteenth-century commercial network that connected Timbuktu with Ghadames (Libya), and which involved a number of literate slaves as commercial agents.
Areas of Interest:
Saharan/Sahelian ideas about racial difference
West African intellectual history
Recent Publications (More Publications)
Highlight:
My first book, A history of race in Muslim West Africa, 1600-1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), is about the development of ideas about racial difference along the West African Sahel. The research for this project was focused in and around the Malian town of Timbuktu. My current research centers on a nineteenth-century commercial network that connected Timbuktu with Ghadames (Libya), and which involved a number of literate slaves as commercial agents.