Janet J Ewald, Associate Professor

Contact Info:

Office Location:	316 Carr Building
Office Phone:	(919) 684-4280
Email Address:

Teaching (Fall 2012):

• HISTORY 89S.02, FIRST-YEAR SEMINAR (TOP) Synopsis

  Art 102, WF 01:25 PM-02:40 PM

  (also cross-listed as AAAS 89S.02)

• HISTORY 495S.01, SENIOR THESIS SEMINAR Synopsis

  Carr 229, W 03:05 PM-05:35 PM

Education:

PhD	University of Wisconsin-Madison	1982
MA	University of Wisconsin-Madison	1975
BA	University of Wisconsin-Madison	1973

Specialties:

Comparative Colonial Studies
Labor and Working Class History
Medieval and Early Modern History

Research Interests:

Current projects: I enjoy reading novels and discussing them; following Carolina Hurricanes hockey and Duke women's basketball; walking; swimming; communing with my cats; cooking, especially vegetarian and my own versions of Asian cuisine; traveling.

My specialty in the history of Africa has led me, in both my teaching and research, to explore how Africans participated in the major currents of world history since about 1700. My first book Soldiers, Traders, and Slaves: State Formation and Economic Transformation in the Greater Nile Valley, 1700-1885 uses oral traditions as well as written sources to reconstruct how people in a dangerous frontier zone responded to predatory empires, commercial capitalism, slave raiding, and militant Islam. The book, as well as several articles, analyzes not only how people constructed a small kingdom but also how they continually reconstructed their memories of that kingdom. Following the paths of slaves from the Nile valley led me to the shores of the Indian Ocean and beyond. I have now embarked on a second major project, "Motley Crews: Indian and African Seafarers on English Vessels in the Indian Ocean, c. 1600-1900." The project analyzes two forms of labor control--indentures and slavery--in a maritime setting. Not only Africans, but also Asians and Europeans, are the main actors; center stage is the Indian Ocean bounded by the crescent of shore from Bombay through the Arabian coast to the African Swahili coast; the action takes lace in the tumultuous centuries, especially after 1750, when a system of slavery rose and fell; Asian and African autonomy gave way to European dominance; and steam engines replaced sailing vessels on the ocean.

Curriculum Vitae

Current Ph.D. Students  

• Fahad A. Bishara  
• Arthur M. Fraas  

Recent Publications   (More Publications)   (search)

1. Slave Trade: The Indian Ocean, c1750-1880, in in Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World, edited by Peter N. Stearns (Spring, 2008), Oxford University Press . edit (2008)
2. Motley Crews: African and Indian Seafarers on English/British Vessels in the Eastern Trade, c. 1613-1900.  (a book-length project.)
3. Building a State and Struggling Over Land: The Taqali Kingdom, 1750-1884", in State, Land, Literacy, and the State in the History of Sudanic Africa, edited by Donald Crummey (2003), Red Sea Press
4. The Turkiyya, in The Encyclopedia of Sub-Saharan Africa, edited by John Middleton (forthcoming 2003), MacMillan Press
5. Crossers of the Sea: Slaves and Migrants in the Western Indian Ocean, c. 1800-1900, The American Historical Review, vol. 105 no. 1 (2000), pp. 69-91 [pdf]

American Council for Learned Societies; Carter G. Woodson Institute Fellow; Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow; National Humanities Center Fellow; American Institutes for Yemeni Studies fellowship for research in Yemen; Trent Foundation; American Philosophical Society; various awards for developing courses in Atlantic and Indian Ocean history.