History Faculty Database
History
Arts & Sciences
Duke University

 HOME > Arts & Sciences > History > Faculty    Search Help Login pdf version printable version 

Karin Shapiro, Associate Professor of the Practice of African and African American Studies

Karin Shapiro

I study American social and southern history, as well as South African history. My interest in the political economy of race and coerced labor in both societies led to me to examine a dramatic Gilded Age labor rebellion in the Tennessee coalfields against the use of convict workers, the subject of my first book, A New South Rebellion: The Battle against Convict Labor in the Tennessee Coalfields, 1871-1896 (UNC Press, 1998). I also co-edited, along with scholars from the University of the Witwatersrand’s History Workshop and the Radical History Review, History from South Africa: Alternative Visions and Practices (Temple University Press, 1991).  This volume, though now dated, brought both more nuanced radical interpretations of South African history and provided an exposure of History Workshop historians to a wide range of American historians who sought deeper historical understandings of that country’s democratic revolution. 

Committed to reaching audiences beyond a scholarly community, I have produced a film on the epidemiologist Sherman James and the origins of his John Henryism Hypothesis (2018) and co-produced two others – one on South Africans in North Carolina (2005) and one on the international Fulbright program (2011) – and have curated exhibits on Nelson Mandela (2008) and Jewish history and life in Durham, North Carolina (2013).  By and large, these efforts have drawn on my abiding interests in the American South and South Africa.

I am now engaged in three distinct projects. The first consists of a biography of Archbishop Walter Khotso Makhulu, archbishop of Central Africa between 1980 and 2000.  A graduate of the same seminary and a direct contemporary of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu who served as Archbishop of Cape Town, Makhulu played a key role in the anti-apartheid movement.  For years, he secretly funneled money from the Norwegian government and Norwegian state church to a wide variety of anti-apartheid activists inside of South Africa.  In addition, he oversaw the demographic transformation of the African bishopric and facilitated the incorporation of African rituals into the Anglican Church in Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi. Archbishop Makhulu was also a critical voice in key debates in the Anglican Church, namely the ordination of women and gay rights.

Second, I am exploring South Africa’s apartheid-era emigration policy and its relationship to notions of citizenship and state formation, as well as the ways in which passports and other kinds of travel documents formed part of the oppressive apparatus of the successive National Party governments.

Third, I am researching the transnational careers of seven influential South African medics who came to North Carolina in the 1950s and ‘60s to work at Duke and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Primarily epidemiologists and family and community medicine doctors, this cohort adopted a "social medicine" approach. These pioneering doctors generally left South Africa when the National Party introduced apartheid in the late 1940s/1950s. Several ended up in North Carolina, where they had long and illustrious careers. I am interested in the ways in which these medics continued to explore the impact of social environment on health through epidemiological studies of North Carolina communities, as well as their efforts to establish health care facilities that harkened to those they had created in South Africa.

Contact Info:
kshapiro@duke.edu
(919) 684-2961
Office Location:  243D Friedl Building, Box 90252, Durham, NC 27708
Office Phone:  (919) 684-2961
Email Address: send me a message
Web Pages:  https://duke.box.com/s/4y59yao2e0pgm978m6yl
https://duke.box.com/s/83mnodzp6wvunc0vr8hvgyrekqxs9odl

Teaching (Spring 2024):

  • AAAS 349S.01, CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICA Synopsis
    Friedl Bdg 216, W 10:20 AM-12:50 PM
    (also cross-listed as HISTORY 259S.01, POLSCI 368S.01, PUBPOL 321S.01, RIGHTS 351S.01, SOCIOL 259S.01)
Education:

Ph.D.Yale University1991
M.Phil.Yale University1986
M.A.Yale University1983
Honours Degree in HistoryUniversity of Witwatersrand1981
B.A. (hons)University of Witwatersrand (South Africa)1981
B.A.University of Witwatersrand (South Africa)1980
Specialties:

Politics, Public Life and Governance
Race and Ethnicity
Global Transnational History
Research Interests:

I study American social and southern history, as well as South African history. My interest in the political economy of race and coerced labor in both societies led to me to examine a dramatic Gilded Age labor rebellion in the Tennessee coalfields against the use of convict workers, the subject of my first book, A New South Rebellion: The Battle against Convict Labor in the Tennessee Coalfields, 1871-1896 (UNC Press, 1998). I also co-edited, along with scholars from the University of the Witwatersrand’s History Workshop and the Radical History Review, History from South Africa: Alternative Visions and Practices (Temple University Press, 1991). This volume, though now dated, brought both more nuanced radical interpretations of South African history and provided an exposure of History Workshop historians to a wide range of American historians who sought deeper historical understandings of that country’s democratic revolution.

Committed to reaching audiences beyond a scholarly community, I have co-produced two films – one on South Africans in North Carolina (2005) and one on the international Fulbright program (2011) – and have curated exhibits on Nelson Mandela (2008) and the Jewish history and life in Durham, North Carolina (2013). By and large, these efforts have drawn on my abiding interests in the American South and South Africa.

I am now engaged in three distinct projects. The first consists of a biographical essay of Archbishop Walter Khotso Makhulu, archbishop of Central Africa between 1980 and 2000. A graduate of the same seminary and a direct contemporary of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Archbishop Desmond Tutu who served as Archbishop of Cape Town, Makhulu was a key figure in the anti-apartheid movement. For years, he secretly funneled money from the Norwegian government and Norwegian state church to a wide variety of anti-apartheid activists inside of South Africa. In addition, he oversaw the demographic transformation of the African bishopric and facilitated the incorporation of African rituals into the Anglican Church in Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi.

Second, I am exploring the evolution of South African’s emigration policy and its relationship to notions of citizenship and state formation, the ways in which passports and other kinds of travel documents formed part of the oppressive apparatus of the apartheid-era governments, and the movement of people and ideas from South Africa to the United States.

Third, I am researching the transnational careers of seven influential South African medics who came to North Carolina in the 1950s and ‘60s to work at Duke and UNC, Chapel Hill. Primarily epidemiologists and family and community medicine doctors and shaped by a "social medicine" approach, many of these pioneering social medics left South Africa when the National Party introduced apartheid in the late 1940s/1950s. Several ended up in North Carolina, where they had long and illustrious careers. I am interested in the ways in which these medics continued to explore the impact of social environment on health through epidemiological studies of North Carolina communities, as well as their efforts to establish health care facilities that harkened back to those they had created in South Africa.

Keywords:

Convict labor--United States • History, 19th Century • History, 20th Century • History--21st century • Social history • South Africa

Curriculum Vitae
Representative Publications   (More Publications)

  1. Shapiro, K, A New South Rebellion: The Battle against Convict Labor in the Tennessee Coalfields, 1871-1896 (1998), University of North Carolina Press
  2. Paul Weinberg and Karin A. Shapiro (Producers and Directors), Double Vision (May, 2005) (A documentary on South African immigration to North Carolina.)  [abs]
  3. Brown, J; Bozzoli, B; Delius, P; Manning, P; Shapiro, KA; Wiener, J, History from South Africa: Alternative Visions and Practices (1991), Temple University Press
  4. Shapiro, K, William R. Riley: Limits of Interracial Unionism in the Late-Nineteenth-Century South, in The Human Tradition in American Labor History, edited by Arnesen, E (2004), Scholarly Resources
  5. Bonner, P; Shapiro, K, "Company Town, Company Estate: Pilgrim's Rest, 1910-1932, Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 19 no. 2 (June, 1993), pp. 171-200, Informa UK Limited [doi]
  6. Shapiro, KA, Doctors or Medical Aids - The Debate over the training of Black Medical Personnel for the Rural Black Population in South Africa in the 1920s and 1930s, Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 13 no. 2 (January, 1987), pp. 234-255 [doi]
  7. Shapiro, KA, Entries for: William Riley, Richard L. Davis, Myles Horton, the Tennessee Coal Miners’ Insurrection of 1891-92, the Highlander Folk School/Research Center, and Convict Leasing in the Postbellum South, in Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working Class History, edited by Arnesen, E (2007), Routledge
  8. Review of Anthony Marx, Making Race and Nation: A Comparison of the United States, South Africa and Brazil, Journal of American Ethnic History, vol. 19 no. 2 (2000), pp. 129-130
  9. Shapiro, K, Steel Drivin’ Man - John Henry - The Untold Story of an American Legend by Scott Reynolds Nelson, Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, vol. 4 (Winter, 2007), pp. 113-115
  10. Review of George Fredrickson, Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa (November, 1996), South African Sunday Times
Selected Grant Support

  • Josiah Charles Trent Grant, Duke University.      
  • Council for International Exchange of Scholars.      
  • Institute for International Education.      
  • W.E.B. Du Bois Institute Fellow, Harvard University (Declined).      
  • Social Science Research Institute Faculty Fellow, Duke University.      
  • John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Fellow, Duke University.      
  • Fulbright Scholar, Yale University.      
  • Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Fund Grant, South Africa.      

Social Science Research Institute Faculty Fellow (Duke University), W.E.B. Du Bois Institute Fellow (Harvard University), John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute Fellow (Duke University), Fulbright Fellowship, Albert J. Beveridge Grant, John F. Enders Grant (Yale University), Alexander Bouchet Prize (Yale University), Various Human Sciences Research Council Grants (South Africa), Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Fund Grant (South Africa).


Duke University * Arts & Sciences * History * Faculty * Staff * Grad * Reload * Login