When:
Tuesday, January 30, 2018
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM CT
Where: 1902 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208 map it
Audience: Graduate Students
Contact:
Elizabeth Morrissey
Group: Equality Development and Globalization Studies (EDGS)
Category: Lectures & Meetings
EDGS Graduate Lecture Series
Caitlin Monroe, History
What counts as history and who gets to tell it? How have indigenous practices of storytelling, missionary schools, and colonial projects of "civilizing" education efforts shaped and defined what gets counted as "history" in Uganda? What effect has this definition had on our own scholarship on Uganda's intellectual history? This ongoing research project examines 19th- and 20th-century struggles over historical knowledge in western Uganda's educational spaces as a window into broader debates about gendered expertise and group identity. It investigates how education initiatives credentialed and gendered certain kinds of knowledge about the past and discounted others, like the kind women told in folktales or in public healing rituals. While not commonly recognized today as "history," these women's stories, songs, and rituals contained information about the past that often differed from the male-dominated narratives commonly credentialed as such. Building on scholarship on the role of historical thought in shaping ethnic and national identities, I investigate how incorporating women's historical knowledge changes our narratives about group identity and African intellectual history.