Congratulations to Jean Allman
Dean Edward S. Macias has announced that Jean Marie Allman has been named the inaugural holder of the J.H. Hexter Professorship in the Humanities in Arts & Sciences. A formal installation will be held February 12, 2008 in Holmes Lounge.
Professor Allman is one of the most distinguished historians of West Africa in this country. She approaches her research from interdisciplinary angles including nation and national identity, gender and colonialism, fashion and the politics of clothing, and the modernity of indigenous belief systems. All of her work is concerned with how African women and men, in their homes and communities, through their belief systems and material cultures, have positioned themselves as central actors in the making of the modern world.
Three books published include _TONGNAAB: The History of a West African God_, _”I Will Not Eat Stone”: A Women’s History of Colonial Asante_, and _The Quills of the Porcupine: Asante Nationalism in an Emergent Ghana, 1954-1957_. She has edited several volumes and written over 26 articles and book reviews (19 refereed), in addition to serving as co-editor of the _Journal of Women’s History_ and co-editor of two award-winning book series, _The Social History of Africa_ series and _New African Histories_.
Besides a prolific publication record, Professor Allman has exhibited exemplary administrative service to her academic institutions and to her academic discipline. She directed the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois from 2003-2007. A Title VI Center funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the Center is one of the largest and most distinguished African studies programs in the country. Professor Allman has also chaired the American Historical Association’s Joan Kelly Memorial Book Prize Committee, has served as a member of the Board of Directors for the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora and for the African Studies Association, and has been a panelist for the NEH, ACLS, and SSRC.
Undergraduate and graduate students benefit from Professor Allman’s enthusiastic teaching. She has developed numerous courses ranging from introductory surveys to upper-class and graduate seminars. This fall, she is teaching an advanced seminar titled “Gender, Race and Class in South Africa, 1880 – Present,” and next semester her writing intensive seminar is titled “Women, Men, and Gender in Africa.” Professor Allman is well-known for her mentoring in the overlapping academic areas of History, African and African American Studies, and Women and Gender Studies; she has overseen numerous graduate dissertation projects. She is frequently invited to deliver papers and scholarly talks at institutions across the country and abroad.
Professor Allman studied at Northwestern University: she earned a B.A. in history and an undergraduate certificate in African Studies, followed by a Graduate Certificate in African Studies, and finally, a Ph.D. in African History. She began her academic career at the University of Missouri before moving to the University of Minnesota and the University of Illinois. She speaks Twi, French, and some Talen.
J.H. Hexter (1910-1996) earned his B.A. from the University of Cincinnati and M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard University. His first academic position was at Queens College in New York. He joined the Department of History at Washington University in 1957. Specializing in Tudor and 17th-century British history, Professor Hexter became the Charles Stille Professor at Yale (1964), where he founded the Yale Center for Parliamentary History. In 1978, he returned to Washington University as the John M. Olin Professor of the History of Freedom, a position he held until his retirement in 1990. He also founded the Center for the History of Freedom in Arts & Sciences, which published the landmark 15-volume series The Making of Modern Freedom. Later in his career, Professor Hexter developed "Troops to Teachers," a joint U.S. Department of Education and Department of Defense program that recruits military officers to become teachers in public schools.
