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Howard, Allen

  • Allen Howard
  • Allen Howard
  • Professor Emeritus of History
  • Degree: Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison
  • Research Interests: Allen Howard taught and does research in African and Atlantic history. His research focuses geographically on the upper Guinea coast area of West Africa and topically on ethnicity, commerce, and urban social life. He has written extensively on the application of spatial analysis to African history. Along with Michael Adas, he has taken a major role in developing and supervising the minor field in World and Comparative History. He also is actively engaged in the Black Atlantic/Diaspora major field and in the Center for Africa Studies, where he was a member of the Executive Committee and was the Program Chair from 1999 to 2004.

COURSES REGULARLY TAUGHT

 

Undergraduate

  • 506:114 World Civilizations: Europe, Africa, the Americas
  • 508:222 Modern Africa
  • 508:322 West Africa
  • 508:320 History of Southern Africa
  • 508:422 African Cultural History
  • 506:401, 402 seminar on African Biography and Autobiography
  • 506:401, 402 seminar on African Cities

Graduate

  • 510:541 Colloquium in Global History: The Atlantic
  • 510:509 The Teaching of History
  • 510:551 Seminar in Global and Comparative History

PUBLICATIONS

  • Community Leadership and the Transformation of Freetown, 1801-1976. (Mouton: 1978), co-author.
  • The Spatial Factor in African History. The Relationship of the Social, Material, and Perceptual (Brill Academic Publishers, 2005); co-edited
  • "Cities in Africa/Les villes en Afrique " (a special issue of the Canadian Journal of African Studies (editor; 2003).
  • Completing a manuscript entitled Contested Places; Disputed Rules: Traders and Authorities in Northern Sierra Leone, 1780-1930.
  • Currently researching a book that examines the social, cultural, and economic histories of Liverpool, Freetown, and Kingston from the 18th century to the present.
  • Recently published articles and book chapters:
  • "Nineteenth-Century Costal Slave Trading and the British Abolition Campaign in Sierra Leone," Slavery and Abolition 27:1 (2006).
  • "Nodes, Networks, Landscapes, and Regions: Reading the Social History of Tropical Africa 1700s-1920," in The Spatial Factor in African History.
  • "Re-Marking on the Past: Spatial Structures and Dynamics in the Sierra Leone-Guinea Plain, 1860s-1920s," in The Spatial Factor in African History.
  • "Cities in Africa, Past and Present: Contestation, Transformation, Discourse." introduction to special issue Canadian Journal of African Studies, 37:3 (2003).
  • "Contesting Commercial Space in Freetown, 1860-1930: Traders, Merchants, and Officials," Canadian Journal of African Studies; 37:3 (2003).
  • "Mande Identity Formation in the Economic and Political Context of Northwestern Sierra Leone," Paideuma,46 (2000).
  • "Mande and Fulbe Interaction in Northwestern Sierra Leone, Late 18th through Early 20th Centuries, Mande Studies 1:1 (1999).
  • "Islam and Trade in Sierra Leone, 18th-20th Centuries" in A. Jalloh and D. E. Skinner, eds., Islam and Trade in Sierra Leone, Trenton: Africa World Press, 1997.
  • "Pawning in Coastal Northwest Sierra Leone, 1870-1910" in T. Falola and P. E. Lovejoy, eds., Pawnship in Africa. Debt Bondage in Historical Perspective, Westview Press, 1994.

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

  • African Studies Association
  • Association of Concerned Africa Scholars
  • World History Association
  • American Historical Association
  • Mande Studies Association
  • Society of Economic Anthropology

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