Paul S. Landau
Associate Professor of History
University of Maryland
Office: 2132 Taliaferro Hall
College Park, Maryland, 20742
w: (301) 405-4291
e: Plandau@umd.edu
Education
Ph.D., Hist., 1992, University of Wisconsin - Madison. Dir. Jan Vansina.
Major: Africa; Minor: Comparative World.
M.A., Hist., 1986, University of Wisconsin - Madison. Minor: Af. Studs.
B.A., 1984, Wesleyan University, cum laude, honors in history.
Teaching
University of Maryland at College Park, 1999present, Assoc. Prof.
Yale University, 1995-98 (Asst. Prof.), 19989 (Assoc. Prof.)
University of New Hampshire, 19921995, 3-yr. appt.
Research experience
Botswana: 10/88-6/89 and 1/90-8/90, 10&11/97:
Serowe and Tswapong Hills; Gaborone
Britain: 9/89-1/90, 10/90-1/91, 7/93-8/93, 7/99, 12/03: archival research
South Africa: 6/95, 7&8/96, 11/97-4/98, archival research
Kenya: 7/00, travel
Zimbabwe: 5/01, 6/01, archival research
Language skills: Setswana (Botswana and South Africa), French, Zulu (South Africa).
Awards and honors
East Asian Studies / curricular development, UMD, June 2005
Driskell Center research and travel grant, 2003/4
American Philosophical Association research grant, August 2001
Bruce Mansfield Prize 12/99, for “Religion and Christian Conversion," see below
Univ. of Maryland GRB semester fellowship (for Spring, 2001), 1999
Univ. of W. Australia, visiting “Distinguished Africanist,” (declined) 12/99
YCIAS (Yale) Summer Research Fellowship, 1999
Yale University Morse Fellowship (research leave for 1997/8)
1995 Herskovits Prize Finalist, Nov. 1996, for Realm of the Word
YCIAS (Yale) Summer Research Fellowship, 1996
A. Whitney Griswold Faculty Award, 1996
Research Fellow, African Studies Center, Boston University, 1993-94
University of New Hampshire, Liberal Arts Summer Grant, 1993
University of New Hampshire, Liberal Arts Grant, 1992-93
Fulbright-Hayes Dissertation Research Grant, 1989-90
Fulbright IIE United Nations Grant, 1988-89
HEA Title VI, FLAS Fellowship (Zulu), 1985-86
HEA Title VI, FLAS Grant (Tswana), Summer 1985
University of Wisconsin Academic Fellowship, 1984-85
Forthcoming book:
THE SAMUELITES: The lost history of resistance and mobilization in 19th–20th c. South Africa
Books
THE REALM OF THE WORD. Language, Gender, and Christianity in a Southern African Kingdom. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1995. (Finalist for the Herskovits Prize of the African Studies Association for the best work in African Studies in 1995.)
IMAGES AND EMPIRES. Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa. Edited with Deborah Kaspin. Introduction by Landau. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Based on the . . .
Conference organized with Deborah Kaspin, “Images and Empires in Africa,” at Yale University, Feb. 14-16, 1996.
New works in compendia:
“Language,” chapter 10 in Missions and Missionaries, ed. Norman Etherington (Companion Series to the Oxford History of the British Empire, ed. Wm. Roger Louis), Oxford Univ. Press, 2005
“Transformations in Consciousness,” in vol. 1, ch. 8, The Cambridge History of South Africa, edited by Robert Ross et. al. (Cambridge University Press: forthcoming in 2006).
Articles in peer-refereed journals:
“The Spirit of God, Pigs and Demons: the ‘Samuelites’ of Southern Africa,” Journal of Religion in Africa 29, 3 (1999), 313-40.
“‘Religion’ and Christian Conversion in African History: A New Model,” Journal of Religious History, 23, 1 (Special issue: Africans Meeting Missionaries; February 1999), 8-30. Winner of the Bruce Mansfield Prize.
“Explaining Surgical Evangelism in Southern Africa: Teeth, Pain, and Faith,” Journal of African History, 37, 2 (1996), 261-81.
“The Illumination of Christ in the Kalahari Desert,” Representations, 45 (Winter 1994), 25-39.
“When Rain Falls: Rainmaking and Community in a Tswana Village, ca. 1870 to Recent
Times,” International Journal of African Historical Studies, 26, 1 (Jan. 1993), 1-29.
“Preacher, Chief and Prophetess: Moruti Seakgano in the Ngwato Kingdom, Botswana,”
Journal of Southern African Studies, 17, 1 (March, 1991), 1-22.
Essays: in edited anthologies; lesser works or scholarly publications marked as such
electronic, temporary: “Reflections on History and Theory (in response to Prof. Herf),” April 26, 2005, University of Maryland, Department of History website (www.history.umd.edu).
in my book, Images and Empires: “An Amazing Distance: Pictures and People in Africa,” Introduction, pp. 1-40.
in my book, Images and Empires: “Photography and Colonial Administration in Africa,”pp. 141-171.
electronic: “Photography and Colonial Vision,” publically posted, edited web-based text, for “Africa Forum,” on H-Africa (www.hnet.msu.edu/Africa), published July 1999-2001, 2001-present on file resource for Africanist scholars.
a photgraphic and historical anthology: “Hunting with Gun and Camera,” in The Colonising Camera: Photographys in the Making of Namibian History, Patricia Hayes, Wofram Hartmann, and Jeremy Sylvester, eds. Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1998, 151-155 (quarto-pages).
an anthology about fieldwork experience: “Truth, Falsehood, and Thinking Between: Histories of Affiliation and Ethnogenesis,” in Jan Vansina and Caroline Keyes Adenaike, eds., In Pursuit of History: Fieldwork in Africa (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1996), 75-93.
a prominant exhibition catalogue: “With Gun and Camera in South Africa: Constructing the Image of Bushmen, ca. 1880 1940,” in Pippa Skotnes, ed., Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of Bushmen, South African National Gallery, 1996.
a Festschrift: “Revelation, Illumination and the Image of Christ in the Kgalagadi,” in Robert W. Harms, Joseph C. Miller, David S. Newbury, and Michele D. Wagner, eds., Paths Toward the African Past: African Historical Essays in Honor of Jan Vansina (Atlanta: ASA Press, 1994).
Reviews and r.e. book review essays; e=web published)
Review of John Ililffe, Honor in African History (Cambridge: 2005), forthcoming in the South African Jounral of Historical Studies.
Review of Building Post-Apartheid: Monuments and Memorials in South Africa (Routledge, 2003), forthcoming in Kleio (South Africa).
Review of Annie Coombes, Building Post-Apartheid: Monuments and Memorials in South Africa (Routledge, 2003), forthcoming in Kleio (South Africa).
Review of Isabel Hofmeyr, The Portable Bunyan: A Transnational History of the Pilgrim’s Progress (Princeton, 2004), forthcoming for Int. Journ. of Af. Historical Studies.
Review of Robert Aldrich, Colonialism and Homosexuality (Routledge, 2002), The American Historical Review, June 2004, pp. 866-7.
Review of Zole Maseko’s film, The Return of Sara Baartman (2002), for The International Journal of African Historical Studies, July 2004.
Review of Paul la Hausse de Lalouvire, Restless Identities: Signatures of Nationalism, Zulu Ethnicity and History in the Lives of Petros Lamula (c. 18811948) and Lymon Maling (1889c.1936) (Piet.: Univ. of Natal Press, 2000), The Journal of African History, 45, 1 (2004).
e Review of Norman Etherington, The Great Treks: The Transformation of Southern Africa, 1815-1854 (London: Longman, 2001), for H-SAFRICA online ( "permanently" posted Nov. 2003).
“Christian missions in the British Empire and elsewhere,” review of Holger B. Hansen and Michael Twaddle, eds., Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World (Ohio: Athens, 2002), for The Journal of African History, 44, 3 (2003), 507-8.
e Review of Marc Epprecht, “This Matter of the Women is Getting Very Bad”: Gender, Development and Politics in Colonial Lesotho (Univ. of Natal Press, 2000), for H-AFRICA online ("permanently" posted Nov. 2002).
Review of John de Gruchy, The London Missionary Society in Southern Africa, 1799-1999 (Athens, OH: Ohio Univ. Press, 2000), The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 33, 2 (2000), 390-3.
r.e. “Hegemony and Resistance in J. and J.L. Comaroff’s Of Revelation and Revolution,” featured review essay, Africa (Journal of the International Africa Institute) 70, 3 (2000).
Review of Bernth Lindfors, ed., Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1999), The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 32, 2-3 (1999), 427-30.
e Review of Carolyn Hamilton, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. Press, 1998), African Studies Quarterly, web-based Africanist journal, 1999.
Review of Bettina Schmidt, Creating Order: Culture as Politics in 19th and 20th Century South Africa (The Hague: 1996), The Journal of African History, 39, 4 (1998), 481-83.
Review of Jock McCulloch, Colonial Psychiatry and the African Mind (Cambridge: CUP, 1995), in Social History of Medicine, 9, 3 (1996), 494-6.
Review of Pauline Peters, Dividing the Commons: Politics, Policy, and Culture in Botswana (Virginia, 1994), The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 29, 2 (1997), 384-6.
Review of David Chidester, Religions of South Africa (Routledge, 1992), Journal of Southern
African Studies, 20, 4 (Dec. 1994), 681-3.
Review of Megan Biesele, Women Like Meat: The Kalahari Ju/’Hoan (Indian Univ. Press, 1993), The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 27, 3 (1994), 673-6.
Review of Rob Gordon, The Bushman Myth: The Making of a Namibian Underclass (Boulder, Col.: 1994), The Southern African Review of Books, August/Sept. 1994.
Non-academic venues for published work
“Khama the Great and Seretse,” an entry in John Middleton, ed., The Encyclopoedia of Sub-Saharan Africa (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997).
“Bushmen and Coca-Cola,” The Southern African Review of Books, March/April 1995, 8-9..
“Rolling in the Firehouse: Riots, race and reflections on some recent books about the United States,” review essay of six books, The Southern African Review of Books, May/June 1993.
“The Persecution of Ruth and Seretse Khama,” review essay of Michael Dutfield, A Marriage of Inconvenience (London: 1991), The Southern African Review of Books, Jan./Feb. 1991.
Scholarly participation of last 3 yrs only: i. invited formal public talks; r. invited remarks; and p. papers read at professional meetings; c. panel chair/organizer
c Roundtable: “Towards a History of Sexuality in Africa,” with Elaine Salo, Marc Epprecht, Ibrahim Sundiata, and Julie Livingstone, African Studies Association, approved (Nov. 19th, 2005).
r Commentary on Marilyn Lake, “White Men as Women: Images . . . Ausralia, 1908,” at “The Colonial and the Visual,” a workshop sponsored by the Center for Historical Studies at the Univ. of Maryland, June, 2005.
p “The Non-ethnicity of Precolonial South Africa,” at the conference, “Pre-Colonial History in a Post-Colonial Age: Past and Present in African History,” March 11-13, 2005.
p “The Samuelites of Thaba Nchu and the Transgression of Colonial Borders,” African Studies Association annual meeting, Friday, Nov. 12, 2004.
r Presentation at “The Role of Visual Materials in the Teaching and Learning Process,” Faculty Forum, University of Maryland, Monday, Nov. 8, 2004.
p. “Missions and Language,” chapter draft, presented to the Oxford History of the British Empire group, Dec. 13, 2003, Basel, Switzerland.
p. “The Political, the Ethnic, and the Christian: Policing Peasant Movements in 1940s South Africa,” January 10th, 2003, American Society of Church History, Washington, D.C.
i. “Was African Political Thought Shoehorned into ‘Religion’ in South Africa?” invited talk, African Studies Series, March 27th, 2003, Columbia University.
Selected other service
Associate Professor of African and African-American Studies (AASP) (2004-present)
Editorial board, Journal of Religious History (2002present)
Editorial board, Kleio (newly accredited historical journal of the University of South Africa (UNISA), 2004present.
Reviewer for Heinemann Social History of Africa Series
Reviewer for Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado
Reviewer for submissions to
Bulletin of the History of Medicine,
Gender and History,
Cultural Anthropology,
and The American Historical Review
Reviewer of Applications for funding from the Social Science Research Council.
Reviewer of Applications for funding from the Driskell Center of UMD