Between 1938 and 1942, the South Carolina Public Service Authority sought to displace 901 black families and dig up and flood over 9,000 graves for rural redevelopment. This dissertation challenges government and capitalist conceptions of value by conceptualizing and documenting a “conjure value” among South Carolina’s African-descended people.
My project is the first study of West African history to consider its Arabic tradition of arithmetic texts. It presents an intellectual history of 19th century Saharan West Africa focusing on manuscripts on arithmetical calculations (ḥisāb) and their applications to the elaborated system of rules of Muslim inheritance shares (farāʾiḍ).
Anna Duensing is a historian of the United States and the world, specializing in African American history, Black radicalism, transnational social movements, and the evolving global politics of white supremacy across the twentieth century. She is currently working on her first book manuscript Fascism Is Already Here: Civil Rights and the Making of a Black Antifascist Tradition.
My current research positions rural East Africa within a broader global narrative of environmental management and social change by examining the role that access to water played in colonial Kenyan statecraft between 1938 and 1963. I study three development projects in the arid and semi-arid landscapes of Kenya, where the colonial government invested thousands of pounds expanding water access into the hinterland to spur agricultural production.
award-winning
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