Curriculum Vitae
(Abbreviated)
MICHAEL O. WEST
EDUCATION
B.A., Politics, Lake Forest College, 1982
A.M., History, Harvard University, 1983
Ph.D., History, Harvard University, 1990
CURRENT POSITION
Professor (Sociology; Africana Studies; History), Binghamton University
CURRENT RESERCH
Black Power in Global Perspective
PUBLICATIONS
Books
Editor: Out of One, Many Africas: Reconstructing the Study and Meaning of Africa (co-edited
with William G. Martin), University of Illinois Press, 1999.
Author: The Rise of an African Middle Class: Colonial Zimbabwe, 1890-1965, Indiana
University Press, 2002.
Finalist, Melville Herskovits Award (given annually by the US African Studies
Association for the “best” book in the field published the previous year).
Editor: From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International Since the Age of Revolution (co-edited
with William G. Martin and Fanon Che Wilkins), University of North Carolina Press, 2009.
In Progress: Kwame Nkrumah and the Black Power Movement
Journal Articles
“Indian Politics in South Africa: 1860 to Present,” South Asia Bulletin, 7, 1 & 2 (1987): 97-111.
“The Tuskegee Model of Development in Africa: Another Dimension of the African/AfricanAmerican Connection” Diplomatic History, 16, 3 (1992): 371-387.
“Ndabaningi Sithole, Garfield Todd and the Dadaya School Strike of 1947,” Journal of Southern
African Studies, 18, 2 (1992): 297-316.
West, M.
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“‘Equal Rights for all Civilized Men’: Elite Africans and the Quest for ‘European’ Liquor in
Colonial Zimbabwe, 1924-1961,” International Review of Social History, 37 (1992): 376-397.
“Pan-Africanism, Capitalism and Racial Uplift: The Rhetoric of African Business Formation in
Colonial Zimbabwe,” African Affairs, 92 (1993): 263-283.
“Nationalism, Race and Gender: The Politics of Family Planning in Zimbabwe, 1957-1990,”
Social History of Medicine, 7, 3 (1994): 447-471.
“Indians, India and Race and Nationalism in British Central Africa,” South Asia Bulletin:
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 14, 2 (1994): 86-103.
“In Search of Ethiopianism: An Historical Investigator’s Personal Odyssey in Zimbabwe,”
Journal of African Travel-Writing, 1 (1996): 52-63.
“Crossing Boundaries: Research Notes on South Asians and Africans in Africa, the Americas
and Europe,” Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 16, 2 (1996): 4852.
“Liquor and Libido: ‘Joint Drinking’ and the Politics of Sexual Control in Colonial Zimbabwe,
1920s-1950s,” Journal of Social History, 30, 3 (1997): 645-667.
“A Future with a Past: Resurrecting the Study of Africa in the Post-Africanist Era,” Africa
Today, 44, 3 (1997): 309-326. (With William G. Martin.)
*“Return
to Sender: No Such Person in the House, A Reply to Christopher C. Lowe’s Article
‘Resurrection How’?” Africa Today, 45, 1 (1998): 63-69. (With William G. Martin.)
“Like A River: The Million Man March and the Black Nationalist Tradition in the United
States,” Journal of Historical Sociology, 12, 1 (1999): 81-100.
“Going to America: The Odyssey of Stephen Sithole, an African Evangelical Christian, 193853,” Journal of African Travel-Writing, 8/9 (2001): 136-150.
“Seeds are Sown: The Garvey Movement in Zimbabwe in the Interwar Years,” International
Journal of African Historical Studies, 35, 2-3 (2002): 335-362.
“Global Africa: The Emergence and Evolution of an Idea,” Review, 28, 1 (2005): 85-108.
“Walter Rodney and Black Power: Jamaican Intelligence and US Diplomacy,” African Journal
of Criminology and Justice Studies [online], 1, 2 (2006): 1-50.
Reply to critical assessment of article directly above by Christopher Lowe, “Resurrection How?
A Response to Michael O. West and William G. Martin’s Article ‘A Future with a Past:
Resurrecting the Study of Africa in the Post-Africanist Era’,” Africa Today, 44, 4 (1997): 385421.
*
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“The Struggle for Zimbabwe, “Then and Now: Notes Toward A Deep History of the Current
Crisis,” Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, 8, 2 (2007): 139-147.
“Seeing Darkly: Guyana, Black Power, and Walter Rodney’s Expulsion from Jamaica,” Small
Axe, 25 [corresponds to 12, 1] (2008): 93-104.
“Little Rock as America: Hoyt Fuller, Europe, and the Little Rock Racial Crisis of 1957,”
Journal of Southern History, 78, 4 (2012): 913-942.
“China, Africa and the Bandung Idea, Then and Now,” Agrarian South: Journal of Political
Economy, 3, 1 (2014): 111-123.
“Kwame Nkrumah and Ali Mazrui: An Analysis of the 1967 Transition Debate,” Journal of Pan
African Studies, 8, 6 (2015): 122-140.
Chapters in Edited Books, Introductions to Book
“‘Waiting for Derek’: The Divestment Struggle.” In How Harvard Rules: Reason in the Service
of Empire, edited by John Trumpbour. Boston: South End Press, 1989: 399-410.
“Introduction: The Rival Africas and Paradigms of Africanists and Africans at Home and
Abroad” (with William G. Martin). In Out of One, Many Africas: Reconstructing the Study and
Meaning of Africa, edited by William Martin and Michael O. West. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 1999: 1-36.
“The Ascent, Triumph and Disintegration of the Africanist Enterprise, USA” (with William G.
Martin). In Out of One, Many Africas: Reconstructing the Study and Meaning of Africa, edited
by William G. Martin and Michael O. West. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999: 85-122.
“Franchise or Nothing: Zimbabwean Black Elite Responses to Imperial Ideologies of
Democracy.” In The Historical Dimensions of Democracy and Human Rights in Zimbabwe,
Volume One: Pre-Colonial and Colonial Legacies, edited by Ngwabi Bhebe and Terence
Ranger. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications, 2001: 84-98.
“Ethiopianism and Colonialism: The African Orthodox Church in Zimbabwe, 1928-1934.” In
Christian Missionaries and the State in the Third World, edited by Holger Bernt Hansen and
Michael Twaddle. Oxford: James Currey and Athens: Ohio University Press, 2002: 237-254.
“An Anticolonial International? Indians, India and Africans in British Central Africa.” In
Antinomies of Modernity: Essays on Race, Orient, Nation, edited by Vasant Kaiwar and Sucheta
Mazumdar. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003: 146-179.
“Contours of the Black International: From Toussaint to Tupac” (with William G. Martin). In
From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International since the Age of Revolution, edited by
West, M.
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Michael O. West, William G. Martin, and Fanon Che Wilkins. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2009: 1-44.
“Haiti, I’m Sorry: The Haitian Revolution and the Forging of the Black International” (with
William G. Martin). In From Toussaint to Tupac: The Black International since the Age of
Revolution, edited by Michael O. West, William G. Martin, and Fanon Che Wilkins. Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2009: 72-104.
“The African Middle Class in Zimbabwe: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives.” In The
Making of the Middle Class: Toward a Transnational History, edited by A. Ricardo Lopez and
Barbara Weinstein. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012: 45-57.
“Whose Black Power?: The Business of Black Power and Black Power’s Business.” In The
Business of Black Power: Community Development, Capitalism, and Corporate Responsibility in
Postwar America, edited by Laura Warren Hill and Julia Rabig. Rochester: Rochester
University Press, 2012: 274-303.
“Introduction” Turkish translation of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa [Avrupa Afrika’yi
Nasil Geri Birakti] (Ankara: Dipnot Yayinlari, 2015), pp. 9-27.
“Ali Mazrui and Kwame Nkrumah.” In Global African, Universal Muslim: Essays in Honor of
Ali A. Mazrui, edited by Seifudein Adem. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc. (forthcoming).
“Between Diaspora and Homeland: The Study of Africa and the African Diaspora in the United
States.” In Martin S. Shanguhyia and Toyin Falola, eds., Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial
and Postcolonial History (forthcoming).
Essays, Reports, and Opinion Pieces
“A Guadeloupian Odyssey” (with Sandra Jackson-Opoku). In Being Single (Mar/April 1993):
30-31.
“Love Potions” (with Sandra Jackson-Opoku). In Caribbean Travel and Life (Jan/Feb 1994): 38
& 41.
“From Homeland to Township: Rap Music and the South African Choral Tradition” (with
Sandra Jackson-Opoku). In The World & I (April 1994): 228-241.
“The Decline of the Africanists’ Africa and the Rise of New Africas” (with William G. Martin).
In Issue: A Journal of Opinion, 23, 1 (1995): 24-26.
“Summary Report of Ghettoizing African Studies?: The Question of Representation in the Study
of Africa,” ACAS Bulletin, No. 46 (1996): 23-29.
“James Aggrey’s Impact on Southern Africans,” Southern African Encounter, 3, 1 (1996): 20-23.
West, M.
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“The Study of Global Africa and the Descent of the Africanist Curtain,” Africa Update
[newsletter of the African Studies Program, Central Connecticut State University], 5, 3 (1998):
7-9.
“Whither Shall We Go?: African and African American Studies for the 21st Century,”
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 18, 2 (1998): 134-137.
“Comments for Panel on ‘Mobilizing New Constituency,’ African Studies Association Annual
Meeting, Chicago, Oct 28 - Nov 1, 1998,” The Black Scholar, 29, 1 (1999): 34-36.
“Comments on Tiffany Patterson and Robin Kelley’s ‘Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the
African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World’,” African Studies Review, 43, 1 (2000):
61-64.
“US Intelligence and Jamaican Police: Targeting Walter Rodney,” Against the Current, 20, 6
(2006): 30-33.
“Esau Nemapare,” in Dictionary of African Biography, edited by Emmanuel Akyeampong and
Henry Louis Gates Jr. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012): 438-439.
“How Europe Underdeveloped Africa at 40,” Groundings: A Publication of the Walter Rodney
Foundation, 2, 1 (2015): 18-20.
Working Papers
“Ideology in Africa: Nkrumah and Cabral.” In Proceedings of the First Annual W. E. B. DuBois
Graduate Colloquium, Spring 1984, edited by Margaret E. Corey and Bryan R. Washington.
Harvard University: Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 1985: 15-35.
“The Rise and Fall of African Nationalism.” In Proceedings of the Second Annual W. E. B.
DuBois Graduate Colloquium, Spring 1985, edited by Bryan R. Washington. Harvard
University: Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, 1985: 55-63.
Book Reviews
Walter Rodney, A History of the Guyanese Working People, 1881-1905, in South Asia Bulletin,
3, 1 (1983): 70-78.
Jonathan Crush and Charles Ambler, eds., Liquor and Labor in Southern Africa, in International
Review of Social History, 39 (1994): 108-111.
Carol Summers, From Civilization to Segregation: Social Ideals and Social Control in Southern
Rhodesia, 1890-1934 and Sybille Küster, Neither Cultural Imperialism nor Precious Gift of
Civilization: African Education in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1890-1962, in Journal of African
History, 37, 1 (1996): 157-160.
West, M.
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Terence Ranger, Are We Not Also Men?: The Samkange Family & African Politics in
Zimbabwe, 1920-64, in International Journal of African Historical Studies, 30, 1 (1997): 132136.
Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and
British Africa, in Journal of Social History, 32, 1 (1998): 216-219.
Brian Raftopoulos and Ian Phimister, eds., Keep on Knocking: A History of the Labour
Movement in Zimbabwe, 1900-97, in Counterpoise for Social Responsibilities, Liberty and
Dissent, 2, 4 (1998): 36-37.
Timothy Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women: Commodification, Consumption and Cleanliness in
Modern Zimbabwe, in Journal of Social History, 32, 4 (1999): 998-1000.
Charles Green, ed., Globalization and Survival in the Black Diaspora: The New Urban
Challenge, in Peace Review, 12, 2 (2000): 345-347.
Terence Ranger, Voices from the Rocks: Nature, Culture & History in the Matopos Hills of
Zimbabwe, in Journal of Social History, 34, 3 (2001): 757-759.
Gerald Horne, From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War against Zimbabwe,
1965-1980, in International Journal of African Historical Studies, 35, 1 (2002): 175-178.
Mark Huband, The Skull Beneath the Skin: Africa after the Cold War, in Africa Today, 49, 3
(2002): 132-134.
Robert I. Rotberg, Ending Autocracy, Enabling Democracy: The Tribulations of Southern
Africa, 1960-2000, in International Journal of African Historical Studies, 35, 2-3 (2002): 532536.
Gaurav Desai, Subject to Colonialism: African Self-Fashioning and the Colonial Library, in
Canadian Journal of African Studies, 36, 2 (2002): 368-370.
Jock McCulloch, Black Peril, White Virtue: Sexual Crime in Southern Rhodesia, 1902-1935, in
Journal of Social History, 36, 3 (2003): 815-819.
Elizabeth Schmidt, Mobilizing the Masses: Gender, Ethnicity, and Class in the Nationalist
Movement in Guinea, 1939-1958, in American Historical Review, 111, 2 (2006): 599-600.
Jacques Depelchin, Silences in African History: Between the Syndromes of Discovery and
Abolition, in International Journal of African Historical Studies, 40, 2 (2007): 337-340.
Mohamed Adhikari, Not White Enough, Not Black Enough: Racial Identity in the South African
Colored Community and James Muzondidya, Walking a Tightrope: Towards a Social History of
the Coloured People of Zimbabwe, in Journal of Southern African Studies, 33, 4 (2007): 881885.
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David Maxwell, African Gifts of the Spirit: Pentecostalism & the Rise of a Zimbabwean
Transnational Religious Movement, in American Historical Review, (2008): 1276-1277.
Paul Gilroy, Darker Than Blue: On the Moral Economies of Black Atlantic Culture, in
Contemporary Sociology, 39 (2010): 706-707.
Alusine Jalloh and Toyin Falola, editors, The United States and West Africa: Interactions and
Relations, in Journal of African American History, 96, 1 (2011): 123-125.
Michael W. Casey, The Rhetoric of Sir Garfield Todd: Christian Imagination and the Dream of
an African Democracy, in Social Sciences and Missions 25 (2012): 307-210.
Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the
Black Panther Party, in The Black Scholar, 43, 4 (2013): 163-168.
Akinyele Omowale Umoja, We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom
Movement, in The Black Scholar, 44, 1 (2014): 167-170.
Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, in
Palimpsest: A Journal of Women, Gender, and Black Internationalism, 3, 1 (2014): 75-79.
Clairmont Chung, editor, Walter A. Rodney: A Promise of Revolution, in Journal of Colonialism
and Colonial History, 15, 1 (2014).
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, editor, A Black Communist in the Freedom Struggle: The Life of Harry
Haywood and Walter T. Howard, We Shall Be Free! Black Communist Protests in Seven Voices,
in Journal of Southern History, 80, 3 (2014): 748-750.
Rhondda Robinson Thomas, Claiming Exodus: A Cultural History of Afro-Atlantic Identity,
1774-1903, in The Historian, 77, 1 (2015): 205-206.
CURRENT EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERSHIP
Advisory and Contributing Editor, Contours: A Journal of the African Diaspora.
Member, International Advisory Board, Palimpsest: A Journal of Women, Gender, and the Black
International.
Member, International Advisory Board, SBF Journal, Ankara University, Turkey
Member, Editorial Board, Africa World Review
Book Review Editor, The Black Scholar