Stephen Volz joined the Kenyon faculty in 2004 and became an Associate Professor in 2010. His general field of expertise is African history, with particular interest in Africa's cultural and political interactions with other regions of the world. Prior to pursuing graduate studies at Wisconsin and coming to Kenyon, he was first a Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana and then a high school social studies teacher in New York City. The general focus of his research is the history of relations between Africans and Europeans in southern Africa, and he is currently exploring Tswana intellectual reactions to British colonial conquest at the end of the nineteenth century. During 2012-15, while continuing to teach in the History Department, he is serving as director of the International Studies program at Kenyon.

Areas of Expertise

Southern Africa, colonialism, history of religion

Education

University of Wisconsin - Madison (M.A., Ph.D.)
Washington University (M.A.T.)
Valparaiso University (B.A.)

Selected Publications

African Teachers on the Colonial Frontier: Tswana Evangelists and Their Communities During the Nineteenth Century (New York: Peter Lang, 2011)

"Them who kill the body: Christian ideals and political realities in the interior of southern Africa during the 1850s" Journal of Southern African Studies 36,1 (2010) 41-56

"Written on our hearts: Tswana Christians and the 'word of God' in the mid-nineteenth century" Journal of Religion in Africa 38,2 (2008) 112-140

Words of Batswana: Letters to Mahoko a Becwana, 1883-1896, editor and translator, with Part T. Mgadla (Cape Town: Van Riebeeck Society, 2006)

"European missionaries and the development of Tswana identity" Le Fait Missionnaire: Social Sciences and Missions 15 (2004) 97-128

Courses Taught

HIST 145 Early African History
HIST 146 Modern Africa
HIST 192 The Making of the Contemporary World
HIST 242 Americans in Africa
HIST 341 African Women in Fiction and Film
HIST 345 History of the Indian Ocean
HIST 350 Race, Resistance, and Revolution in South Africa
HIST 387 Practice and Theory of History
HIST 444 Faith and Power in Africa
INST 201 Expansion of International Society