Location: Bowdoin / David M. Gordon

History

David M. Gordon

Associate Professor of History

Contact Information

dgordon@bowdoin.edu
(207) 798-4298
History
305 Adams Hall


Spring 2012

  • Conquest, Colonialism, and Independence: Africa since 1880 (AFRS 264)
  • After Apartheid: South African History and Historiography (AFRS 269)
  • Advanced Independent Study in History (HIST 401)
  • Honors Seminar in History (HIST 451)
  • Honors Seminar in History (HIST 452)


david gordon

David Gordon was born and educated in South Africa and came to the USA for graduate studies at Princeton University. His dissertation examined socio-environmental and economic developments in a Central African lake region that straddles Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It was published as Nachituti’s Gift: Economy, Society and Environment in Central Africa (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006).

Professor Gordon shares his enthusiasm for African history in courses that range from Africa and the Atlantic World to South Africa after apartheid. He maintains close ties with southern and central Africa and writes about a wide variety of subjects relating to the history of southern and central Africa. He is presently researching and writing a book on the intersections of religion and politics in Zambia over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

 Nachituti's Gift: Economy, Society, and Environment in Central Africa. (University of Wisconsin Press, Dec. 2005).nachitutis

"History on the Luapula Retold: Landscape, Memory, and Identity in the Kazembe Kingdom," Journal of African History 46 (2005)

"Growth without Capital: A Renascent Fishery in Zambia and Katanga, 1960s to Recent Times," Journal of Southern African Studies 31,3 (2005).

"The Cultural Politics of a Traditional Ceremony: Mutomboko and the Performance of History on the Luapula," Comparative Studies in Society and History 46, 1 (2004).

"Technological Change and Economies of Scale in the History of Mweru- Luapula's Fishery," in FAO Technical Report 461/2, edited by Eyolf Larson et. al.

"Rites of Rebellion: Recent Anthropology from Zambia" African Studies 60, 2 (2003).

"Owners of the Land and Lunda Lords: Colonial Chiefs in the Borderlands of Northern Rhodesia and the Belgian Congo," International Journal of African Historical Studies 34, 2 (2001).

"A Sword of Empire: Medicine in Colonial Xhosaland, 1856-1891" African Studies 60, 2 (2001)
Republished in Medicine and Colonial Identity, edited by Mary Sutphen and Bridie Andrews. Routledge, 2003.

"From Rituals of Rapture to Dependence: The Political Economy of Khoikhoi Narcotic Consumption, c.1487-1870," South African Historical Journal, 35 (1996).

(with Tshidiso Maloka) "Chieftainship, Civil Society and the Political Transition in South Africa," Critical Sociology 22, 3 (1996).