David William Cohen

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David William Cohen is professor of history and anthropology and director of the International Institute at the University of Michigan. He specializes in East Africa (Kenya, Uganda) and is a leader in the emerging field of historical anthropology.

With E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, he wrote on the multiple investigations into the 1990 disappearance and death of Kenya’s Foreign Minister, Robert Ouko.

Formerly, he was at Johns Hopkins University and later professor of anthropology and history and director of the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University.

[edit] Publications

"The Cwezi Cult," Journal of African History, ix, 4 (1968), 651-57.
"Luo History Without Court Chronicles," Journal of African History, ix, 3 (1968), 480-82.
"A Survey of Interlacustrine Chronology," Journal of African History, xi, 2 (1970), 177-201.
"Agenda for African Economic History," The Journal of Economic History, xxxi, 1 (March, 1971), 208-21.
The Historical Tradition of Busoga: Mukama and Kintu (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972).
"The River-Lake Nilotes from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century," Zamani: A Survey of East African History, eds. B. A. Ogot and J. A. Kieran (Nairobi and New York: Longmans, 1968).
Neither Slave Nor Free: The Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World, edited with Jack P. Greene, with an introduction by David William Cohen and Jack P. Greene (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972).
Selected Texts, Busoga Traditional History, 3 vols., limited xerox and bound edition deposited in Africana collections in North America, Europe, and Africa: 1969, 1970, 1973).
"The River-Lake Nilotes from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century," entirely rewritten chapter in Zamani: A Survey of East African History, New Edition, ed. B. A. Ogot, (Nairobi: Longmans, 1974).
"Precolonial History as the History of Society," African Studies Review, 17, 2, (1974), 467-72.
"The Convulsions of Devolution," Times Literary Supplement (TLS), February 18, 1977, 194.
Womunafu's Bunafu: A Study of Authority in a Nineteenth Century African Community (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).
"Trends in African Historical Studies," American Anthropologist, 80 (1978), 101-105.
Review, The Chronology of Oral Tradition by David P. Henige, African Affairs, 77, 308 (July, 1978), 413-15.
"Reconstructing a Conflict in Bunafu: Seeking Evidence Outside the Narrative Tradition," The African Past Speaks: Essays on Oral Tradition and History, edited by Joseph C. Miller (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon, 1980), 201-220.
"New Light on Burundi," review of Peuples et rois de l'afrique des lacs: Le Burundi et les royaumes voisins au xix siecle, by Emile Mworoha, Journal of African History, 23, 2 (1982), 251-53.
“The Political Transformation of Northern Busoga: 1600-1900," Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, 23 (3-4), 87-88 (1982), 465-88.
"The Face of Contact: A Model of a Cultural and Linguistic Frontier in Early Eastern Uganda," Nilotic Studies, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Languages and History of the Nilotic Peoples, Cologne, January 4-6, 1982, edited by Rainer Vossen and Marianne Bechhaus-Gerst (Kolner Beitrage zur Afrikanistik, Band 10.) (Berlin: Deitrich Reimer Verlag, 1983), 339-355.
"Food Production and Food Exchange in the Precolonial Lake Plateau Region," Imperialism, Colonialism, and Hunger: East and Central Africa, edited by Robert I. Rotberg (Lexington, MA.: Lexington, D. C. Heath, 1983), 1-18.
"Luo Camps in Seventeenth Century Eastern Uganda: The Use of Migration Tradition in the Reconstruction of Culture," SUGIA: Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, 5 (1983), 145-75.
Review of Oral Historiography by David Henige, International Journal of African Historical Studies, 17, 2 (1984), 364-65.
Review of Europe and the people without history, by Eric R. Wolf, Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 58, 1-2(1984), 103-106.
"The Construction of Dominance: The Strategies of Selected Luo Groups in Uganda and Kenya," in Ahmed I. Salim, ed., State Formation in Eastern Africa (Nairobi: Heinemann, 1984), 126-61, with R. Herring and B. A. Ogot.
Review of Colonial Evangelism: A Sociohistorical Study of an East African Mission at the Grassroots by T. O. Beidelman, Ethnohistory, 32, 3(1985), 290.
"Natur und Kampf--Uberfluss und Armut in der Viktoriasee-Region in Afrika von 1880 bis zur Gegenwart," SOWI: Sozialwissenschaftliche Informationen fur Unterricht und Studium, 14, 1 (March) 1985, 10-22.
"Doing Social History from Pim's Doorway," in Reliving the Past: Perspectives on Social History, edited by Olivier Zunz (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985), 191-235.
Towards a Reconstructed Past: Historical Texts from Busoga, Uganda (London: The British Academy and Oxford University Press, 1986).
"Ayany, Malo, and Ogot: Historians in Search of a Luo Nation," with E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, 107-108, xxcii-3-4, 1987, 269-286.
"The Cultural Topography of a `Bantu Borderland': Busoga, 1500-1850," Journal of African History, 29, 1, 1988, 57-79.
"Peoples and States of the Great Lakes Region," in J. F. A. Ajayi, ed., General History of Africa, VI: Africa in the Nineteenth Century until the 1880s (London: Heinemann; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 270-93).
"The Undefining of Oral Tradition," Ethnohistory, 36, 1, Winter, 1989, 9-18.
Siaya: A Historical Anthropology of an African Landscape (London: James Currey; Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya; Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1989), with E. S. Atieno Odhiambo.
"La Fontaine and Wamimbi: The Anthropology of `Time-Present' as the Substructure of Historical Oration," in John Bender and David E. Wellbery, eds., Chronotypes: The Construction of Time (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1991), 205-25, 249-53.
"`A Case for the Basoga': Lloyd Fallers and the Construction of an African Legal System," in Kristin Mann and Richard Roberts, eds., Law in Colonial Africa (Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann; London: James Currey), 1991, 239-54.
"Weihnactsdiscos--und anderes: Diskurse der Beherrschten in eine kenianischen Dorf der 1970er Jahre," in Alf Lüdtke, ed., Herrschaft als Soziale Praxis (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1991), 491-521.
Burying SM: The Politics of Knowledge and the Sociology of Power in Africa (Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann; London: James Currey, 1992), with E. S. Atieno Odhiambo.
"The Quest for Africa," Passages: A Chronicle of the Humanities, (Fall, 1991), 1.
"Historicizing a Regional Cultural Tradition," Current Anthropology, 32, 3 (June, 1991), 36......
"The Map: A Representation of Africa," Passages: A Chronicle of the Humanities, 3, 1992, 8-9.
Review, In My Father's House: Africa and the Philosophy of Culture by Anthony Appiah, (London: Methuen, 1992), Passages: A Chronicle of the Humanities, 3 (1992), 15.
"`With Their Consent': Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions: A Novel," Passages: A Chronicle of the Humanities, 4, 1992, 12.
"The Banalities of Interpretation," Public Culture, 5, 1(Fall, 1992), 57-65.
Comment: "Misconceiving fertility: The Economist in Kenya," PAS News and Events, 3, 2 (1992), 4.
"The Constitution of International Expertise," ii: The Journal of the International Institute, Winter, 1994. 6, 8.
"Reading the Minister's Remains: Investigations into the Death of the Honourable Minister John Robert Ouko in Kenya, February, 1990," Passages, 7, 1994, 14-18.
The Combing of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
“Historical anthropology: Discerning the rules of the game,”FOCAAL, 26/27, {1996}, 65-7.
“Understanding the Globalization of Scholarship,” in Marvin W. Peterson, et alia, eds., Planning and Management for a Changing Environment (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1997), 548-62.
“The Luo of Western Kenya, 1500-1800,” with E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, in E. J. Alagoa, ed., Oral Tradition and Oral History in Africa and the Diaspora: Theory and Practice (Lagos, Nigeria: Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization, The National Library Press, 1990 [copyright], 1997? [published].
“Silences of the Living, Orations of the Dead: The Struggle in Kenya for S. M. Otieno’s Body, 20 December 1986 to 23 May 1987,” with E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, in Gerald Sider and Gavin Smith, eds., Between History and Histories: The Making of Silences and Commemorations (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 180-98.
“Further Thoughts on the Production of History,” in Gerald Sider and Gavin Smith, eds., Between History and Histories: The Making of Silences and Commemorations (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 300-310.
"Reading the Minister’s Remains: Investigations into the Death of the Honourable Minister John Robert Ouko in Kenya, February 1990," with E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, in Della Pollock, ed., Exceptional Spaces: Essays in Performance and History (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), 77-97.
“Bringing New Approaches to the Classroom: Thoughts, Questions and Pitfalls from a University of Michigan Seminar,” with Abigail Stewart, Women’s Studies Quarterly 1998: 3 & 4, 225.
“Autobiography of a Pioneer,” review of In the Realms of Gold: Pioneering in African History by Roland Oliver, Journal of African History, 41 (2000), 131-33.
“African Historians and African Voices: Bethwell Allan Ogot and the Changing Authority of the ‘African Voice’,” in E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, ed., African Historians and African Voices: Essays present to Professor Bethwell Allan Ogot (Basel: P. Schlettwein, 2001), 47-55.
“Toward a Portrait of the University as Author of the Text,” II: The Journal of the International Institute, Fall, 2001, 27.
“Expertise may be thought of as. . .,” II: The Journal of the International Institute, Fall, 2001, 22.
“International Expertise: A Position Paper,” II: The Journal of the International Institute, Fall, 2001, 10.
“Robert Ouko’s Pain: The Negotiation of a ‘State of Mind’,” in Michael S. Roth and Charles G. Salas, eds., Disturbing Remains: Memory, History, and Crisis in the Twentieth Century (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2001), 17-36.
“In a Nation of White Cars. . . One White Car, or ‘A White Car,’ Becomes a Truth,” in Luise White, Stephan F. Miescher, and David William Cohen, eds., African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), 264-80.
“Introduction: Voices, Words, and African History,” (with Stephan F. Miescher and Luise White), in Luise White, Stephan F. Miescher, and David William Cohen, eds., African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), 1-27.
“The Fate of Documentation: The Ethics of Property in the Work of Visual Representation,” Kronos (Special Issue: Visual History), 27, November, 2001, 293-303.
“Review: Richard Price, The Convict and the Colonel,” Historische Anthropologie, 9, 3, 2001, 478-81. Trans. Alf Luedtke.
African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), ed. with Luise White and Stephan F. Miescher.
Wer begräbt SM? Politik des Wissens und Soziologie der Macht in Afrika (trans. Sibylle Alsayad and Adelheid Seyler), with forward to the new edition by Georg Elwert (Hamburg: Lit Verlag, 2001), with E. S. Atieno Odhiambo.
“The Uncertainty of Africa in an Age of Certainty,” in Responsibility in Crisis: Knowledge Politics and Global Publics (Ann Arbor: Scholarly Publishing Office, Univerrsity of Michigan Library, 2004), edited, with Michael Kennedy.
“Sacred Spaces and Heretical Knowledge: National Universities and Global Publics,”a position paper, with Michael Kennedy and Kathleen Canning, Responsibility in Crisis: Knowledge Politics and Global Publics (Ann Arbor: Scholarly Publishing Office, Univerrsity of Michigan Library, 2004), edited, with Michael Kennedy.
“Constituting Sacred Spaces, Producing Heretical Knowledge,” with Michael Kennedy, introduction to Responsibility in Crisis: Knowledge Politics and Global Publics (Ann Arbor: Scholarly Publishing Office, Univerrsity of Michigan Library, 2004), edited, with Michael Kennedy.
Responsibility in Crisis: Knowledge Politics and Global Publics (Ann Arbor: Scholarly Publishing Office, Univerrsity of Michigan Library, 2004), edited with introduction, with Michael Kennedy.
The Risks of Knowledge: Investigations into the Death of the Hon. Minister John Robert Ouko in Kenya, 1990 (Oxford, Ohio: Ohio University Press; 2004), with E. S. Atieno Odhiambo.
Womunafu’s Bunafu: A Study of Authority in a 19th Century African Community (New York: ACLS History E-Book, 2004).