Making History: Origins and Gender of Uganda's Contested Discipline

Caitlin Monroe

Conversations about history education often provoke controversy, whether in American debates about the 1619 project or in Indian conflicts about teaching about an Islamic Mughal past. At the heart of these debates lay fundamental issues relevant to educators and citizens alike: who should get to tell history – and which history should they tell? This project investigates these questions in western Uganda, examining how changing notions of historical expertise shaped history education both in and outside formal classrooms. In the 19th and 20th centuries, state-building and colonial education efforts narrowed a previously expansive practice of history education, marginalizing women's historical knowledge. The consequences of this process are evident today: history education in Uganda overwhelmingly focuses on male political authority and foreign researchers are often told by interlocutors that women "don't know history." Extant Africanist intellectual history scholarship has thus shown male intellectuals using history to articulate ethnic identity or partisan zeal, while women's knowledge that contributed to community identity or navigating crisis is largely absent from this scholarship. Drawing on musical performances, oral histories, and archival documents, this book project reintegrates African women's knowledge into accounts of imperial and educational encounters and explores the creation (and risks) of a narrow disciplinary understanding of the past.

About Caitlin Monroe

Caitlin Monroe is an Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies at the University of Northern Colorado. She has most recently published articles in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, Teaching History, and The History Teacher. She is currently working on a book project, tentatively titled "Making History: Origins and Gender of Uganda's Contested Discipline." As a professor at the University of Northern Colorado, she is also involved with the university's Secondary Teacher Education Program, where she helps train many of Colorado's next generation of teachers. This role has made her think more deeply and capaciously about the historical discipline, its teaching, and how we can effectively engage wider audiences in conversations about the nature of history and its importance in society. In addition to receiving support from the NAEd/Spencer postdoctoral fellowship, her work has been generously supported by Fulbright, the Buffett Institute, Northwestern's Program in African Studies, and the University of Northern Colorado.