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David Bresnahan | Assistant Professor

David Bresnahan

David Bresnahan
Assistant Professor

D.Bresnahan@utah.edu

Curriculum Vitae

801/581-8127

CTIHB 319

About

I am a scholar of early African history with a research focus on East Africa’s engagements with the Indian Ocean world. I am currently completing a book, entitled Inland from Mombasa: The Indian Ocean World, East Africa’s Interior, and the Making of Global Connections, which is a longue durée history of the Swahili port city of Mombasa from the vantage point of the Mijikenda-speaking communities that lived on the city’s rural edges.


Education

  • BA, History, Elizabethtown College
  • MA, History, Ohio University
  • PhD, History, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Research Focus

East Africa, Indian Ocean, global history, oral societies, historical linguistics, trade histories, environment.  


Key Publications

(2022) “Short Teaching Module: Precolonial Kenya, a Small-Scale History.” World History Commons.

(2020) “Greatness is Like a Rubbish Hole: Social Frictions and Global Connections in the Early Swahili World.Journal of World History. Vol. 31, 361-390.

(2018) “Forest Imageries and Political Practice in Colonial Coastal Kenya." Journal of Eastern African Studies. Vol. 12, 655-673.

(2016) “Running in Kenya, a Field Story.” Edge Effects.


Teaching

HIST 1500: World History to 1500
HIST 3440: Africa in World History
HIST 3460: Environmental History of Africa
HIST 4210: Global History of Poverty
BUS 3930: Global Indian Ocean    

 

 

 

Last Updated: 9/18/23