Mann, Gregory

Professor

Office Hours

Spring 2025: Wednesdays, 2:30 - 3:30 PM

Education

Ph.D. — Northwestern University 2000
M.A. — Northwestern University 1995
B.A. — University of Georgia 1993

Interests and Research

Gregory Mann, Professor, is an historian of West and francophone Africa. His work has focused largely on Mali and the Sahel in the twentieth century, including both the colonial and the postcolonial periods. Mann has written two books: From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel: the Road to Nongovernmentality (2015) and Native Sons: West African Veterans and France (2006). Each analyzes an aspect of governmentality, or the forms of governmental logic that animate life and struggle in the seam between state and society. Mann has also published a score of peer-reviewed articles—notably in the American Historical Review, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and the Journal of African History—on themes ranging from pilgrimage to migration, human rights, the history of the social sciences, and the historiography of Africa. He is currently writing a synthetic book-length essay on the historical relationship between Africa and France, from the mid-nineteenth to the twenty-first century.

Mann is a former editor of the Journal of African History, and a member of the editorial boards of that journal and of Humanity. He is a member—along with Dr. Devon Golaszewski, Madina Thiam and Oumou Sidibe—of the Projet Archives des Femmes du Mali, a project funded by the Modern Endangered Archives Program at UCLA. He is former director of Columbia’s M.A. program in History and Literature (Paris).

Mann has been a visiting professor at Paris-VIII (St. Denis), Sciences Po (Paris), and Paris-I Sorbonne-Panthéon. He has also co-organized a number of workshops and programs with colleagues at the University of Bamako. He has been a fellow of the Stanford Humanities Center and has won numerous other fellowships and awards.

Mann has worked with a number of doctoral students on dissertations in history, anthropology and political science, as well as with Master’s students in the Columbia-LSE Dual Degree Program in International and World History. Queries from prospective students are welcome.

Courses

West African History (Global Core; lecture)
Writing Contemporary African History (seminar)
Africa and France (Global Core; seminar)
Political History of Contemporary Africa (lecture)
Islam in Africa (seminar)
African Civilizations (Global Core; Core seminar)
Making African History: Between Field and Archive (doctoral seminar)
Introduction to History and Historiography (doctoral colloquium)
Historiography of Africa (doctoral colloquium)
Nongovernmental Africa (doctoral colloquium)

Awards, Honors, and Research Grants

2020 Co-P.I., grant from Modern Endangered Archives Program, UCLA, for Projet Archives Femmes (Bamako)
2020 P.I., grant from Humanities War and Peace Initiative, Columbia
2018 P.I., grant from CAETR (Collaborative to Advance Equity through Teaching and Research at Columbia), for second round of project to preserve archives of Malian feminists
2018-19 P.I., grant from ISERP for a seminar series on “Time and Temporality in African History”
2017 P.I., grant from CAETR (Collaborative to Advance Equity through Teaching and Research at Columbia), for project to preserve archives of Malian feminists, $5,000
2015 Choice Outstanding Academic Title: From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel (Cambridge, 2015)
2011 Faculty grant, Institute of African Studies; History Department Board of Visitors grant, les Maliens à New York: Atelier méthodologique sur une phénomène migratoire, co- organized with Dr. Isaie Dougnon (FLASH), New York City, July
2011 Chang-Chavkin grant for contributions to the Global Core, Columbia College
2009-10 Fellow, Stanford Humanities Center
2007 David Pinkney Prize for the best book in French history published in 2006, awarded by the Society for French Historical Studies for Native Sons
2007 Finalist, Melville J. Herskovits Prize for the best book in African studies published in
2006, awarded by the African Studies Association for Native Sons
2007 Faculty Development Grant, Columbia University
2005 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend for project on “Building
African Citizenship: Independent Mali and Post-Imperial France”
2004 Fellow, Columbia University Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall (Paris), Spring
2002-03 “West African Muslims in New York City” (research grant), with Drs. Linda Beck and
Ousmane Kane, as part of a larger project on “Muslims in New York”, funded by the Ford Foundation
2002 Faculty Development Grant, Columbia University
2000 Camargo Foundation Fellowship (Cassis, France)
1999-2000 Dissertation Year Fellowship, Northwestern University
1998-99 Fulbright-IIE Fellowship
1997-98 AED/NSEP Graduate Enhancement Fellowship
1996 Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (summer)
1996 Hans E. Panofsky Research Grant, Program of African Studies, Northwestern University
1995-97 Northwestern University Fellow
1994-95 Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies

Publications

I. Books

From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel: the Road to Nongovernmentality (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Native Sons: West African Veterans and France in the 20th century (Duke University Press, 2006).

II. Articles

A. Single Author, Peer-reviewed

2024 "A Return to Khaki Rule? Democracy and Africa's Lost History of Military Government," The Journal of African History 65, 2: 151-157
2022 “The World Won’t Listen: the Mande ‘Hunters’ Oath’ and Human Rights in Translation,” Humanity (2022) 13, 2: 129-45.
2021 “French Colonialism and the Making of the Modern Sahel,” in Léonardo Villalòn, ed., Oxford Handbook of the Modern Sahel, New York, Oxford University Press, 35-50. 2020 “An Historian’s Theory of Social Change,” History in Africa 47: 75-81.
2020 Co-editor with Lisa Lindsay, “Frederick Cooper and the Historiography of Africa,” Special issue, History in Africa 47: 51-99.
2015 “From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel: An Introduction,” Humanity 6, 2: 287-97.
2015 “Experience as Evidence in Africanist Historiography,” History in Africa 42: 279-86.
2013 “Anticolonialism and Social Science: Georges Balandier, Madeira Keita, and ‘the Colonial Situation’ in French Africa,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, 1: 92-119.

2012 “Citizenship after Empire: Recognizing ‘French’ West Africans in Sudan,” in Maghreb et Sciences Sociales: De la Colonie à l’état-nation, constructions identiaires au Maghreb, Noureddine Amara, ed., Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain (Tunis) and Karthala (Paris), 119-31.
2012 “Knowing the Postcolony: Sociology and Socialist Government in 1960s Mali,” In la Fabrique des Savoirs en Afrique subsaharienne, Didier Nativel and Daouda Gary-Tounakara, eds., Karthala: 91-108.
2009 “What was the indigénat? The ‘Empire of law’ in French West Africa,” Journal of African History 50, 3: 331-53.
2008 “An Africanist’s Apostasy: On Luise White’s Speaking with Vampires,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 41, 1: 117-21.
2007 “Colonialism Now: Contemporary Anti-colonialism and the facture coloniale,” Politique Africaine 105: 181-200.
2005 “Locating Colonial Histories: Between France and West Africa,” American Historical Review 110, 2: 409-34.

2005 “Des tirailleurs Sénégalais aux sans-papiers: Universaux et particularismes,” In L’Esclavage, la Colonisation, et après…: France, Etats-Unis, Grande Bretagne, Patrick Weil and Stéphane Dufoix, eds. Presses Universitaires de la France: 411-36.

2003 “Fetishizing Religion: Allah Koura and French ‘Islamic Policy’ in Late Colonial French Soudan,” Journal of African History 44, 2: 263-82.

2003 “Immigrants and Arguments in France and West Africa,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 45, 2: 362-85.

2003 “Old Soldiers, Young Men: Masculinity, Islam, and Military Veterans in Late 1950s Soudan Français (Mali),” In Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa, Lisa A. Lindsay and Stephan F. Miescher, eds. Heinemann (Social History of Africa series): 69-85. 2003 “Violence, Dignity and Mali’s New Model Army, 1960-68,” Mande Studies 5: 65-82. 2002 “What’s in an Alias? Family Names, Individual Histories, and Historical Method in the Western Sudan,” History in Africa 29: 309-20.

B. Collective, co-authored, and co-edited work, peer reviewed

2023 With Madina Thiam, et al., "le Projet Archives des femmes: Archiver, numériser, et diffuser les luttes des femmes maliennes," Revue de l’Histoire de l’Afrique Contemporaine, 1-13.

2020 With Madina Thiam, “The History of Mali: Connectivity and State Formation since the 18 th century,” In Thomas Spear, et al., eds., Oxford Research Encyclopedia in African History, 1-27.

2020 Co-editor with Lisa Lindsay, “Frederick Cooper and the Historiography of Africa,” Special issue, History in Africa 47: 51-99.

2015 Janet Roitman and Kenneth Harrow, “An Interview with Gregory Mann,” Humanity 6, 2:299-307.

2013 With Baz Lecocq, et al., “One Hippopotamus and Eight Blind Analysts: a Multivocal Analysis of the 2012 Political Crisis in the Divided Republic of Mali,” Review of African Political Economy 40, 137: 343-57.

2007 With Baz Lecocq, “Between Empire, umma, and Muslim Third World: The French Union and African Pilgrims to Mecca, 1946-1958,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 27, 2: 367-83.

2003 With Baz Lecocq, “Writing Histories of an African Post-colony: Modibo Keita’s Mali, 1960-68,” Mande Studies 5: 1-8.

2003 Co-editor with Baz Lecocq, “Modibo Keita’s Mali, 1960-68,” Mande Studies 5: 1-112. 1999 With Jane I. Guyer, “Imposing a Guide on the Indigène: the Fifty Year Experience of the Sociétés de Prévoyance in French West and Equatorial Africa,” In Credit, Currencies, and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective, Endre Stiansen and Jane I. Guyer, eds. Nordic Africa Institute: 118-45.

C. Articles in peer-reviewed volumes edited by others

2021 “French Colonialism and the Making of the Modern Sahel,” in Léonardo Villalòn, ed., Oxford Handbook of the Modern Sahel, New York, Oxford University Press, 35-50. 2012 “Citizenship after Empire: Recognizing ‘French’ West Africans in Sudan,” in Maghreb et Sciences Sociales: De la Colonie à l’état-nation, constructions identiaires au Maghreb, Noureddine Amara, ed., Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain (Tunis) and Karthala (Paris), 119-31.

2012 “Knowing the Postcolony: Sociology and Socialist Government in 1960s Mali,” In la Fabrique des Savoirs en Afrique subsaharienne, Didier Nativel and Daouda Gary- Tounakara, eds., Karthala: 91-108.

2003 “Old Soldiers, Young Men: Masculinity, Islam, and Military Veterans in Late 1950s
Soudan Français (Mali),” In Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa, Lisa A. Lindsay
and Stephan F. Miescher, eds. Heinemann (Social History of Africa series): 69-85.
1999 With Jane I. Guyer, “Imposing a Guide on the Indigène: the Fifty Year Experience of the
Sociétés de Prévoyance in French West and Equatorial Africa,” In Credit, Currencies,
and Culture: African Financial Institutions in Historical Perspective, Endre Stiansen and
Jane I. Guyer, eds. Nordic Africa Institute: 118-45.

D. Other articles
2017 “‘Montout, Negro Colonizer’ from Coup de Bambou (Guinea, 1950),” in African
Muckracking, A. Schiffrin and G. Lugalambi, eds., Johannesburg, Jacana Media.
2015 “Introduction,” La Lutte pour la Chefferie de Naréna: la Vie de Massadan Balla Keita
(1895-1969), Daouda Namballa Keita [and Jan Jansen], eds., Editions Donko-Ba
(Bamako), 1-3.

2013 “Afropositivism,” Current Anthropology, Hot Spots Forum: Mali http://production.culanth.org/fieldsights/308-hot-spot-mali

2013 “When You Refuse You Say ‘No!’”, JENDA: a Journal of Culture and African Women Studies 2: 231-33.

2004 “Name-Dropping: Jamuw and History in the Western Sudan,” In Mande-Manding:
Background reading for ethnographic research in the region south of Bamako (Mali), Jan
Jansen, ed. Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden
University (The Netherlands): 177-89.

1999 “Dust to Dust: a User’s Guide to Local Archives in Mali,” History in Africa 26: 453-56.