Education
BA Johns Hopkins University, 1988
MA University of Michigan, 1992
PhD University of Michigan, 1996
Research Interests
Lisa Lindsay’s research centers on the social history of West Africa, particularly Nigeria, and on links between Africa and other parts of the world. Focusing on gender, labor, slavery, migration, and biography, she endeavors to understand large-scale processes through human-scale experiences and to attend to African particularities as well as points of larger comparison and connection. Her most recent book, Atlantic Bonds, is the contextualized biography of a South Carolina freedman who in the 1850s migrated to modern-day Nigeria, making trans-Atlantic connections that his descendants and their American relatives maintain to this day. It won the African Studies Association’s prize for the best book published that year in any field of African studies. Her current research concerns women and gender in the Atlantic slave trade, especially from the Bight of Benin. Professor Lindsay’s research has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Humanities Center, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Some Notable Publications
- Atlantic Bonds: A Nineteenth Century Odyssey from America to Africa (UNC Press, 2017)
- Randy M. Browne, Lisa A. Lindsay, John Wood Sweet, “Rebecca’s Ordeal, from Africa to the Caribbean: Sexual Exploitation, Freedom Struggles, and Black Atlantic Biography,” Slavery & Abolition 43, 1 (2021): 40-67
- “Biography in African History,” History in Africa 44 (2017): 11-26
- “The Autobiography of Jacob Von Brunn, from African Captive to Liberian Missionary,” Slavery and Abolition 37, 2 (2016): 446- 471
- “Extraversion, Creolization, and Dependency in the Atlantic Slave Trade,” Journal of African History 55, 2 (2014): 135-145
- Biography and the Black Atlantic, co-edited with John Wood Sweet (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)
- Captives as Commodities: The Transatlantic Slave Trade (Prentice Hall, 2008)
- Working with Gender: Wage Labor and Social Change in Southwestern Nigeria (Heinemann, 2003)
- Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa, co-edited with Stephan Miescher (Heinemann, 2003)
Graduate Students
- This faculty member is accepting applicants for the 2023-2024 cycle
- Kaela Thuney (Co-advised with Lauren Jarvis)
- Nancy Andoh
Courses Taught (as schedule allows)
For current information about course offerings, click here.
- HIST 83—FYS: African History through Popular Music
- HIST 130 - Modern Africa
- HIST 243 - The United States and Africa
- HIST 278 - The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
- HIST 398 - The Atlantic Slave Trade: A View From the Sources
- HIST 721 - Atlantic History, 1400-1800