Kenda Mutongi
- MIT Sponsors:
- Craig Wilder, History Section
- Scholar Link:Visit Kenda Mutongi's faculty page
The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific and religious freedom have always been in the minority… It will take such a small committed minority to work unrelentingly to win the uncommitted majority. Such a group may transform America’s greatest dilemma into her most glorious opportunity.
Background
Kenda Mutongi is professor of Africa history at Williams College. She holds a BA in history and English from Coe College, and an MA in history and anthropology from University of Virginia, where she also earned a PhD in history.
Interests
Mutongi studies modern Africa (focus on eastern and southern Africa), women’s and gender history, political economy, urban history, historical ethnography, and business history. Her doctoral dissertation examined the complex culture of widowhood in Kenya, exploring how women crafted social power by defining and deploying the moral and political meanings of widowhood.
Her current project focuses on the history of secondary schooling in Kenya. The study focuses on post-colonial Kenya but also looks back to the turn of the twentieth century when the first schools were established in Kenya. The study will help provide a picture of what it has been like for the students to grow up in a Kenya that is buffeted by all the fears, expectations, and contradictions of a new African nation.
Sample Work
Publication
MATATU: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi
MATATU: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi. University of Chicago Press, March, 2017
Publication
Worries of the Heart: Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya
Worries of the Heart: Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya. University of Chicago Press, 2007. MELVILLE J. HERSKOVITS, FINALIST, 2008. Awarded by the African Studies Association for the best scholarly book on Africa, in any discipline.
Publication
School Fires and Protest in Kenya’s Secondary and High Schools, 1970 to the Present
“School Fires and Protest in Kenya’s Secondary and High Schools, 1970 to the Present.” In Preparation.
Publication
The Harry Thuku Massacre in Early Colonial Nairobi
“The Harry Thuku Massacre in Early Colonial Nairobi.” Transition: The Magazine of Africa and the Diaspora (forthcoming).