David William Cohen is professor of history and anthropology and director of the International Institute at the University of Michigan

University of Michigan

The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...

. He specializes in East Africa

East Africa

East Africa or Eastern Africa is the easterly region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. In the UN scheme of geographic regions, 19 territories constitute Eastern Africa:...

 (Kenya

Kenya

Kenya , officially known as the Republic of Kenya, is a country in East Africa that lies on the equator, with the Indian Ocean to its south-east...

, Uganda

Uganda

Uganda , officially the Republic of Uganda, is a landlocked country in East Africa. Uganda is also known as the "Pearl of Africa". It is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan, on the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the southwest by Rwanda, and on the south by...

) and is a leader in the emerging field of historical anthropology.

Cohen received his PhD from the University of London

University of London

-20th century:Shortly after 6 Burlington Gardens was vacated, the University went through a period of rapid expansion. Bedford College, Royal Holloway and the London School of Economics all joined in 1900, Regent's Park College, which had affiliated in 1841 became an official divinity school of the...

. He taught at Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

, and was later professor of anthropology and history and director of the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University

Northwestern University

Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois, USA. Northwestern has eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools offering 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees....

.

With E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, he wrote on the multiple investigations into the 1990 disappearance and death of Kenya’s Foreign Minister, Robert Ouko.

Books

• The Historical Tradition of Busoga: Mukama and Kintu (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972).
• Neither Slave Nor Free: The Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World, edited with Jack P. Greene, with an introduction by David William Cohen and Jack P. Greene (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972).
• Womunafu's Bunafu: A Study of Authority in a Nineteenth Century African Community (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). Repr. New York: ACLS History E-Book, 2004.
• Towards a Reconstructed Past: Historical Texts from Busoga, Uganda (London: The British Academy and Oxford University Press, 1986).
• Siaya: A Historical Anthropology of an African Landscape (London: James Currey; Nairobi: Heinemann Kenya; Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1989), with E. S. Atieno Odhiambo.
• Burying SM: The Politics of Knowledge and the Sociology of Power in Africa (Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann; London: James Currey, 1992), with E. S. Atieno Odhiambo.
• The Combing of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
• The Risks of Knowledge: Investigations into the Death of the Hon. Minister John Robert Ouko in Kenya, 1990 (Oxford, Ohio: Ohio University Press; 2004), with E. S. Atieno Odhiambo.
• African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001), ed. with Luise White and Stephan F. Miescher.

Peer-reviewed journal articles

• "The Cwezi Cult," Journal of African History, ix, 4 (1968), 651-57.
• "Luo History Without Court Chronicles," Journal of African History, ix, 3 (1968), 480-82.
• "A Survey of Interlacustrine Chronology," Journal of African History, xi, 2 (1970), 177-201.
• "Agenda for African Economic History," The Journal of Economic History
  The Journal of Economic History
  The Journal of Economic History is an academic journal of economic history which has been published since 1941. Many of its articles are quantitative, often following the formal approaches that have been called cliometrics or the new economic history to make statistical estimates.The journal is...
  
  , xxxi, 1 (March, 1971), 208-21.
• "Precolonial History as the History of Society," African Studies Review
  African Studies Review
  The African Studies Review is a double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal publishing original research and analyses of Africa as well as book reviews. From 1958 to 1969, the journal was published under the title African Studies Bulletin ....
  
  , 17, 2, (1974), 467-72.
• "Trends in African Historical Studies," American Anthropologist
  American Anthropologist
  American Anthropologist is the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association . It is known for publishing a wide range of work in anthropology, including articles on cultural, biological and linguistic anthropology and archeology...
  
  , 80 (1978), 101-105.
• “The Political Transformation of Northern Busoga: 1600-1900," Cahiers d'Études africaines
  Cahiers d'Études africaines
  The Cahiers d'Études africaines is an international and interdisciplinary academic journal covering topics in the social sciences as relating to Africa, the West Indies, and Black Africa. The journal publishes miscellaneous issues and essays covering recent trends in research and field theory and...
  
  , 23 (3-4), 87-88 (1982), 465-88.
• "Ayany, Malo, and Ogot: Historians in Search of a Luo Nation," with E. S. Atieno Odhiambo, Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, 107-108, xxcii-3-4, 1987, 269-286.
• "The Cultural Topography of a `Bantu Borderland': Busoga, 1500-1850," Journal of African History, 29, 1, 1988, 57-79.
• "The Undefining of Oral Tradition," Ethnohistory, 36, 1, Winter, 1989, 9-18.
• "Luo Camps in Seventeenth Century Eastern Uganda: The Use of Migration Tradition in the Reconstruction of Culture," SUGIA: Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika, 5 (1983), 145-75.
• "Natur und Kampf--Uberfluss und Armut in der Viktoriasee-Region in Afrika von 1880 bis zur Gegenwart," SOWI: Sozialwissenschaftliche Informationen fur Unterricht und Studium, 14, 1 (March) 1985, 10-22.

Other

He has also compiled

• Selected Texts, Busoga Traditional History, 3 vols., limited xerox and bound edition deposited in Africana collections in North America, Europe, and Africa: 1969, 1970, 1973)

and written the sections

• "The River-Lake Nilotes from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century," Zamani: A Survey of East African History, eds. B. A. Ogot and J. A. Kieran (Nairobi and New York: Longmans, New Edition, ed. B. A. Ogot, (Nairobi: Longmans, 1974).

and

• "Peoples and States of the Great Lakes Region," in J. F. A. Ajayi, ed., General History of Africa, VI: Africa in the Nineteenth Century until the 1880s (London: Heinemann; Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 270-93).1968);

He also contributed chapters to many collected works, as well as written a number of essays and books reviews.

External links