RACHEL KANTROWITZ, PHD.
Welcome to my website!
I have over 10 years of experience in researching questions of African development and international education. I am also a skilled editor, translator, and writing coach. The pages here should help answer your questions about my services, from editing to international development consulting. Please get in touch via the contact forms if you would like to discuss further!
I currently blog on African development, am a freelance editor and international development consultant.
Since 2015, I have been affiliated with the Department of Education at Brown University. first as a Postdoctoral Fellow and then as Visiting Assistant Professor. Currently, I am a Visiting Scholar in the department, as well as the Managing Editor of the Journal of African History.
More about me:
I am an interdisciplinary scholar of twentieth century Francophone West Africa, with research and teaching expertise in development, religion, youth, and education across the Global South.I received my PhD in African History from New York University in May 2015. I have also worked in public health, city planning, and secondary education, all of which I very much enjoy.
My manuscript, Imperial Pasts and Franco-African Futures: West African Catholic Education, 1946-1975, analyzes the rise of French-funded Catholic schools in majority Muslim West Africa and—through these schools—the strengthening of ties between France and Africa in an era when many spoke of severing or loosening them. Based on over sixty interviews with former students and archival research in over a dozen archives and four countries, I consider debates about religious versus secular schools, the language of instruction, and the relationship between universal education and development. Drawn from this research, my peer-reviewed article, “Triangulating Between the Church, the State, and the Postcolony: Coopérants in Independent West Africa,” which appeared in Cahiers d’Études africaines in June 2016. I have an article forthcoming in The Journal of African History and and working on another article on oral history methodology. My research and language learning has been funded by the Marandon, the Fulbright Commission, and the Remarque Institute at École Normal Supérieure in Paris, France.
At Brown University, I have taught courses on education in the context of development, global inequalities, and social justice movements, with a particular emphasis on Africa. This past semester I taught Decolonizing African Education, which looks at education from the colonial period to contemporary movements such as #Feesmustfall in South Africa. Readings are drawn from multiple countries in north and subsaharan Africa. My second course from the fall was Empire, Childhood, and Youth, which asks how empire shaped ideas about and experiences of childhood, in the case of the British and French empires of the twentieth century. In the spring, I will teach Comparative Education, covering places as diverse as Rwanda, Afghanistan, Brazil, and Senegal. Comparative Education situates these case studies within thematic units on colonialism, conflict, religion, and activism. At NYU, I taught a course on development in Africa, and prior to my graduate work I taught at a high school in France.
I hold a BA from Vassar College, where I graduated Phi Beta Kappa, with departmental and general honors. I have an undergraduate background in Spanish and Latin American history, and remain interested in the points of intersection between Latin America and Africa. In particular, I am interested in how development expertise from Latin America was applied to Africa.
Welcome to my website!
I have over 10 years of experience in researching questions of African development and international education. I am also a skilled editor, translator, and writing coach. The pages here should help answer your questions about my services, from editing to international development consulting. Please get in touch via the contact forms if you would like to discuss further!
I currently blog on African development, am a freelance editor and international development consultant.
Since 2015, I have been affiliated with the Department of Education at Brown University. first as a Postdoctoral Fellow and then as Visiting Assistant Professor. Currently, I am a Visiting Scholar in the department, as well as the Managing Editor of the Journal of African History.
More about me:
I am an interdisciplinary scholar of twentieth century Francophone West Africa, with research and teaching expertise in development, religion, youth, and education across the Global South.I received my PhD in African History from New York University in May 2015. I have also worked in public health, city planning, and secondary education, all of which I very much enjoy.
My manuscript, Imperial Pasts and Franco-African Futures: West African Catholic Education, 1946-1975, analyzes the rise of French-funded Catholic schools in majority Muslim West Africa and—through these schools—the strengthening of ties between France and Africa in an era when many spoke of severing or loosening them. Based on over sixty interviews with former students and archival research in over a dozen archives and four countries, I consider debates about religious versus secular schools, the language of instruction, and the relationship between universal education and development. Drawn from this research, my peer-reviewed article, “Triangulating Between the Church, the State, and the Postcolony: Coopérants in Independent West Africa,” which appeared in Cahiers d’Études africaines in June 2016. I have an article forthcoming in The Journal of African History and and working on another article on oral history methodology. My research and language learning has been funded by the Marandon, the Fulbright Commission, and the Remarque Institute at École Normal Supérieure in Paris, France.
At Brown University, I have taught courses on education in the context of development, global inequalities, and social justice movements, with a particular emphasis on Africa. This past semester I taught Decolonizing African Education, which looks at education from the colonial period to contemporary movements such as #Feesmustfall in South Africa. Readings are drawn from multiple countries in north and subsaharan Africa. My second course from the fall was Empire, Childhood, and Youth, which asks how empire shaped ideas about and experiences of childhood, in the case of the British and French empires of the twentieth century. In the spring, I will teach Comparative Education, covering places as diverse as Rwanda, Afghanistan, Brazil, and Senegal. Comparative Education situates these case studies within thematic units on colonialism, conflict, religion, and activism. At NYU, I taught a course on development in Africa, and prior to my graduate work I taught at a high school in France.
I hold a BA from Vassar College, where I graduated Phi Beta Kappa, with departmental and general honors. I have an undergraduate background in Spanish and Latin American history, and remain interested in the points of intersection between Latin America and Africa. In particular, I am interested in how development expertise from Latin America was applied to Africa.