RACHEL KANTROWITZ, PHD.
With almost a decade in the higher education space, I have developed a strong commitment to the role of higher education in contributing to greater equity in the United, States. .I am a scholar of twentieth century Francophone West Africa, with teaching expertise in development, religion, youth, and education across the Global South
Currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Education at Brown University. From 2015-2017 I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in International Humanities, also at Brown University. I teach classes in International and Comparative Education. I received my PhD in African History from New York University in May 2015.
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 teach 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 organized a conference on Education in Africa, held at Brown University on March 10, 2017. Scholars participated from across the US as well as Africa.
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.
I am engaged in the digital humanities, particularly in the intersection of historical method and technology. For my research, I have used software called DEVONthink to create my own document database to go beyond the original organization of the archives I visited. Based on my work, this past May I was invited to give a talk at the Center for Jewish History (NYC) about database management and digital workflow. At the 2015 American Historical Association meeting, I discussed how programs like DEVONthink can transform historical research and writing at a roundtable on digital tools for historians that I co-organized. You can listen to a recording of the session and see the panelists' presentations here.
With almost a decade in the higher education space, I have developed a strong commitment to the role of higher education in contributing to greater equity in the United, States. .I am a scholar of twentieth century Francophone West Africa, with teaching expertise in development, religion, youth, and education across the Global South
Currently a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Education at Brown University. From 2015-2017 I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in International Humanities, also at Brown University. I teach classes in International and Comparative Education. I received my PhD in African History from New York University in May 2015.
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 teach 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 organized a conference on Education in Africa, held at Brown University on March 10, 2017. Scholars participated from across the US as well as Africa.
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.
I am engaged in the digital humanities, particularly in the intersection of historical method and technology. For my research, I have used software called DEVONthink to create my own document database to go beyond the original organization of the archives I visited. Based on my work, this past May I was invited to give a talk at the Center for Jewish History (NYC) about database management and digital workflow. At the 2015 American Historical Association meeting, I discussed how programs like DEVONthink can transform historical research and writing at a roundtable on digital tools for historians that I co-organized. You can listen to a recording of the session and see the panelists' presentations here.
