Africa

United States of America

Associate Professor

Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee

jrich@mtsu.edu

Middle Tennessee State University
Box 23, MTSU, Murfreesboro, TN 37132

Phone: 615-898-2574

Gabon

Social history of colonial Gabon. I spent over a year on a Fulbright IIE grant
in Libreville in 1999-2000 and am interested in town life, the rise of the
timber industry, gender and racial identities, and food supply in Libreville
during the colonial period.

BOOKS
Co-editor with Carina Ray of Navigating African Maritime History, to be
published in the Research in Maritime History series, Memorial University
of Newfoundland Press, 2010

A Workman is Worthy of His Meat: Food and Colonialism in the Gabon Estuary
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007)

PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES

"Searching for Success: Boys, Family Aspirations, and Opportunities in
Rural Gabon, ca. 1900-1940," Journal of Family History (forthcoming)

"Rocky Rapids and Broken Oars: River Travel, Commercial Rivalries, and
Political Divides in Oskar Lenz's Gabonese Voyages, 1874-1877," Canadian
Journal of History (forthcoming)

"Manhood, State Power, and Scandals in the Gabon Estuary, 1940-1946,"
Outre-Mers (forthcoming)

"Cruel Guards and Anxious Chiefs: Fang Masculinities and State Power in
the Gabon Estuary, 1920-1960," Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines (forthcoming)

"After The Last Slave Ship, The Sea Remains: Mobility and Atlantic
Networks in Gabon, c. 1860-1920," Atlantic Studies 4:2 (2007), 153-172.

"Hunger and Consumer Protest in Colonial Africa during World War I: The
Case of the Gabon Estuary, 1914-1920," Food, Culture, and Society 10:2
(2007), 239-260.

"Maurice Briault, André Raponda Walker, and the Value of Missionary
Anthropology in Colonial Gabon," Le Fait Missionnaire 19 (2006), 71-95.

"My Matrimonial Bureau: Masculine Concerns and Presbyterian Mission
Evangelization in the Gabon Estuary, ca. 1900-1915," Journal of Religion
in Africa 36:2 (2006), 200-223.

"Forging Permits and Failing Hopes: African Participation in the Gabonese
Timber Industry, ca. 1920-1940," African Economic History 33 (2005),
147-171.

"Civilized Attire: Dress, Cultural Change and Status in Libreville, Gabon,
ca. 1860-1914," Cultural and Social History 2:2 (2005), 189-214.

"Troubles at the Office: Clerks, State Authority, and Social Conflict in
the Gabon Estuary, 1920-1945," Canadian Journal of African Studies 38:1
(2004), 58-87.

"Une Babylone Noire: Interracial Unions in Colonial Libreville, c.
1870-1914," French Colonial History 4 (2003), 145-170.

"Leopard Men, Slaves, and Social Conflict in Libreville (Gabon), c.
1860-1879," International Journal of African Historical Studies 34:3
(2001), 619-638.

BOOK CHAPTERS

"Unsteady is the Cross: Catholic Missionaries, Catechists, and the Perils
of Christian Living in the Gabon Estuary, ca. 1914-1945," in
Historiographie du Gabon, état des lieux et travaux en
cours, edited by Clotaire Messi Me Nang (Paris: Karthala, forthcoming)

"Marcel Lefebvre in Gabon: Revival, Missionaries, and the Colonial Roots
of Catholic Traditionalism," in Sarah Curtis and Kevin Callahan (eds.),
Encountering French History (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, forthcoming)

"Libreville: Die Stadt der Freien," in Fotofieber: Bilder aus West-
und Zentralafrika Die Reisen von Carl Passavant 1883-85, edited by
Jürg Schneider, Ute Röschenthaler, and Bernhard Gardi (Basel:
Christoph Merian Verlag Basel, 2005), 163-176.

"Where Every Language is Heard: Senegalese and Vietnamese Migrants in
Colonial Libreville, 1860-1914," in African Urban Spaces in Historical
Perspective, edited by Steven Salm and Toyin Falola (Rochester:
University of Rochester Press, 2005), 191-212.

Catholic traditionalism ; missionaries ;