African History Professor Awarded Tenure

History Professor Caroline Elkins was awarded tenure on July 1 after eight years as an associate professor of African Studies at Harvard.

Elkins said she first discovered a “passion” for African history when she took a course on the subject as an undergraduate at Princeton.

She said she is drawn to the subject because it provides an “intellectual challenge” and involves “thinking outside the box” to understand the “confluence of so many areas of history.”

“It is impossible to study the history of Europe or America without considering the influence of Africa,” Elkins said. “It is an incredibly valuable subject for young students.”

In 2006, Elkins was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for her book “Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya,” which “realigned historians’ understanding of the final years of colonial Kenya,” Dean of Social Science Stephen M. Kosslyn said in a press release announcing Elkins’ tenure.

Elkins collected much of the information contained in the book from oral histories of Kenyan survivors of British detention camps in the 1950s and wrote the book during a yearlong stay at the Radcliffe Institute between 2003 and 2004.

Her research interests include “colonial violence and post-conflict reconciliation in Africa, and violence and the decline of the British Empire,” according to her history department Web site.

Elkins is currently teaching both Historical Study A-21: “Africa and Africans: The Making of a Continent in the Modern World” and History 2709: “Themes in Modern Sub-Saharan African History: Proseminar.”

She will also teach another course in the spring.

“Being in her classroom is an incredibly exciting experience. She balances being a challenging professor with being an understanding and encouraging mentor,” said Meghan A. Shutzer ’10, a social studies concentrator who took two courses taught by Elkins.

“I think she brings the best out of her students. I wanted to go to her class every day,” she added.

Elkins describes her own classes as “engaging.”

She said she makes all of her classes, even lectures, dialogues between herself and her students and that classes are often a learning experience for her.

For Elkins, she noted that the best part of being a professor is “inspiring students to pursue their interests in Africa.”

“Teaching at Harvard and winning a Pulitzer Prize have both been humbling experiences,” Elkins said. “I have been surrounded by so many wonderful people...I am very lucky.”