Dr. Aliou Ly

Assistant Professor

CONTACT
E-mail: aliou.ly@mtsu.edu
Phone: (615) 898-2627
Office Location and Mailing Address: Peck Hall, Room 237
MTSU Box 23
Murfreesboro, TN 37132

FIELDS:  West African history, Atlantic Rim history, African nationalism, gender in African politics, women in African liberation struggles, and the history of Guinea Bissau.

BIOGRAPHY: As a historian of colonial and post-colonial West Africa, I specialize in the political history of Guinea Bissau, with a focus on the meaning of women's participation in national liberation struggles. My current research explores the ways in which a focus on the perspective of women fighters leads to re-writing current historical narratives of the Guinea Bissau national liberation war. This research has methodological implications for historical research on national liberation struggles more broadly. In addition to considering women as active agents in reshaping the narrative of the war, I also take seriously their reasons for participating, based on concerns for family and community. Their perspective serves to refocus the historiography of national liberation struggles on concrete lived reality rather than clichéd political abstractions. My research also examines the ambiguous relations between African national liberation movements and movements for women's rights and emancipation within those movements. For many years, I have also had a research interest in the Haitian Revolution of 1791 to 1803, and the dissemination of the idea of this revolution throughout African political and intellectual circles in the 19th and 20th centuries.

UNDERGRADUATE COURSES TAUGHT:

• History 1110, History of World Civilization

SELECTED AWARDS: 

 MTSU Access and Diversity Award, 2012

UC Davis African, African-American Studies Research Grant 2009

UC Davis African Studies Graduate Fellowship in History 2007-2009

EDUCATION:

Ph.D., University of California Davis 2012
M.A.,   California State University, Fullerton, 2006

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