Morgan Robinson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3796873 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Morgan Robinson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Morgan |
| FAMILY NAME | Robinson |
| SIGNATURE | ROBINSON M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Mississippi State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4338-8116 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 6 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 6 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2019 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
History of the Standard Swahili Language
In many ways, Swahili has become emblematic of the African continent. Taught in universities around the world, an official language of the African Union, and embraced by some members of the diaspora as a way to connect with the continent’s histories and cultures, Swahili is a global language, and its most far-reaching dialect is Standard Swahili. The conventional historical narrative depicts Standard Swahili as a constructed language that was dev…
Spilling Millet
This essay is a study in bureaucratic knowledge production using the example of the postal system in German East Africa. There is a great deal of historical literature that focuses on bureaucratic-knowledge-as-power: bureaucracies produced information that was used to quantify and, ultimately, to control populations both in the metropole and the colony. In this piece I want to emphasize another kind of bureaucratic knowledge production: namely, i…
When a Wonder Is Not a Wonder
Talking about the things we know is at once an everyday occurrence and an incredibly complicated process—the complexity of which, as historians of science have frequently demonstrated, can be a hindrance to the production and communication of knowledge. This essay frames this difficulty as a problem of translation. “Translation” here means two things: first, the interlinguistic process of moving ideas from one language to another; and, second, th…
Sheng
Sheng is a way of speaking Swahili that is used by an increasing number of Kenyans in Nairobi and beyond; the moniker was created in typical Sheng fashion by rearranging the syllables of a clipped
The Idea of the Upelekwa
By the 1880s, the Universities' Mission to Central Africa had stations scattered all over East Africa. African adherents came to the mission's Zanzibar headquarters for school and returned to the mainland as clergy and teachers. Despite their wide dispersal, the members of the mission maintained strong connections; in this piece, I trace these connections through the idea of the Upelekwa, a Swahili term meaning 'mission field' and connoting a com…
La Belle Époque from Eastern Africa
This article seeks to expand our historical understanding of late-nineteenth-century “globalization” through the letters of a female Christian convert living in southeastern Tanganyika. By examining the correspondence between Agnes Sapuli and her educational sponsor in England, the historian can begin to reconstruct the individual, subjective experience of turn-of-the-century global connectedness. In so doing, we find that in the so-called periph…
The Idea of the Upelekwa
By the 1880s, the Universities' Mission to Central Africa had stations scattered all over East Africa. African adherents came to the mission's Zanzibar headquarters for school and returned to the mainland as clergy and teachers. Despite their wide dispersal, the members of the mission maintained strong connections; in this piece, I trace these connections through the idea of the Upelekwa, a Swahili term meaning 'mission field' and connoting a com…
La Belle Époque from Eastern Africa
This article seeks to expand our historical understanding of late-nineteenth-century “globalization” through the letters of a female Christian convert living in southeastern Tanganyika. By examining the correspondence between Agnes Sapuli and her educational sponsor in England, the historian can begin to reconstruct the individual, subjective experience of turn-of-the-century global connectedness. In so doing, we find that in the so-called periph…
Sheng
Sheng is a way of speaking Swahili that is used by an increasing number of Kenyans in Nairobi and beyond; the moniker was created in typical Sheng fashion by rearranging the syllables of a clipped
The Idea of the Upelekwa
By the 1880s, the Universities' Mission to Central Africa had stations scattered all over East Africa. African adherents came to the mission's Zanzibar headquarters for school and returned to the mainland as clergy and teachers. Despite their wide dispersal, the members of the mission maintained strong connections; in this piece, I trace these connections through the idea of the Upelekwa, a Swahili term meaning 'mission field' and connoting a com…
When a Wonder Is Not a Wonder
Talking about the things we know is at once an everyday occurrence and an incredibly complicated process—the complexity of which, as historians of science have frequently demonstrated, can be a hindrance to the production and communication of knowledge. This essay frames this difficulty as a problem of translation. “Translation” here means two things: first, the interlinguistic process of moving ideas from one language to another; and, second, th…
History of the Standard Swahili Language
In many ways, Swahili has become emblematic of the African continent. Taught in universities around the world, an official language of the African Union, and embraced by some members of the diaspora as a way to connect with the continent’s histories and cultures, Swahili is a global language, and its most far-reaching dialect is Standard Swahili. The conventional historical narrative depicts Standard Swahili as a constructed language that was dev…
Spilling Millet
This essay is a study in bureaucratic knowledge production using the example of the postal system in German East Africa. There is a great deal of historical literature that focuses on bureaucratic-knowledge-as-power: bureaucracies produced information that was used to quantify and, ultimately, to control populations both in the metropole and the colony. In this piece I want to emphasize another kind of bureaucratic knowledge production: namely, i…
African history and culture studies (5 works) · History (5 works) · History (5 works) · Political science (5 works) · Geography (4 works) · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Sociology (4 works) · Swahili (4 works)