Rebecca Shumway

Associate Professor, History
Director of Graduate Studies, History
Affiliated Professor, African and African Diaspora Studies (AADS)

Education

PhD, History, Emory University, 2004
MA, History, Emory University, 1998
BA, History and African Studies, Northwestern University, 1995

Teaching Schedule

Course Num	Title	Meets	Syllabus
HIST 372-001	Topics in Global History: West Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade	TR 1pm-2:15pm
HIST 372G-001	Topics in Global History: West Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade	TR 1pm-2:15pm

Courses Taught

West Africa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Seminar in History: Africans, Slavery and the Atlantic World
The Myth of the Dark Continent: Africa and Racism
Africans in World History: Communities, Cultures, and Ideas
History of Southern Africa
Honors Seminar: Gold and Vibranium, Reality and Myth in African History
Graduate Seminar: African Roots of American Cultures

Teaching Interests

Precolonial Africa
West Africa and the Slave Trade
Africa and Racism
Comparative Slavery
African Roots of American Culture

Research Interests

History of Africa
Precolonial West Africa
Slavery and Slave Trade
State Formation and Cultural Identity
African Diaspora

Related Activities

Faculty Coordinator, African Studies Forum

Biographical Sketch

Rebecca Shumway is an historian of 18th and 19th century West Africa and the Atlantic World with a focus on coastal Ghana (Fante).

Selected Publications

Shumway, Rebecca. The Fante and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2011.

Shumway, Rebecca, and Trevor R. Getz, eds. Slavery and Its Legacy in Ghana and the Diaspora. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.

Shumway, Rebecca. "Palaver." Max Planck Encyclopedia of International Procedural Law. (2022).

Shumway, Rebecca. "Public Slavery in the Precolonial Gold Coast (Ghana)." Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 64, no. 2 (2022): 80-91.

Shumway, Rebecca. "West Africa, 1500–1825." In The Cambridge History of America and the World: Volume 1: 1500–1820, edited by Carla Gardina Pestana, Eliga Gould and Paul Mapp, 297-313. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Shumway, Rebecca. "Emerging Modernities in 19th Century Africa." In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, Oxford University Press, 2020.

Shumway, Rebecca. "Naming Our African Ancestors: Pushing, and Respecting, the Limits." Journal of the Early Republic 40, no. 2 (2020): 195-200.

Shumway, Rebecca. "Exploiting British Ambivalence in West Africa: Fante Sovereignty in the Early Nineteenth Century." In Facing Empire: Indigenous Experiences in a Revolutionary Age, edited by Kate Fullagar and Michael A. McDonnell, 72-90, 2018.

Shumway, Rebecca. "Anti-Slavery in Nineteenth Century Fanteland." In Slavery and Its Legacy in Ghana and the Diaspora, edited by Rebecca Shumway and Trevor R. Getz, 85-104. New York: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2017.

Shumway, Rebecca. "From Atlantic Creoles to African Nationalists: Reflections on the Historiography of Nineteenth-Century Fanteland." History in Africa 42 (2015): 139-64.

Shumway, Rebecca. "Castle Slaves of the Eighteenth Century Gold Coast." Slavery and Abolition: A Journal of Slave and Post-Slave Studies 35, no. 1 (2014): 84-98.

Shumway, Rebecca. "Palavers and Treaty-Making in the British Acquisition of the Gold Coast Colony (West Africa)." Chap. 7 In Empire by Treaty: Negotiating European Expansion, 1600-1900, edited by Saliha Belmessous, 161-85. New York: Oxford, 2014.

Shumway, Rebecca. "Precolonial Political Systems." In Oxford Bibliographies in African Studies, edited by Thomas Spear New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Shumway, Rebecca. "The Fante Shrine of Nananom Mpow and the Atlantic Slave Trade in Southern Ghana." International Journal of African Historical Studies 44, no. 1 (2011): 27-44.