Sara Berry

Professor
Economic and Social History of Africa
with special interest in agrarian studies

Center for Africana Studies

The Johns Hopkins University
Department of History
3400 North Charles Street
Baltimore MD 21218

Telephone: 410-516-7577
E-mail: sberry@jhu.edu

Office Hours: Thursday 4-5pm Friday 12-1pm and by appointment

Curriculum Vitae

I teach courses in African history and anthropology, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches to the study of social, economic and political change. I published several books and numerous articles on 20^th century African economic and social history, agrarian change, and development studies, including Fathers work for their sons: accumulation, mobility and class formation in an extended Yoruba community (University of California Press, 1985), No condition is permanent: the social dynamics of agrarian change in sub-Saharan Africa (University of Wisconsin Press, 1993); and Chiefs know their boundaries: essays on property, power and the past in Asante, 1896-1996 (Heinemann, 2000). Trained initially in economics, I have specialized in using micro-historical research to promote interdisciplinary analysis of social and economic transformations, and to bring comparative and historical perspectives to bear on understanding contemporary African political economies. My current work uses local histories of conflict over land to examine the historically contingent nature of claims on property and their role economic and political change; relationships between struggles over property, power and the production of history; and the changing social and economic meaning of law in colonial and postcolonial Africa.

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