Thomas V. (Thom) McClendon, Ph.D.
Professor of History
Office: Mood Bridwell, #214
Phone: (512) 863-1414
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Dr. McClendon's CV (pdf)
How I got here and what I do:
I joined the History Department at Southwestern in 1998, having taught previously at UC Berkeley and UCLA. I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area (the son of transplants from Louisiana and Texas) and did my undergraduate work at Pomona College. Before graduate school, I earned a J.D. at UC Berkeley in 1980 and practiced law in California for several years. Interest in the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa and travel in Africa in 1986-87 led me to graduate school in African history at Stanford, where I earned my degree in 1995. My research and teaching concern African and diasporan history, specializing geographically on South Africa and conceptually on social, cultural, and legal history of the colonial period.
Research:
My current research examines the development of indirect rule, including customary law, in colonial Natal, South Africa. This work focuses particularly on the career of Sir Theophilus Shepstone, who dominated “native” policy in 19th century Natal. An article based on this work is forthcoming in the Journal of Southern African Studies.
Another piece of this research appears in Clifton Crais, ed., The Culture of Power in Southern Africa: Essays on State Formation and the Political Imagination (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003).
My first book centered on gender and generation conflict among African labor tenants on white-owned farms in early 20th century South Africa. The book appeared in Heinemann’s Social History of Africa series as Genders and Generations Apart: Labor Tenants and Customary Law in Segregation-Era South Africa, 1920s to 1940s (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002). The
research also appeared in journals such as the International Journal of African Historical Studies.
Teaching:
My teaching of African history and African American history emphasizes the concerns with colonialism,
gender and generation, race, and law reflected in my research. I offer an introductory trans-regional history course, “Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds,” focused on Western imperialism in South Asia and Africa. I offer
surveys of Africa, South Africa, and African-American history. In addition, I teach “Gender and Generation in Africa,” which is cross-listed with Feminist Studies, and “Slavery in the Atlantic World,” a Feminist Studies allied course. My interest in law has also led me to offer a research seminar, part of our department’s capstone sequence, on law and history. I also teach the department’s sophomore-level Historiography course. Life beyond SU: My wife, Nancy, and I live in the western reaches of Georgetown with our two dogs. Our horse lives a few miles further west. Austin, especially its music, beckons, but we wish shows started earlier and that there were public transport! When we can, we visit Louisiana, where my family has a tree farm. We also make occasional trips to our natal homelands on the West coast. Research, luckily, carries me to South Africa every couple of years.
mcclendt@southwestern.edu
CONTACT:
Department of History
Thomas McClendon, Chair
Southwestern University
P.O. Box 770
Georgetown, TX 78627
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