Thomas McClendon
Professor of History
Areas of expertise
African history (particularly South Africa), colonialism, apartheid, and legal history.
Education
Ph.D., Stanford University 1995
M.A., Stanford University 1990
J.D., University of California, Berkeley 1980
B.A., Pomona College 1976
Positions
Professor of History
Southwestern University
August 01, 2007 - present
Associate Professor of History
Southwestern University
August 01, 2003 - July 01, 2007
Assistant Professor of History
Southwestern University
August 01, 1998 - July 01, 2003
Visiting Lecturer, History
University of California, Berkeley
January 01, 1997 - June 01, 1998
Visiting Assistant Professor
University of California, Los Angeles
September 01, 1995 - June 01, 1996
Teaching Philosophy
Previous Courses
African History
Apartheid in Film and Literature
Colonial and Postcolonial Worlds
Gender and Generation in Africa
Historiography
Research Seminar: Power and Resistance
Slavery and Freedom in the Atlantic World
South African History
Research
My research has focused on South Africa, especially KwaZulu-Natal in the
19th and 20th centuries. I am concerned with colonialism, indirect
rule, gender and generation conflict, and land and labor. I have two current projects. One is The South Africa Reader: History, Culture, Politics (Duke University Press, 2013), co-edited with Clifton Crais. The Reader contains about 100 selections, including historical primary sources, some fiction and a smattering of scholarly articles, along with 75 or so images. I am also beginning work on a project, with Pamela Scully, looking at the role of South Africans in the anti-apartheid movement in the United States, particularly on college campuses.
Professional Work
Publications
Books:
The South Africa Reader: History, Culture, Politics, The World Readers (Duke University Press, 2013), co-edited with Clifton Crais
White Chief, Black Lords: Shepstone and the Colonial State in Natal, South Africa, 1845-1878, Rochester Studies in Africa and the Diaspora (University of Rochester Press, 2010).
Genders and Generations Apart: Labor Tenants and Customary Law in Segregation-Era South Africa, 1920s to 1940s, Social History of Africa (Heinemann, 2002).
Journal Articles:
"You Are What You Eat Up: Deposing Chiefs in Early Colonial Natal", 1847-58, Journal of African History 47, no. 1 (2006): 1-21.
"The Man Who Would be Inkosi: Civilizing Missions in Shepstone's Early Career," Journal of Southern African Studies (2004): 251-70.
"A Dangerous Doctrine?: Twins, Ethnography, and Inheritance in Colonial Africa," Journal of Legal Pluralism, 39 (1997): 121-40.
"'Hiding Cattle on the White Man's Farm': Cattle Loans and Commercial Farms in Natal, 1930-1950," African Economic History, 25 (1997): 43-58.
"Tradition and Domestic Struggle in the Courtroom: Customary Law and the Control of Women in Segregation-Era Natal," The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 28, no. 3 (1995): 527-61.
"Inupiat Eskimos, Bowhead Whales and Oil: Competing Federal Interests in the Beaufort Sea," 10 Alaska Law Review 1 (1980) (co-author).
Book Chapters:
"Makwerekwere: separating immigrants and natives in colonial Natal, 1847-54," in Dennis Cordell, et al., eds., The Demographics of Empire: Population and State Power in Colonial Africa (in press, Ohio University Press).
"Generating Change, Engendering Tradition: Rural Dynamics," in Benedict Carton, et al., ed., Zulu Identities: Being Zulu, Past and Present (New York: Columbia University Press; Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press), 281-89.
"Interpretation and Interpolation: Shepstone as Native Interpreter," in Benjamin Lawrance, et al., ed. Interpreters, Clerks and Intermediaries in Colonial Africa (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006): 77-93.
"Coercion
and Conversation: African Voices in the Making of Customary Law in Natal," in
Clifton Crais, ed., The Culture of Power
in Southern Africa: Essays on State Formation and the Political Imagination
(Heinemann, Social History of Africa Series): 49-63.
Honors & Awards
Fulbright-Hays (dissertation research)
SSRC (dissertation research)
NEH Summer Fellowship
Sam Taylor Fellowships
Groups & Affiliations
African Studies Association
American Historical Association
California Bar Association (inactive)
