The University of Iowa

The Cultural Politics of Land

Thursday, February 7, 2019, 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Schaeffer Hall , Room 302
20 East Washington Street, Iowa City, IA 52240

The African Studies Program invites you to a Baraza/GHS Forum talk by Admire Mseba, "The Cultural Politics of Land and the Power of Chiefs in Northeastern Zimbabwe from Precolonial Times to the 1930s." This event will take place on Thursday, February 7, 2019, from 4-5:30 p.m. in 302 Schaeffer Hall.

Drawing on oral traditions relating to territorial control and social healing and to archival materials concerning colonial interventions in matters involving chiefs, Mseba examines the making of authority among the people who lived on the northeastern parts of the Zimbabwean plateau from the late sixteenth century to the mid-1930s. Mseba argues that throughout the four centuries preceding colonial rule and thereafter, the people who lived in the northeastern parts of the Zimbabwean plateau weaved complex institutions that would ensure that authority over land would not be centralized.

Admire Mseba is a postdoctoral research fellow with the International Studies Group, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa. Mseba graduated with a PhD in history from the University of Iowa in 2015. He is currently completing his first book titled Society, Power, and Land in Northeastern Zimbabwe, c.1560-1960. Mseba’s work has been published in the International Journal of African Historical Studies and Environment and Planning, among others. His current work focuses on international cooperation and environmental control in twentieth-century Southern Africa.

This event is sponsored by the Department of History, Graduate History Students, and International Programs.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa–sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact James Giblin in advance at 319-335-2302 or james-giblin@uiowa.edu.