Kenda Mutongi Professor of History University of Virginia, PhD. 1996

Contact
NAB Room 226
Phone: 413.597.4261
Kenda.B.Mutongi@williams.edu
Office Hours:
Monday/Wednesday 12.30-3.00

Biography
Growing up in a small village in western Kenya, Kenda Mutongi never imagined herself studying African history.  Folks like her who excelled at good missionary and government schools, were expected to choose professions that allowed them to make lots of money so that they could return to the village and share it with all in the village.   A generous scholarship enabled her to leave Kenya for Coe College where she studied English Literature and History, before receiving a Ph.D in African History from the University of Virginia.  Mutongi enjoys teaching and researching African history and has no regrets. She teaches courses on 19th and 20th century Africa.   Her research has focused on 20th century Kenya with special interest in gender and urban history.  Mutongi has published articles in the main African Studies journals, and is also the author of Worries of the Heart: Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya (University of Chicago Press, 2007).  She is currently working on a book tentatively titled Coming for to Carry me Home: Commuters and Transport Culture in Nairobi.  Mutongi has also been a member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton and a fellow at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.  In addition to African history, Mutongi also enjoys gardening, politics, international travel (when she can afford it), and spending time with her husband, Alan de Gooyer and their two children, Ada and Stefan.

Courses Taught
Hist 103: The City in Africa: Nairobi and Johannesburg in the 20th Century
Hist 203: A History of Modern Africa
History 304: Apartheid and South Africa
History 308: Gender and Society in Africa
History 486T: African Political Thought

Selected Publications
Books:
Worries of the Heart: Widows Family and Community (University of Chicago Press, 2007)

Articles:
Whither Transport History? A Road Map from Africa, A Review Essay, American Historical Review (in progress)

Thugs or Entrepreneurs? Perceptions of Matatu Operators in Nairobi, 1970 to the Present, Africa, 76, 4 (2006)

"Worries of the Heart": Widowed Mothers, Daughters, and Masculinities in Western Kenya, 1940-60," Journal of African History, 1, 3 (1999). REPRINTED in Andrea Cornwall. Ed. Readings in Gender in Africa (Oxford University Press, 2005).

"Dear Dolly's Advice: Representations of Youth, Courtship, and Sexualities in Africa, 1960-80," International Journal of African Historical Studies, 1, 2 (2000) REPRINTED in Lynn Thomas and Jennifer Cole. Eds. Love in Africa (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming)

Research Interests
Modern Africa, East Africa, Transport Culture, Urban History


Program Connections at Williams
Africana Studies


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