Now ask yourself the question, why is Lidwein Kapteijns undertaking this task instead of person of Somali origin? Look at the short summary of Professor Kapteijns:
Lidwien Kapteijns is Kendall/Hodder Professor of History at Wellesley College, teaching African and Middle Eastern History in the Department of History. She teaches courses on the history of Precolonial and Modern Africa, South Africa, and the Early and Modern Middle East. She teaches seminars on Women, Work and the Family in African History and Women in Islamic Society. She is also one of the faculty members teaching HIST 205: The Making of the Modern World Order, a requirement for IR students.
Prof. Kapteijns has two research areas. She started out as a Sudanist and lived and worked in the Sudan, where she taught at the University of Khartoum (1977-1981). For her first book, she did extensive fieldwork in Western Darfur, the area that is currently in the news because of the ethnocidal violence there. Her work on Sudanese history focused on late precolonial states in western Darfur. She also edited and published a number of source publications: Arabic historical documents with English translations.
During her M.A. studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Prof. Kapteijns studied Somali Language and Literature. In 1986 she returned to the study of Somali history and oral literature, which is where her major research interests currently lie. She co-edits a journal called Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies, now in its fifth year and her most recent book (written together with Maryan Omar Ali) dealt with Somali oral texts from the colonial period to 1980. It is called Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women and the Pastoral Tradition in Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980 (Greenwood/Heinemann, 1999). She is currently working on a project called “Somali Popular Culture and the Changing National Imaginary, 1960-present.” As Somalia has been in civil war for much of the last 20 years, she did her fieldwork for this book in the Republic of Djibouti, also in Northeast Africa.
Prof. Kapteijns has held a number of administrative positions at Wellesley College: she chaired Women’s Studies, the Peace & Justice Program, and the History Department. She has also served as Faculty Director of Internships and Service Learning since 2003.
She co-founded The Somali Institute for Research and Development (SIRAD), a small non-profit organizing public forums, in Somali, for the Somali community of Boston (siradinc@comcadst.net).
Abbreviated Curriculum Vitae of Lidwien Kapteijns (August 2005)
Education:
Universiteit van Amsterdam (The Netherlands): Ph.D. Degree, in History, cum laude, 1982;
“ Doctoraal” Degree, in History, cum laude1977; B.A. Degree, in History, 1973.
University of London (School of Oriental and African Studies), M.A Degree, in Area Study of
Africa, 1975;
Work Experience:
Wellesley College, Department of History, 1986 – present. Professor (1997), Associate (1991),
Assistant (1986). Chair of Women’s Studies 1993-1999. Chair of History Department,
2001-2003, and 2005-2006; Chair of Peace and Justice Studies, 2005-2006.
Wellesley College, Office of the Dean of the College: Faculty Director of Internships and
Service-Learning, 2001 to present.
Michigan State University, Assistant Director, African Studies Center, 1984-1986.
Monmouth College, N.J., Lifelong Education, teacher of Arabic and Middle Eastern History.
African Studies Center, Leiden (The Netherlands), Research Associate, 1981-1982.
University of Khartoum, Department of History, Lecturer, 1977-1981
Merowe, Sudan: Higher Secondary School for Girls: English teacher, 1975-1976.
Selected Publications:
Books:
Women's Voices in a Men's World: Women and Tradition in Northern Somali Orature, 1899-1980"(with Maryan O. Ali). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999.
An Islamic Alliance: Ali Dinar and the Sanusiyya, 1906-1916 (with Jay Spaulding). Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994.
After the Millennium: Diplomatic Correspondence from Wadai and Dar Fur on the Eve of Colonial Conquest, 1885-1916 (with Jay Spaulding). East Lansing: MSU, 1988.
Kapteijns, L., Een Kennismaking met de Afrikaanse Geschiedenis (An Introduction to the History of Africa) (with Jay Spaulding). Muiderberg: Coutinho, 1985.
Mahdist Faith and Sudanic Tradition: The History of the Masalit Sultanate, 1870-1930. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985.
Articles:
“ Common Public Identity and Conceptions of Moral Womanhood in Recent Somali History (1960-2000),” forthcoming in a volume on Islam and Gender in Africa, ed. by Margot Badran (Leiden: Brill).
"'Come Back safely:' Laments about Labor Migration in Somali Love Songs," with Maryan Omar Ali, NortheastAfrican Studies, 8, 2 (2005), forthcoming.
.
“ Educating Immigrant Youth in the United States: An Exploration of the Somali Case,” (with Abukar Arman), Bildhaan: an International Journal of Somali Studies, 4, 2005, pp. 18-43.
"Government Qadis and Child Marriage in Aden: Ethnography in the Aden Archives," Internal Journal of African Historical Studies, 37, 3 (2004), pp. 401-434.
“ The Disintegration of Somalia: A Historiographical Essay,” in Bildhaan: International Journal of Somali Studies, 1 (2001), pp. 11-52.
“Islam in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa,” in The History of Islam in Africa, ed. by Nehemia Levtzion and Randall Pouwels. Columbus: Ohio University Press, 2000, pp. 27-50.
"`Proclaim to the People:' Five Poems by Sayyid Muhammad `Abd Allah Hasan of Somalia (1856-1921), Sudanic Africa: A Journal of Historical Sources, 7 (1996), pp. 25-34.
"Gender Relations and the Transformation of the Northern Somali Pastoral Tradition," International Journal of African Historical Studies, 28, 2 (1995), pp. 241-259.
"Sittaat: Somali Women's Songs for the "Mothers of the Believers," The Marabout and the Muse: New Approaches to Islam in African Literature, ed. by Kenneth Harrow (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1996), pp.124-141.
"Women and the Crisis of Communal Identity: The Cultural Construction of Gender in Somali History," in Ahmed I. Samatar, ed., The Somali Challenge: From Catastrophe to Renewal? (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994), pp. 211-232.
"Women of the Zar and Middle-Class Sensibilities in Colonial Aden, 1923-1932," (with Jay Spaulding), in Voice and Power: The Culture of Language in Northeast Africa, ed. by R.J. Hayward and I.M. Lewis (London: SOAS, 1996), pp. 171-189.
"The Betrothal of `Ambaru bint Musa: Islamic Law versus Somali Custom in a Colonial Context," (with Jay Spaulding), Islam et Societes au Sud du Sahara, 7 (nov.1993), pp.193-203.
"From Slaves to Coolies: Two Documents from the Nineteenth-Century Somali Coast," (with Jay Spaulding), Sudanic Africa: A Journal of Historical Sources, 3 (1992), pp. 1-8.
"The Orientalist Paradigm in the Historiography of the Late Precolonial Sudan, (with Jay Spaulding), in Golden Ages, Dark Ages: Imagining the Past in Anthropology and History, ed. by Jay O'Brien and William Roseberry (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1991), pp.19-38.
"Class Formation and History in Precolonial Somali Society: A Research Agenda," (with Jay Spaulding), Northeast African Studies 11, 1 (1989), pp. 19-38.
"The Historiography of the Sudan from 1500 to the Establishment of British Colonial Rule: A Critical Overview," International Journal of African Historical Studies, 22, 2 (1989), pp. 251-266.
"Islamic Rationales for the Changing Social Roles of Women in the Western Sudan," in M.W. Daly, ed., Modernization in the Sudan: Festschrift for Richard Hill (New York, Lilian Barber Press, 1985), pp. 57-72
"Dar Sila: The Sultanate in Precolonial Times, 1874-1916," Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines xxiii, 4, 92 (1983), pp. 447-470.
"Mahdist Faith and the Legitimation of Popular Revolt in Western Dar Fur," in Africa, 55, 4 (1985), pp. 390-399.
"The Religious Background of the Mahdi and his Movement," African Perspectives 2, 1976. pp. 61-81.
Reviews:
Review Essay “State and Clan in Somalia,” African Studies Review, 45, 3 (2002), pp. 52-56.
Review of Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, new edition), in International Journal of African Studies, 34, 1 (2001), 203-06.
Review of I.M. Lewis, A Pastoral democracy (third edition, Oxford: James Currey, 1999), Africa (with Mursal Farah), 71, 4, 2001, pp. 719-722.
Review of: Nuruddin Farah, Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora (London: Cassell, 2000)), International Journal of African Studies, 33, 2 (2000), p. 384-86.
Review Essay: “New Studies of Women, Gender, and Islam: Contextualizing and Historicizing Muslim Women’s Lives,” in Canadian Journal of African Studies, 32, 2 (1998), pp. 586-593.
Review of: Judith Olmstead, Woman Between Two Worlds: Portrait of an Ethiopian Rural Leader (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1997), in American Historical Review, 103, 3 (June 1998), pp. 938-939.
Review of: Aman: The Story of a Somali Girl. As Told to Virginia Lee Barnes and Janice Boddy (New York, 1994), International Journal of African Historical Studies, 29, 1 (1996), pp. 128-131.
Review of: Margot Badran, Feminists, Islam and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt (Princeton, 1994), International Journal of African Historical Studies, 29, 1 (1996), pp. 143-145.
Review of: Hussein M. Adam and Charles Geshekter, Proceedings of the First International Congress of Somali Studies (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press, 1992), Journal of African History 35, 3 (1994), pp. 518-521.
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