Staff Profile:Associate Professor Heike Schmidt
- Name:
- Dr Heike Schmidt
- Job Title:
- Associate Professor
- Responsibilities:
Director of Global Engagement
Undergraduate teaching (convenor)
Part One - Research Skills and Opportunities in History
Part One Option - The Rwanda Genocide of 1994
Part One Option - African Treasures: Across Oceans of Water and Sand
Part Two Option - The Colonial Experience, Africa 1879 to 1980
Part Three Topic - Africa from European Settlement to Nelson Mandela
Part Three Subject - Gender in Africa
Part Three Dissertation Supervision
Postgraduate Teaching
MA Option - Violence and Conflict in Twentieth Century Africa
Supervision:
I welcome MA and Ph.D. students who are interested in the History of Africa. Prospective postgraduate students are most welcome to contact me to discuss possible dissertation or thesis topics.
- Areas of Interest:
Africa, especially Zimbabwe and Tanzania. Nineteenth and twentieth century. Colonialism, gender, violence & conflict, nationalism, identity.
My passion for Africa began during a study abroad year at the University of Zimbabwe. I have since become a historian of modern Africa, with my area of specialty being the history of East Africa and Southern Africa, in particular Tanzania and Zimbabwe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. My research focuses on violence and conflict, gender, nationalism, compared colonialisms, religion, and social identities. In my research I have applied a range of approaches, notably social history, gender history, 'new' colonial history, and historical anthropology. My research and my publications are rooted in extended fieldwork which includes undertaking oral history as well as archival studies in Africa.
I have published widely on questions of violence, identity, and social cohesion. My monograph, Colonialism in Zimbabwe: A History of Suffering (James Currey, Oxford and Weaver Press, Harare/Zimba¬bwe), is a social history of the gendered experience of suffering and a micro-history of a frontier society, located on the border of Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
Currently, I am writing the biography of a hitherto unremembered Zimbabwean nationalist who spent most of the 1960s and 1970s in exile, in London. The objective is to tell the personal story of one man's aspirations realized within and against the opportunities that colonialism provided. More broadly, the project aims to provide a new understanding of politicisation, mobilisation, and belonging. This is part of a larger project on nationalism in Africa.
- Research groups / Centres:
Gender History Research Cluster Lead.
Heritage and Creativity Gender Cluster
Gender and History Cluster Blog- Publications:
-
YNumber of items: 29.
2015
- Schmidt, H. I. (2015) Shaming men, performing power: female authority in Zimbabwe and Tanzania on the eve of colonial rule. In: Shetler, J. B. and Hodgson, D. (eds.) Gendering Ethnicity in African History: Women's Subversive Performance of Ethnicity. Women in Africa and the Diaspora. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison WI, pp. 265-289. ISBN 9780299303945
2014
- Schmidt, H. I. (2014) Who is master in the colony? Propriety, honor, and manliness in German East Africa. In: Eley, G. and Naranch, B. (eds.) German Cultures of Colonialism: Race, Nation and Globalization 1884-1945. Politics, History, and Culture. Duke University Press, Durham, pp. 109-128. ISBN 9780822357117
2013
- Schmidt, H. I. (2013) Colonialism and violence in Zimbabwe: a history of suffering. James Currey and Weaver, Oxford and Harare, pp303. ISBN 9781847010513
- Schmidt, H. I. (2013) Keine romantische liebe in Africa? Mission, Manner, Monogamie. L'Homme: European Journal of Feminist History, 24 (1). pp. 93-102. ISSN 1016-362x
2010
- Schmidt, H. I. (2010) Deadly silence predominates in the district: the Maji Maji War and its aftermath in Ungoni. In: Giblin, J. and Monson, J. (eds.) Maji Maji: Lifting the Fog of War. African Social Studies. Brill, Leiden, pp. 183-219. ISBN 9789004183421
- Schmidt, H. I. (2010) Kongo. In: McNeill, W. (ed.) Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History. Volume III. 2nd Edition. Berkshire Publishing Group, Great Barrington, pp. 1087-1090. ISBN 9781933782652
- Schmidt, H. (2010) (Re)Negotiating Marginality: The Maji Maji War and Its Aftermath in Southwestern Tanzania, ca. 1905–1916. International Journal of African Historical Studies, 43 (1). pp. 27-62. ISSN 0361-7882
- Schmidt, H. I. (2010) Zimbabwe, Great. In: McNeill, W. (ed.) Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History. Volume V. 2nd Edition. Berkshire Publishing Group, Great Barrington, pp. 2114-2117. ISBN 9781933782652
2008
- Schmidt, H. I. (2008) Colonial intimacy: the Rechenberg scandal, homosexuality and sexual crime in German East Africa. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 17 (1). pp. 25-59. ISSN 1535-3605
- Schmidt, H. I. (2008) Silence and absence: violence and the dislocation of memory in Zimbabwe. In: Oral History - A dialogue with our Times: Proceedings of the 15th International Oral History Conference. International Oral History Association, Guadalajara, Mexico, p. 15.
2007
- Schmidt, H. (2007) The future of Africa's past: observations on the discipline. History in Africa, 34. pp. 453-460. ISSN 0361-5413 doi: https://doi.org/10.1353/hia.2007.0018
2006
- Schmidt, H. (2006) The Governor has not been sexually active: Homosexuality and Sexual Crime in German East Africa. In: Proceedings of the American Historical Association 112th Annual Meeting, 5-8 January 2006, Philadelphia.
2004
- Schmidt, H. I. (2004) Kongo. In: McNeill, W. (ed.) Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History. Volume III. Berkshire Publishing Group, Great Barrington, pp. 1087-1090. ISBN 0974309109
- Schmidt, H. (2004) Zimbabwe, Great. In: McNeill, W. (ed.) Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History. Volume V. Berkshire Publishing Group, Great Barrington, pp. 2114-2117. ISBN 0974309109
2002
- Deutsch,, J.-G., Probst, P. and Schmidt, H., eds. (2002) African modernities: entangled meanings in current debate. James Currey, Oxford, p. 192. ISBN 0852557922
- Schmidt, H. (2002) Entangled memories: Bindung and identity. In: Elkana, Y., Krastev, I., Macamo, E. and Randera, S. (eds.) Unraveling ties: from social cohesion to new practices of connectedness. Campus, Frankfurt, pp. 199-212. ISBN 9783593368467
- Schmidt, H. (2002) Introduction: Cherished Visions and Entangled Meanings. In: Deutsch, J.-G. and Probst, P. (eds.) African Modernities: Entangled Meanings in Current Debate. James Currey, pp. 1-17.
2000
- Schmidt, H. (2000) Gender and power: changing political institutions in precolonial Africa. In: Biennial Meeting of the African Studies Association, Germany, March 30 - April 1, Leipzig, p. 13.
- Schmidt, H. (2000) Wissensproduktion und die Frage nach dem Ort der Weltgeschichte und Weltsgeschickte: Kommentare zu Steve Feierman. In: Harneit-Sievers, A. (ed.) Afrikanische Geschichte. Klaus Schwarz Verlag, Berlin, pp. 25-35. ISBN 9783879975822
1999
- Schmidt, H. (1999) Neither war nor peace: making sense of violence. Sociologus, 1. pp. 211-225. ISSN 0038-0377
1998
- Schmidt, H. and Wirz, A., eds. (1998) Afrika und das Andere: Alteritaet und Innovation. Schriften der VAD (17). Lit., Hamburg, pp408. ISBN 382583395X
- Schmidt, H. (1998) Afrikanische Moderne(n). Humboldt-Spektrum, 5 (4). pp. 62-64. ISSN 0946-641x
- Schmidt, H. (1998) Heilungsprozebe: Korperlichkeit und Machtverhaltnisse Einleitung. In: Schmidt, H. and Wirz, A. (eds.) Afrika und das Andere: Alteritaet und Innovation. Lit, Hamburg, pp. 43-44. ISBN 382583395x
- Schmidt, H. (1998) Roads or other notable features do not exist: the Anglo Portuguese boundary commissions of 1898 and 1905/06. In: Proceedings of the 1998 Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, October 26 - November 1, Chicago, p. 15.
1997
- Schmidt, H. (1997) Healing the wounds of war: memories of violence and the making of history in Zimbabwe's most recent past. Journal of South African Studies, 23 (2). pp. 301-310. ISSN 1465-3893 doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/03057079708708538
- Schmidt, H. (1997) Geschlechterverhältnisse. Gegenstand und Methode. In: Deutsch, J.-G. and Wirz, A. (eds.) Geschichte in Afrika: Einfuhrung in Probleme und Debatten. Studien (Zentrum Moderner Orient) (7). Arabische Buch, Berlin, pp. 175-200. ISBN 3860931679
1996
- Schmidt, H. (1996) Love and healing in forced communities: borderlands in Zimbabwe's war of liberation. In: Nugent, P. and Asiwaju, A. I. (eds.) African boundaries: barriers, conduits and opportunities. Frances Pinter, London, pp. 183-204. ISBN 185567372X
1995
- Schmidt, H. (1995) 'Penetrating' foreign lands: contestations over African landscape. A case study from Eastern Zimbabwe. Environment and History, 1 (3). pp. 351-376. ISSN 1752-7023
1993
- Schmidt, H. (1993) Muredzwa superwoman: mapping areas of female power in the Mutasa Mamboship, Eastern Zimbabwe. In: Women, Colonialism and Commonwealth Seminar, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, p. 16.
