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Profile Detail
Timothy Scarnecchia
Associate Professor
Professor Scarnecchia is the author of The Urban Roots of Democracy and Political Violence in Zimbabwe: Harare and Highfield, 1940-1964 (University of Rochester Press, 2008). He is currently working on a monograph that will provide a more extensive political and social history of Salisbury/Harare from the 1940s to the 1980s. This next book also combines detailed social history with diplomatic history, arguing that the shape of nationalist politics in Zimbabwe must be understood both for its local dynamics and its international diplomacy.
Scarnecchia participated in two conferences in June 2011. The first was the 4th European African Studies Conference (ECAS 4) in Uppsala, Sweden. The second was the SHAFR Diplomatic history conference in Washington DC. At the ECAS 4 conference, Professor Scarnecchia presented research on the impact of the 1960-4 Congo Crisis on Southern Rhodesian (Zimbabwean) African nationalism.
That paper has been published in a special issue of the African Journal on Conflict Resolution Vol. 11. No. 1 (2011). The entire issue can be downloaded here.
Professor Scarnecchia Is also editing a blog on Zimbabwe, Rethinking Zimbabwe, as part of a larger African Arguments blog coordinated by the SSRC and Royal African Society. Zimbabwe Scholars wanting to contribute pieces to the blog are welcome to get in touch.
At the SHAFR conference in June 2011, Professor Scarnecchia presented a paper on how Zimbabwean leaders used the opportunity of Henry Kissinger's 1976 diplomacy at the Rhodesian Geneva talks to advance and consolidate their power over the liberation struggle. He also serve as a discussant on a panel investigating the Africa diplomacy of the Kennedy Administration in the early 1960s.
Professor Scarnecchia traveled to South Africa in 2011 where he worked in the Department of Foreign Affairs archives housed at the Oliver Tambo building in Pretoria, at the , funded by a Faculty Research Grant from KSU's Research and Sponsored Programs.
In Fall 2011, Professor Scarnecchia will teach three courses, World Civ II, a Modern African History survey, and a first-year seminar on African Youth Culture.
In Spring 2011 Professor Scarnecchia co-coordinated the May 4th Symposium on Democracy along with professors Monika Flaschka, Wendy Wilson-Fall, and Suzanne Holt. The conference was held April 28-29, 2011 on the theme "Democracy and Violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo".
Biography Born in Warren, Ohio, I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan. After doing my BA at University of Michigan, I entered the Ph.D program there in History. Active in the anti-apartheid movement in the mid-1980s, I turned to African history and received a Fulbright-Hays fellowship after studying ChiShona for three years at Michigan State University. My dissertation fieldwork brought me in contact with a cross-section of Zimbabweans, including my research assistants who were from Highfield, Warren Park, and Mbare. In addition, I worked with faculty at the University of Zimbabwe's department of economic history and their talented honors students. After returning to the US and completing my Ph.D at the University of Michigan, I taught for a year at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte in a visiting position. The next year, I went to Kampala, Uganda, and was a research affiliate at the Makerere Institute for Social Research. After that, I taught for two years as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan's department of history and Center for Afro-American and African Studies. I spent the next four years living in Washington DC raising our daughter and working in DC. In 2002, I started teaching at Georgetown University as a visiting professor in the department of history and the School of Foreign Service. In 2004, I continued to teach as a professorial lecturer there. In 2007, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to return to my 'home area' of Northeast Ohio and begin a tenure track position in the department of history at Kent State. I received tenure and promotion to associate professor in Spring 2010.
Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities
SELECTED PRESENTATIONS:
"Short Attention Span Diplomacy: Henry Kissinger's Shuttle diplomacy, the US, and the Geneva Talks, 1976", SHAFR Conference, Washington, DC. June 24, 2011.
"The Congo crisis, the United Nations, and Zimbabwean nationalism, 1960–1963", ECAS 4 Uppsala Sweden, June 14, 2011.
"Urban Political Conjunctures: Terence Ranger's insights into the limits of class alliances in Zimbabwean urban history" Making History: Terence Ranger and African Studies, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, October 14-15, 2010.
"American Imperialists and Allies: Robert Mugabe's diplomacy with Americans at the Rhodesia Geneva talks, 1976" Panel: "Zambia,South Africa, Rhodesia and the Diplomacy of American Cold War Cultural Influence" Cold War Cultures Conference, University of Texas at Austin, September 29 to October 2, 2010.
"'The Point of No Return': October 8, 1960 and the Militarization of the State in Southern Rhodesia" African Studies Association Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, November 20, 2009.
"The Logic of 'Sell-out' Politics and American Interests in Zimbabwe's African Nationalist Parties, 1961-1964", Exploring Hidden Dimensions of the Zimbabwe Crisis, Witwatersrand University, Johannesburg, South Africa, July 1-2, 2009.
""On the Wrong Side of the People': Southern Rhodesian African Nationalists' Strategies to access American Funds in the early 1960s", American Historical Association Panel Presentation, New York City, January 5, 2009.
"Roundtable on the 2008 Zimbabwean Elections", African Studies Association Meeting, Chicago, IL, November 2008
PUBLICATIONS
PUBLISHED BOOK
The Urban Roots of Democracy and Political Violence in Zimbabwe: Harare and Highfield, 1940-1964 (Rochester University Press, 2008)
ARTICLES (IN PROGRESS):
"The Point of No Return": The October 8, 1960 Harare Riots and the establishment of the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act in Southern Rhodesia"
"Paranoid States: Cold War Contributions to State terror in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe, 1963-1983".
"'We Don't Give a Damn about Rhodesia': Henry Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy (April-December 1976) and the rise of Robert Mugabe."
PUBLISHED ARTICLES:
"The Congo crisis, the United Nations, and Zimbabwean nationalism, 1960–1963", African Journal on Conflict Resolution, Vol. 11 No. 1, 2011 pp. 63-86.
"The 'Fascist Cycle' in Zimbabwe (2000-05)" Journal of Southern African Studies. (June, 2006)
"Mai Chaza's Guta re Jehova (City of God): healing, reproduction, and urban identity in an African Independent Church" Journal of Southern African Studies 23 (1) (March 1997): 87-105.
"Poor women and nationalist politics: alliances and fissures in the formation of a nationalist political movement in Salisbury, Rhodesia, 1950-56" The Journal of African History 37 (3) (September 1996): 283-310.
FORTHCOMING CHAPTER:
"The Logic of 'Sell-out' Politics and American Interests in Zimbabwe's African Nationalist Parties, 1961-1964", in M. Musemwa and D. Moyo (eds), Crisis! What Crisis? Exploring the Multiple Elements of Zimbabwe's Crisis (Johannesburg, Wits University Press, 2013?)
Affiliations
Director, Kent State NATO and EU studies Center
Department of Pan-African Studies African Studies Minor
OFFICE
Department of HistoryCONTACT INFO
Phone: 330-672-2882tscarnec@kent.edu
EXPERTISE
- African History
- Zimbabwean History
- Urban History
- African Nationalism
