Reading Under the Covers: A History of Schooling in Kenya

The talk focuses on the history of secondary and high schooling in postcolonial Kenya; it will help provide a picture of what it has been like for the students to grow up in a Kenya that is buffeted by all the fears, expectations, and contradictions of a new African nation.  The talk is essentially a history of childhood and of growing up in post-colonial Kenya.

About the speaker: 

Kenda Mutongi is professor of African History at Williams College and Martin Luther King Professor of History at MIT. She is the author of MATATU: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi (University of Chicago Press, 2017); and Worries of the Heart: Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya (University of Chicago Press, 2007), which received an Honorable Mention from the African Studies Association’s Melville J. Herskovits Award for the best scholarly book on Africa in all disciplines.