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Bala Saho

Bala Saho

Associate Professor of History

Professor Saho is a historian of nineteenth and twentieth century West Africa (religious, legal, cultural, and social, women and gender history). His book, Contours of Change: Muslim Courts, Women, and Islamic Society in Colonial Bathurst, the Gambia, 1905–1965, (Michigan State University, Feb, 2018),explores the place of women in the formation of colonial Bathurst, the evolution of women’s understanding of the importance of law in securing their rights, as well as the ways in which women utilized the new qadi court system to fight for growing rights within the domestic sphere. He is currently working on a second book titled, Ritualizing the Womb: The Peril of Childless (Kañeleng) Women in The Gambia.It investigates how voluntary associations of childless women shape perceptions of infertility in modern Gambia and how kañelengcounter the burden of childlessness and redefine the cultural construction of womanhood.

Education

  • Ph.D., African HistoryMichigan State University
  • M.A., African Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  • B.A., History, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Research Interests

  • West African History
  • Atlantic History 
  • World History

Courses Taught

  • HIST 2713 African Civilization 
  • HIST 3723 Africa Since 1945
  • HIST 3943 Muslim Societies in Africa 
  • HIST 4493 Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade
  • HIST 6700 Colonialism in Comparative Perspective

Books


Contours of Change: Muslim Courts, Women, and Islamic Society in Colonial Bathurst, the Gambia, 1905–1965, (Michigan State University, Feb, 2018)

Recent Articles

Saho, B. (2016). “Challenges and Constraints: Forced Marriage as a Form ‘Traditional’ Practice in the Gambia.” In Marriage By Force?:               Contestation Over Consent and Coercion in Africa, 178 – 198, edited by Annie Buntung, Benjamin N. Lawrence and Richard Roberts.    Athens: Ohio University Press, 2016.

Saho, B. (2016). “Djibouti.” In Africa: An Encyclopedia of Culture and Society, 360 – 373, edited by Toyin Falola and Daniel Jean-Jacques. California: ABC-Clio.

Saho, B. (2014). “Ritualizing and Domesticating Space: Kaneleng Women Coping with Childlessness in the Gambia,” Mande Studies Journal, 14, 12: 99 - 126

Saho, B. (2011).  Islam and Personhood in the Senegambia: Life and Times of Seringe Mass Kah, 1827 – 1936.” African Studies Quarterly, Volume 12, Issue 4

Saho, B. (2010).  Islam and Personhood in the Senegambia: Life and Times of Seringe Mass Kah, 1827 – 1936. Mangroves Publishers, Banjul, The Gambia.

Address: Department of History, 455 West Lindsey Street, Room 403A
Norman, Oklahoma 73019-2004
Office: DAHT 412 
Phone: (405) 325-1498
Email: bsaho1@ou.edu 

Bio: ou.edu/cas/history/people/faculty/bala-saho