Neil McHugh at work in his office

BRIEF BIO

    I teach the history of Africa, the Islamic world, and the African Diaspora in the Americas. My areas of interest include religion and religious change, social and cultural identity, and issues of war and peace, and I love incorporating music, literature and the arts into my courses. I also have a thing about maps.
    I received my MA in African History from Indiana University and my PhD at Northwestern University. My book Holymen of the Blue Nile: The Making of an Arab Islamic Community in the Nilotic Suda, 1500--1850 (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994) is a revision of my doctoral dissertation. I have lived in three African countries--Chad (1974-1976), Sudan (1979-1982 and 1989-1990) and Ethiopia (1994-1996)--and have visited many more. I accompanied Fort Lewis College students to Kenya in the summers of 1998 and 2001.

COURSES
   Any questions, please feel free to email me at mchugh_n@fortlewis.edu

Winter 2008 Courses:

• History 141: Survey of African History II
  MWF  9:05--10:00 a.m.
  In this course we survey the history of the African continent since about 1850. The main political developments under consideration include upheavals and revolutions of the nineteenth century, the European conquests, colonial rule, the regaining of independence, and the recent history of over fifty independent countries. We also look at economic history (from the abolition of the slave trade to current issues of poverty and famine), and themes in social and cultural history such as labor migration, urbanization, religious conversion, changes in gender roles. In short, the goal of the course is to investigate African experiences an dperceptions of modern history.
  
  
• History 349:  Islam in History
  MWF  1:55--3:05 p.m.
  The Muslim peoples of Asia, Africa, and Europe have played a pivotal role in world history during the past fourteen centuries and they continue to do so. This may be partly attributable to the central location and the historical importance of the Middle East within the Eastern Hemisphere landmass, but also to the impact of the religion of Islam across a great range of cultures and societies and across a vast expanse of territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific--and now, increasingly, in the Americas. In this course we will delve into the origins of Islam, the development of Islamic civilization, the impact of the West, and issues such as jihad ("holy war") and the relative rights and obligations of men and women.
  
  

• TS2R 401: Global Migration & Diaspora
  MWF  3:15--4:25 p.m.
  This course will look at cultural aspects of migration--a phenomenon that has affected virtually all parts of the globe throughout history but which is currently unprecedented in its scope and volume. the writers of a recent textbook on the subject see fit to label our time "the age of migration." We will study causes and consequences of migration for coutnries of origin and of destination, and the migration experience itself. Students will conduct research into case studies.

Previously taught courses:

• History 140: Survey of African History I
  This course has a modest goal--covering over 5,000 years of the history of peoples who speak one-third of the world's languages (more than one thousand!) in a continent of 11,700,000 square miles of desert, savanna, rainforest and plateau. Obviously we can only get a broad overview of the subject matter, but to go beyond superficiality two approaches are taken: (1) an in-depth consideration of a few societies such as Ancient Egypt, Nubia, the Mali Empire, the Swahili city-states, the Maasai; and (2) a thematic or problems-oriented approach, such as: Was iron technology invented independently in Africa? What role did slavery play in African history? Why was urbanization much more prominent in western than in eastern Africa? How accurate is the stereotype of Africa as a continent of rhythm and masks? Has drought and famine always afflicted the continent?
  
• History 342: West Africa
  Basic trends and selected issues in the history of the region bounded by the Sahara and the Atlantic seaboard. Themes include commercial networks and urbanization, the influence of Islam, slavery and the slave trade, European colonization, nationalism and the environmental crisis.
  
History 343: Ancient Nile Valley
Survey of developments in Ancient Egypt and Nubia from the origins of agriculture through the Pyramid Age, Egyptian imperialism, Nubia's golden era, the impact of Hellenism and down to the extinction of the last outpost of Pharaohic civilization at Meroe.

• History 344: Northeast Africa
  What are the causes of the conflict in the Sudanese province of  Darfur? Why did the Ethiopian government and the Rastafarians host an "Africa Unite" festival in Addis Ababa? Why has Somalia been the only country in the world without a central government during the past fourteen years? These are among the questions to be illuminated in this course, which will look at the history of the Horn of Africa--Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan--with emphasis on the modern period. Textbooks will include novels by Tayeb Salih and Nuruddin Farah. Among the themes to be addressed: the legacy of ancient Nubian and Ethiopian civilizations; famine--causes and consequences; Haile Selassie and the Ethiopian Revolution; the thirty-years war in Eritrea; and the politics of Islam.
  
• History 346: South Africa
  A survey of the present Republic of South Africa from Iron Age culture through European settlement, the 19th century Mfecane upheaval, the gold rush and apartheid to the election of 1994.
  
  
• History 390: War and Peace in Africa
  
• History 391: Worldwide Diaspora
  
• History 396: Philosophy and Methods
  
• History 496: Research Senior Seminar
  A capstone course in preparation of a senior history research paper with a public presentation and defense.
  

• TS2R 391: Africans in the Americas
  MWF  9:35--10:45 a.m.
  In this course we will examine and reflect upon the relationship between Africa and the Americas, which originated in the forced migration of millions of Africans to the Western Hemisphere and has continued in the past two centuries with return migration of African-Americans to Africa, the Pan-African Movement, the Freedom Movement, international relations and, in recent years, a substantial voluntary migration of Africans to North America. The course will give particular attention to the United States but will also consider the Caribbean and Latin America, and student research projects on those areas are encouraged. We will also address the Atlantic slave trade, cultural links, and Pan-Africanism in the broadest sense (politics, identity, religion, etc.). This cours will also: incorporate comparative perspective and historical dimension; address contemporary concerns; bear witness to human agency in the realm of culture; and demonstrate the importance of language, literature, art, music or other related expressions in the transmission of cultural meaning and identity.