(781) 283-2603
Durba waa kibraa sado nimay dacalka saartaaye
Doobi hadduu buusxado, inuu daadhso baa u halis eh
“When fate takes a man on the hem of its robe, he easily becomes arrogant
When a small milk vessel fills up, it is quick to overflow”
(Somali poetry, author unknown)
Lidwien Kapteijns is Kendall/Hodder Professor of History at Wellesley College,
teaching African and Middle Eastern History in the Department of History. She
teaches courses on the history of Precolonial and Modern Africa, South Africa,
and the Early and Modern Middle East. She teaches seminars on Women, Work and
the Family in African History and Women in Islamic Society. She is also one
of the faculty members teaching HIST 205: The Making of the Modern World Order,
a requirement for IR students.
Prof. Kapteijns has two research areas. She started out as a Sudanist and
lived and worked in the Sudan, where she taught at the University of Khartoum
(1977-1981). For her first book, she did extensive fieldwork in Western Darfur,
the area that is currently in the news because of the ethnocidal violence there.
Her work on Sudanese history focused on late precolonial states in western
Darfur. She also edited and published a number of source publications: Arabic
historical documents with English translations.
During her M.A. studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Prof.
Kapteijns studied Somali Language and Literature. In 1986 she returned to the
study of Somali history and oral literature, which is where her major research
interests currently lie. She co-edits a journal called Bildhaan: An International
Journal of Somali Studies, now in its fifth year and her most recent book (written
together with Maryan Omar Ali) dealt with Somali oral texts from the colonial
period to 1980. It is called Women’s Voices in a Man’s World: Women
and the Pastoral Tradition in Northern Somali Orature, c. 1899-1980 (Greenwood/Heinemann,
1999). She is currently working on a project called “Somali Popular Culture
and the Changing National Imaginary, 1960-present.” As Somalia has been
in civil war for much of the last 20 years, she did her fieldwork for this
book in the Republic of Djibouti, also in Northeast Africa.
Prof. Kapteijns has held a number of administrative positions at Wellesley
College: she chaired Women’s Studies, the Peace & Justice Program,
and the History Department. She has also served as Faculty Director of Internships
and Service Learning since 2003.
She co-founded The Somali Institute for Research and Development (SIRAD),
a small non-profit organizing public forums, in Somali, for the Somali community
of Boston (siradinc@comcadst.net).
Abbreviated Curriculum Vitae of Lidwien Kapteijns (August 2005)
Education:
Universiteit van Amsterdam (The Netherlands): Ph.D. Degree, in History, cum
laude, 1982;
“
Doctoraal” Degree, in History, cum laude1977; B.A. Degree, in History,
1973.
University of London (School of Oriental and African Studies), M.A Degree,
in Area Study of
Africa, 1975;
Work Experience:
Wellesley College, Department of History, 1986 – present. Professor (1997),
Associate (1991),
Assistant (1986). Chair of Women’s Studies 1993-1999. Chair of History
Department,
2001-2003, and 2005-2006; Chair of Peace and Justice Studies, 2005-2006.
Wellesley College, Office of the Dean of the College: Faculty Director of Internships
and
Service-Learning, 2001 to present.
Michigan State University, Assistant Director, African Studies Center, 1984-1986.
Monmouth College, N.J., Lifelong Education, teacher of Arabic and Middle Eastern
History.
African Studies Center, Leiden (The Netherlands), Research Associate, 1981-1982.
University of Khartoum, Department of History, Lecturer, 1977-1981
Merowe, Sudan: Higher Secondary School for Girls: English teacher, 1975-1976.
Selected Publications:
Books:
Women's Voices in a Men's World: Women and Tradition in Northern Somali Orature,
1899-1980"(with Maryan O. Ali). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1999.
An Islamic Alliance: Ali Dinar and the Sanusiyya, 1906-1916 (with Jay Spaulding).
Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994.
After the Millennium: Diplomatic Correspondence from Wadai and Dar Fur on
the Eve of Colonial Conquest, 1885-1916 (with Jay Spaulding). East Lansing:
MSU, 1988.
Kapteijns, L., Een Kennismaking met de Afrikaanse Geschiedenis (An Introduction
to the History of Africa) (with Jay Spaulding). Muiderberg: Coutinho, 1985.
Mahdist Faith and Sudanic Tradition: The History of the Masalit Sultanate,
1870-1930. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985.
Articles:
“
Common Public Identity and Conceptions of Moral Womanhood in Recent Somali
History (1960-2000),” forthcoming in a volume on Islam and Gender in
Africa, ed. by Margot Badran (Leiden: Brill).
"'Come Back safely:' Laments about Labor Migration in Somali Love Songs," with
Maryan Omar Ali, NortheastAfrican Studies, 8, 2 (2005), forthcoming.
.
“
Educating Immigrant Youth in the United States: An Exploration of the Somali
Case,” (with Abukar Arman), Bildhaan: an International Journal of Somali
Studies, 4, 2005, pp. 18-43.
"Government Qadis and Child Marriage in Aden: Ethnography in the Aden
Archives," Internal Journal of African Historical Studies, 37, 3 (2004),
pp. 401-434.
“
The Disintegration of Somalia: A Historiographical Essay,” in Bildhaan:
International Journal of Somali Studies, 1 (2001), pp. 11-52.
“Islam in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa,” in The History of
Islam in Africa, ed. by Nehemia Levtzion and Randall Pouwels. Columbus: Ohio
University Press, 2000, pp. 27-50.
"`Proclaim to the People:' Five Poems by Sayyid Muhammad `Abd Allah Hasan
of Somalia (1856-1921), Sudanic Africa: A Journal of Historical Sources, 7
(1996), pp. 25-34.
"Gender Relations and the Transformation of the Northern Somali Pastoral
Tradition," International Journal of African Historical Studies, 28, 2
(1995), pp. 241-259.
"Sittaat: Somali Women's Songs for the "Mothers of the Believers," The
Marabout and the Muse: New Approaches to Islam in African Literature, ed. by
Kenneth Harrow (Portsmouth: Heinemann, 1996), pp.124-141.
"Women and the Crisis of Communal Identity: The Cultural Construction
of Gender in Somali History," in Ahmed I. Samatar, ed., The Somali Challenge:
From Catastrophe to Renewal? (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1994), pp. 211-232.
"Women of the Zar and Middle-Class Sensibilities in Colonial Aden, 1923-1932," (with
Jay Spaulding), in Voice and Power: The Culture of Language in Northeast Africa,
ed. by R.J. Hayward and I.M. Lewis (London: SOAS, 1996), pp. 171-189.
"The Betrothal of `Ambaru bint Musa: Islamic Law versus Somali Custom
in a Colonial Context," (with Jay Spaulding), Islam et Societes au Sud
du Sahara, 7 (nov.1993), pp.193-203.
"From Slaves to Coolies: Two Documents from the Nineteenth-Century Somali
Coast," (with Jay Spaulding), Sudanic Africa: A Journal of Historical
Sources, 3 (1992), pp. 1-8.
"The Orientalist Paradigm in the Historiography of the Late Precolonial
Sudan, (with Jay Spaulding), in Golden Ages, Dark Ages: Imagining the Past
in Anthropology and History, ed. by Jay O'Brien and William Roseberry (Berkeley:
Univ. of California Press, 1991), pp.19-38.
"Class Formation and History in Precolonial Somali Society: A Research
Agenda," (with Jay Spaulding), Northeast African Studies 11, 1 (1989),
pp. 19-38.
"The Historiography of the Sudan from 1500 to the Establishment of British
Colonial Rule: A Critical Overview," International Journal of African
Historical Studies, 22, 2 (1989), pp. 251-266.
"Islamic Rationales for the Changing Social Roles of Women in the Western
Sudan," in M.W. Daly, ed., Modernization in the Sudan: Festschrift for
Richard Hill (New York, Lilian Barber Press, 1985), pp. 57-72
"Dar Sila: The Sultanate in Precolonial Times, 1874-1916," Cahiers
d'Etudes Africaines xxiii, 4, 92 (1983), pp. 447-470.
"Mahdist Faith and the Legitimation of Popular Revolt in Western Dar
Fur," in Africa, 55, 4 (1985), pp. 390-399.
"The Religious Background of the Mahdi and his Movement," African
Perspectives 2, 1976. pp. 61-81.
Reviews:
Review Essay “State and Clan in Somalia,” African Studies Review,
45, 3 (2002), pp. 52-56.
Review of Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin
Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, new edition), in International
Journal of African Studies, 34, 1 (2001), 203-06.
Review of I.M. Lewis, A Pastoral democracy (third edition, Oxford: James Currey,
1999), Africa (with Mursal Farah), 71, 4, 2001, pp. 719-722.
Review of: Nuruddin Farah, Yesterday, Tomorrow: Voices from the Somali Diaspora
(London: Cassell, 2000)), International Journal of African Studies, 33, 2 (2000),
p. 384-86.
Review Essay: “New Studies of Women, Gender, and Islam: Contextualizing
and Historicizing Muslim Women’s Lives,” in Canadian Journal of
African Studies, 32, 2 (1998), pp. 586-593.
Review of: Judith Olmstead, Woman Between Two Worlds: Portrait of an Ethiopian
Rural Leader (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1997), in American Historical
Review, 103, 3 (June 1998), pp. 938-939.
Review of: Aman: The Story of a Somali Girl. As Told to Virginia Lee Barnes
and Janice Boddy (New York, 1994), International Journal of African Historical
Studies, 29, 1 (1996), pp. 128-131.
Review of: Margot Badran, Feminists, Islam and Nation: Gender and the Making
of Modern Egypt (Princeton, 1994), International Journal of African Historical
Studies, 29, 1 (1996), pp. 143-145.
Review of: Hussein M. Adam and Charles Geshekter, Proceedings of the First
International Congress of Somali Studies (Atlanta, Georgia: Scholars Press,
1992), Journal of African History 35, 3 (1994), pp. 518-521.
Text of a Somali song of the late 1960s
(To hear Somali songs, go to hiiraanonline.com)
“In the Old Days”
Sung by Mohamed Jama Joof and Maryan Mursal:
Words by poet currently unknown (late 1960s).
He:
In the old days it was custom that a girl perfumed her hair and braided it.
She wrapped around her waist a wide cloth belt with fringes and an ornamental
cord, and wore a white dress. But something has changed. Something weird
with long horns they wear as hats on their heads and run all over the market.
[Refrain:} You women have destroyed our culture. You have overstepped the
religious law and destroyed our religion. Girls, won’t you behave?
She:
What was custom in the old days and a hundred years ago and what has been left
behind, don’t make us go back to that well-worn road, for we have turned
away from it with effort. Now we expect to run and compete for the sun and
the moon and to lead people. [Refrain:] First get some education and learn
how to read and write. Don’t try to turn back, you country hick, people
who have woken up!
He:
In the old days it would happen that a girl would not address you for one or
two months, and the men who went out looking would not see her for days. But
something has changed. In the evening a whole gang of them goes out, carrying
fat purses, wandering about outside like robbers. [Refrain]
She:
God allayed the waters of sea and river and made them come together. And he
put in order the wide earth and the mountains and created his human beings
each in a different way. You are a loser. No one is asking you to come along.
[Refrain]
He:
In the old days it was custom to pay as bride wealth for a girl a whole herd
of camels and the most exceptional horse, and a rifle on top of that. But something
has changed. You are self-absorbed and ignore the advice of the family in which
you were born. [Refrain]
She:
Girls used to be exchanged for a herd of camels and short-legged goats. But
the religion we learned and the Qur’an do not allow this. Today we have
no need for those who deal in what they do not own and for this old-fashioned
dividing up of women. [Refrain:] First get some education and learn how to
read and write. Don’t try to turn back, you country hick, people who
have woken up!
He:
Beri hore waxaa jiray, inan timaha diibtoo, baarkana u tidhicdoo,
boqorkiyo dhaclaha iyo, maro baylah xidhatee.
Wax beddelay kuwii hore, balo geesa dheeroo, buul madaxa saarto,
suuqa baratamayee.
Naa bi'ise dhaqankii, sharcigii ka baydhoo, diintii burburisee,
hablow maad is badh qabataan?
She:
Boqol sano horteed iyo, beri hore wixii jiray, ee layska baal maray,
budulkii dib ha u qaban, laga soo baqoolee.
Hadda baratan iyo orod, bisha iyo cadceeddiyo, beesha loo horseedoo,
aannu beegsanaynaa.
Horta baro tacliintiyo, buuggiyo dhigaalkoo,
badowyahow dib ha u celin dadka soo baraarugay
He:
Beri hore waxaa jiray, inan aan bil iyo laba, hadal kaaga bixinoo
raggu baadiggoobaa, beri arag ku weydaa
Wax beddelay kuwii hore, casarkii dar baxayoo, kiish buuran qaatiyoo
budhcad dibedda meertee.
Naa bi'ise dhaqankii, sharcigii ka baydhoo, diintii burburisee,
hablow maad is badh qabataan?
She:
Ilaahii bad iyo webi, biyahooda dhaarshee, meel kula ballamayee,
dhulka baaxaddaliyo, buuraha rakibay baa
bani aadmigiisana, ruuxba cayn u beeree
waad baafiyoodee, cidi kulama baydhinee.
Horta baro tacliintiyo, buuggiyo dhigaalkoo,
badowyahow dib ha u celin, dadka soo baraarugay
He:
Beri hore waxaa jiray, inan baarax geeliyo, faraskii Baxdow wada,
yarad looga bixiyaa, bunduqana la raacshaa.
Wax beddelay kuwii hor, isu bogan badh maqanoo,
bahdii ay ka dhalatiyo, baylihisay waanee.
Naa bi'ise dhaqankii, sharcigii ka baydhoo, diintii burburisee,
hablow maad is badh qabataan?
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