Assistant Professor of History at the University of Michigan and 2018 LSA Collegiate Fellow (History)
About
Raevin Jimenez is a historian of southern Africa with a focus on the distant past. She is trained in nontraditional methods including comparative historical linguistics, and has research interests in gender, political ideology, political economy, and the body.
Dr. Jimenez's work examines the gender history of Nguni-speakers in southern Africa between the 9th-20th century. Over a millennium, Nguni-speakers innovated and reconfigured masculine propriety and male relationships. Changing ideas of gender allowed Nguni-speakers to congregate young men into vast networks, define male identity, establish obligations of men as sons and husbands, and orient junior men towards political and economic opportunities. The manipulation of masculinity mediated the extension of regional and global commerce into Southeast Africa in the 11th-13th century, and political centralization in the 13th-17th century. At the end of the millennium, gender and generation formed the cornerstone of political ideology, both in sovereign states and among public intellectuals under colonial rule. Dr. Jimenez's research provides a narrative of long-term historical transformation through the ideals and debates of households, and places 19th and 20th century gender politics in deep time context.
Dr. Jimenez's is committed to providing individualized support for students — particularly people of color, low-income, first-generation, LGBTQ+, and other marginalized students when they find themselves confronted with circumstances during their college years. She also deliberately works to create a climate of inclusion and openness in the classroom so that marginalized individuals will not silence themselves out of existence, as well as to provide students with the skills needed to translate their knowledge and experience to academic speech. In addition to her work within college classrooms, Dr. Jimenez has also spent time teaching recently arrived refugees and tutoring high school students of color.
Current Work:
Dr. Jimenez's current research focuses on deep historical currents in political ideology in southern Africa. She traces continuities and changes in ideas about masculine decorum and household politics of biosocial reproduction from the 9th century to the 19th century, considering the ways communities drew on established conceptual norms to innovate and legitimate new political claims. She is particularly interested in the ways communities mediated large scale historical transformation, including the extension of global commerce, the rise of independent sovereignties, and the advent of European colonialism, through intimate gendered relations and rites of passage.
Research Area Keyword(s):
Africa, pre-colonial, gender, political ideology
