Michael A. Gomez

Michael A. Gomez is an American cultural and social historian . His research focuses on West Africa , the African diaspora, and the southern United States in their colonial and antebellum periods.

Life

Gomez began his studies at Amherst College . He later moved to the University of Chicago , where he received a Bachelor of Arts in American history in June 1981, a Master of Arts in African history in June 1982, and a Ph.D. in June 1985. received in African history.

From 1985 to 1988 he taught as an assistant professor in the Department of History and in the Department of African and Afro-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis . He then taught at the Department of History at Spelman College in Atlanta , Georgia , first from 1988 to 1992 as an assistant professor, then from 1992 to 1997 as an associate professor. During this time he was chairman of the Department of History from 1989 to 1992 and again from 1993 to 1997 . He then taught from 1997 to 1999 as a professor in the Department of History and in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Georgia in Athens . In 1999 Gomez moved to New York University , where he has since taught as a professor in the Department of History and the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies . From 2004 to 2007 he was chairman of the Department of History .

From 2000 to 2007 he was director of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora . His book Black Crescent: African Muslims in the Americas won the 2006 Book Award of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association in the non-fiction category. He is a member of the editorial board of the Africa Series book series at Cambridge University Press and the editorial board of the journal African and Black Diaspora: An International Journal .

Publications (selection)

• Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad: The Precolonial State of Bundu (1992, Cambridge University Press)
• Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (1998, University of North Carolina Press)
• Reversing Sail: A History of the African Diaspora (2005, Cambridge University Press)
• Black Crescent: African Muslims in the Americas (2005, Cambridge University Press)
• (Ed.): Diasporic Africa: A Reader (2006, New York University Press)

Web links

• Entry on the New York University website