By Arik Clausner ‘09
AC: What classes did you teach at Dartmouth during your first year?
NS: In 2008-09 I taught History 5.1, the pre-colonial Africa survey; History 66, the modern Africa survey; and History 7, a first-year seminar on slavery in West Africa. In addition to these courses, I will teach History 67 (the South Africa History course) in Fall 2009 and AAAS 11, the introductory course in African Studies in Winter 2010.
AC: Did you enjoy teaching a first-year seminar?
NS: I enjoyed teaching the first-year seminar on slavery in West Africa. My first-year students were wonderful and very enthusiastic and open to learning about the subject. They all had little knowledge about the topic coming in but were very engaged the entire term. I think we had a good and productive term even with the challenge of my teaching the course for the first time. I was very pleased with the students’ responses to the material, because slavery is a difficult topic to teach in any context.
AC: Where are you from originally?
NS: I was in born in New York City, but my family moved to northern Nigeria when I was a little over two years old. We lived there for ten years and returned to the United States when I was about 12 years of age. We lived in North Carolina until my move to Madison, Wisconsin, for graduate school.
AC: Where did you do your undergraduate and graduate studies?
NS: I completed my undergraduate studies at a small historically black college in Winston Salem, North Carolina—Winston Salem State University. I did my graduate work at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
AC: Did you major in history as an undergraduate?
NS: I was not a history major as an undergraduate student. In fact, my interest in history did not come until the end of college. I was a political science major and English minor. I planned to attend law school up until my junior year of college, when I began to have second thoughts about law school. My backup plan was graduate school. I had some interest in African American history and decided to pursue a master’s degree in African American Studies. After completing my M.A. work, I developed an interest in African Diaspora Studies and decided to pursue the Ph.D. in African History at UW-Madison.
AC: Was there anything in particular that made you interested in teaching?
NS: Probably the fact that I come from a family of educators. My mother is a professor of English at my undergraduate university and my father, who recently retired, was a high-school math teacher. I also have an uncle who teaches science at the high-school level. I believe that growing up in an environment where teaching was highly valued influenced my decision to pursue a teaching career. I am relieved that I did not pursue a law career! I have thoroughly enjoyed teaching and working with students over the years.
AC: Have you taught anywhere else?
NS: This is my first full-time teaching job. I arrived at Dartmouth College after completing my graduate studies in summer 2008. I had significant experience in the classroom as a teaching assistant for many semesters while completing my graduate work in Madison.
AC: How did you develop an interest in this particular field of history?
NS: I developed an interest in African history as a result of growing up in Africa and my master’s thesis work on African American repatriation to Ghana. I also have family roots in Ghana. My father’s family is Ghanaian, and during the early years of my graduate work I developed an interest in learning more about my family history. I realized that, in studying and conducting research on Ghanaian history, I would be able to combine learning about Ga history (the ethno-linguistic group my father’s family belongs to and my dissertation topic) and about Ghanaian history more broadly.
AC: What is your specific area of research?
NS: My own work is on Ga chieftaincy and land politics in colonial Ghana. I look at the politics of land and traditional authority in colonial Accra, the capital of Ghana. I study the impact of British colonialism and urbanization on land and chieftaincy politics and the varied responses of Ga chiefs and local people to these shifts during the colonial period. My interests include the social and political histories of Ghana and West Africa as a whole.
AC: Have you enjoyed teaching at Dartmouth?
NS: I have enjoyed teaching at Dartmouth, and it has been a rewarding experience. It has been a challenging experience preparing courses for the first time, but I have enjoyed working with the students here. Most of them have a wonderful work ethic, and this has made my own work more pleasurable. My students displayed much enthusiasm for learning about African history, and this translated into productive engagement on many levels.
AC: What is your favorite thing about teaching a class?
NS: My favorite thing about teaching a class is having students fully engage with me and the material used in the course. It is one of the most rewarding things for a teacher to experience positive and fruitful responses from students that illustrate what they learn during the course of a term. I see teaching as a two-way street in which I facilitate the learning process on one level, while my students actively engage in multiple ways with the material that I present to them. I always learn from my students, and I find this two-way street to be the most rewarding aspect of teaching.
AC: How do you feel about Hanover?
NS: I feel good about the experience in Hanover. Luckily, I had considerable experience with the cold Wisconsin winters, which prepared me well for the winter here. Moving to a small town from a much larger one like Madison has been a challenge. Despite this, I feel incredibly welcomed here, and my colleagues have been very kind and supportive during my transition to life and work in Hanover.
AC: What projects are you currently working on?
NS: I have started the revision of my dissertation into a book manuscript. In addition, I have started a second project that is an offshoot of my dissertation work. The project is on post-colonial media forms in Ghana. I am interested in studying the historical transformations that have taken place in the state-run press and the ways in which the press has created and shaped local and national discourses about traditional authority and power in post-colonial Ghana.
AC: What are your plans for the summer?
NS: I will be in Accra this summer for about five weeks to acquire some additional material for the book manuscript. Most of my work will be at the National Archives in Accra; however, I also plan on conducting additional oral interviews with chiefs and other local authorities about chieftaincy and land litigation in contemporary Ghana.
