Harry Nii Koney Odamtten
Harry Nii Koney Odamtten is Professor of African and Atlantic History and Director of the Black Justice Studies Collaborative (BJSC) at Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California. He holds a Dual Ph.D. in African American & African Studies and History from Michigan State University (2010) and a Bachelor's in History with Philosophy from the University of Ghana, Legon (2001).
Odamtten is an intellectual and social historian and has published Edward W. Blyden's Intellectual Transformations: Afropublicanism, Pan-Africanism, Islam, and the Indigenous West African Church (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2019), as well as other important texts on Pan-Africanism and 19th-century global Black Intellectual life. He is also an Editor of the Journal of West African History and serves on the Executive Board of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (ASWAD). His research and publications span African and African Diaspora intellectual and social history, African and African-American gender and women’s studies, Pan-Africanism, Hip-Hop, and public culture. He teaches courses on Africa and others at the intersection of Africa, its African Diaspora, and the Atlantic World.
Taught
HIST 11A/12A Africa and Atlantic History
HIST 91 Africa in World History
HIST 140 Black Internationalism
Hist 157 Black Atlantic Migrations
HIST 155 African American Pursuits of Freedom
HIST 56 Women in African History
Future/Developing
Hip Hop and Public Culture in Africa
(Re) Inventing Africa
Edward W. Blyden's Intellectual Transformations: Afropublicanism, Pan-Africanism, Islam, and the Indigenous West African Church (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2019)
Articles
“Ray Kea and the Historians of the Gold Coast: Debates over Continuity and Rupture in African and African Diaspora Atlantic Histories” in Journal of African History, Vol 65 No.1, 2024.
“Pan-Africanism” in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024).
“Dode Akabi: A Reexamination of the Oral and Textual Narratives of a ‘Wicked’ Female King” Journal of Women’s History Vol. 27 (3) 61-85, 2015.
Book Chapters
“Hip Hop and Pan-Africanism” in Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism, edited by Reiland Rabaka (London: Routledge, 2020).
"Hip-Hop Speaks, Hip-Life Answers: Global African Music" in Native Tongues: The African Hip-Hop Reader, edited by Paul Saucier (New Jersey: Africa World Press, September, 2011)
"Pan-Africanism; Ties that Bind Ghana and the United States" in Teaching Africa: A Guide for the 21st Century Classroom, edited by Brandon Lundy and Solomon Negash (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013)
"Critical departures in the Practice of Pan-Africanism" in Pan-Africanism, Citizenship and Identity, edited by Toyin Falola and Kwame Essien (New York: Routledge, 2013)