Dr. Jessica Reuther

PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS

2024 - present

Associate Professor, Ball State University, Department of History, Muncie, IN

Affiliated teaching faculty: African American Studies Program

Affiliated faculty: Women’s and Gender Studies Program

2017- 2024

Assistant Professor, Ball State University, Department of History, Muncie, IN

2016-2017

Visiting Assistant Professor, Ball State University, Department of History, Muncie, IN

EDUCATION

2010-2016

Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia Doctor of Philosophy, Department of History

Dissertation: “Borrowed Children, Entrusted Girls: Legal Encounters with Girlhood in French West Africa, c. 1900-1941”

Committee: Kristin Mann (advisor), Clifton Crais, and Pamela Scully

Exam Fields: African History, France and its Empire, Law and Colonialism in the Atlantic World

2006-2008

University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, Master of Arts, Department of History 

Thesis: “The Art of Abolition: Inscribing Legal and Political Borders in 19th Century North Africa” 

Specialization: Modern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, Comparative Imperialism 

2000-2004

Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri, Bachelor of Arts

Majors in History, International Studies, and French  

Summa cum laude

Publications

Books

The Bonds of Kinship in Dahomey: Portraits of West African Girlhood, 1720-1940. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2025.

Manuscripts (In Progress)

Taboos and Tribunals in the Atlantic World: African Bodies, Supernatural Authority, and Legal Power in the French Empire  

Articles (Under Review/ In Progress)

“Merchant Queens and the Politics of Housebreaking in Ouidah” (in progress)

“The Marie Seblodé Affair in Dahomean Legal History: Applying Pre-colonial  Jurisprudential Logic and Post-colonial Feminist Theory to a Colonial Test Case” (in progress)

Peer-reviewed articles

“Secret Knowledge, the Supernatural, and Slavery in Atlantic Africa” solicited article for the Oxford Encyclopedia of African Slavery, Slave Trade, and the Diaspora. Oxford: Oxford University Press , 2025.

“Street Hawking or Street Walking in Dahomey?: Debates about Girls’ Sexual Assaults in Colonial Tribunals, 1924-1941.” The Journal of African History (volume 63 issue 3) November 2022.

“Women in Benin.” In Oxford Encyclopedia of African Women’s History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.

“Irresponsible Boys, Promiscuous Girls: Maturity, Gender, and Rape Myths in the Criminal Tribunals of Colonial Dahomey, 1924-1940.” La Revue d’histoire de l’enfance “irrégulière” (numero 20) November 2018, 67-84. https://journals.openedition.org/rhei/4209

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Ball State University

AFAM 200: African American Studies Theory and Research Methods

HIST 441/541: Comparative Slavery

HIST 426/526 Topics in African History: Cultural Histories of West Africa and the Atlantic World

HIST 426/526: Topics in African History: Gender and Sexuality in African History

HIST 426: Topics in African History: Africans and Human Rights in Modern History

HIST 372: Africa since 1500

HIST 198: Studies in Non-Western Civilizations

HIST 150: The West in the World

Emory University (Instructor of Record)

Women, Children, and Human Rights in Modern Africa