Historian of Africa, gender and sexuality, and law
Dr. Jessica Reuther
Curriculum Vitae
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)
Rites and Wrongs in Atlantic West Africa: Female Sexualities, Indigenous Cosmologies, and Legal Authorities
Articles (Under Review/ In Progress)
“Merchant Queens and the Politics of Housebreaking in Ouidah” (forthcoming in Rethinking Women’s Political Power in West Africa special issue of Africa Today Spring 2025)
“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 for submission in 2025)
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