Angela Thompsell

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Matthew Yeoman - Yeoman Photography

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Matthew Yeoman - Yeoman Photography

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Angela Thompsell, Ph.D

Associate Professor

(585) 395-5074
athompse@brockport.edu
Office: Liberal Arts 329

Education

• PhD, University of Michigan, 2009 History
• B.A. (summa cum laude), University of Florida, 2001 – History
• B.S. (cum laude), University of Florida, 2001 – Zoology

Areas of Specialty

• Modern Britain
• British Empire
• African History

Courses Taught

• World History, 1500 - Present
• Modern Imperial Britain
• Modern Africa
• Dark Continent to Wakanda: Western images of Africa
• Colonialism in the Congo (research seminar)
• Overseas Empires (graduate online)
• Imperialism (graduate seminar)
• Modern Europe (graduate seminar)

• Awards/Recognitions
  • SUNY Brockport, Department of History Kutolowki Fellow, 2021
  • Chair, AHA Morris D. Forkosch Prize committee, 2021
  • SUNY Chancellors Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2016
  • UUP/NYS Dr. Nuala McGann Drescher Affirmative Action / Diversity Leave Award, 2014
  • Pre-Tenure Grants Development Award, College at Brockport, 2011
  • Presidential Management Finalist, (declined), 2009
  • Mellon British History Seminar at Columbia University, 2007
  • University of Michigan, Institute for Research on Women and Gender, 2006-2007
• Recent Publications
  • “‘A Credible Undertaking’: apathy and antiapartheid activism at SUNY Brockport,” Safundi 23.1(2022). 
  • “G is for Giraffe,” in Animalia: An Anti-imperial Bestiary for Our Times, ed. by Antoinette Burton and Renisa Mawani. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020.
  • “The Foundations of Liberia,” History Today 70.4 (April 2020): 40-49.
  • ‘’The Work of Peace’: History, Imperialism, and Peacekeeping,” in A New Scramble for Africa?: The Role of Great and Emerging Powers, ed. Earl Conteh-Morgan, special issue, Insight (Turkey) 21.1 (Winter 2019): 53-76.
  • Hunting Africa: British Sport, African Knowledge, and the Nature of Empire. Palgrave, forthcoming October 2015.
  • “Nimrods and Amazons: The Gendering of Big Game Hunting in Africa, 1880-1914,” in Gender and Power in Irish History. 2009.

  Public History

  • African History Expert for About.com (now ThoughtCo), 2014-2016. In this position, Angela Thompsell provided readers with more than 70 accessible articles on African history and society that were informed by the latest scholarship. The pages are now updated and maintained by the staff at ThoughtCo.

  Book Reviews

  • Review of Consuming Ivory: Mercantile Legacies of East Africa and New England, by Alexandra Celia Kelly, Middle Ground Journal 23 (Spring 2022): 29-31.
  • Review of Safari Nation: a social history of the Kruger National Park, by Jacob Dlamini, Canadian Journal of Africa studies / Revue canadienne des études africaines 56.1 (2022): 224-6.
  • Review of White War, Black Soldiers: Two African Accounts of World War I, edited by George Robb, translated by Nancy Erber and William Peniston, Journal of Military History, 85.4 (2021): 1100-2
  • Review of Big Game Hunter: a Biography of Frederick Courteney Selous, by Norman Etherington, Journal of African History, 60.2 (2019): 311-12.
  • Review of Beastly Encounters of the Raj: Livelihoods, livestock, and veterinary health in North India, 1790-1920 by Saurabh Mishra, Victorian Studies, 59.2 (2017): 339-340.
  • Review of Imperial Justice: Africans in Empire’s Court by Bonny Ibhawoh, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 16.1(2015).
  • Review of Conservation Song: A History of Peasant-State Relations and the Environment in Malawi, 1860-2000 by Wapulumuka Mulwafu, H-Environment, Jan. 2012.
  • Review of Africa, Empire, and Globalisation: Essays in Honor of A.G. Hopkins, edited by Toyin Falola and Emily Brownell, and A.G. Hopkins, H-Empire, Jan. 2012.
  • Review of Stanley: the Impossible Life of Africa’s Greatest Explorer by Tim Jeal, Journal of British Studies 48(July 2009): 787-9.
• Presentations
  • “Politicizing Identity: Imperial History for Peacebuilding,” Rebuilding State and Society after Civil War, Kent State University, February 20-21, 2020.
  • “The ‘Sergeant Melanine’ Affair: the Berlin Conference, River Regimes, and Transimperial Cooperation,” ERC Secure Closing Conference, Cultures of Security in the Nineteenth Century: Transimperial Perspectives, Utrecht University, May 2019.
  • “They Roared With Laughter: the all too human encounters of African exploration,” University of Ireland, Maynooth, March 2017.
  • “Online Tools for Discussion and Collaboration,” panel with Morag Martin and Jie Zhang, SUNY Conference on Instructional Technology, SUNY Potsdam. June 2016.
  • “A Question of Masculinity: Reconsidering the Encounters of Exploration,” Greater New York Area African History Workshop, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA. April 2016.
  • “Where Are Your Wives?: Laughing at African explorers,” North American Conference on British Studies, annual meeting, Little Rock, AK. November 2015.
  • “Uncomfortably ‘At Home’ with the Empire’s Heroes: The Spatial Dynamics of Masculinity,” Masculinities on the British Fringe, University of Chicago, April 2015.
  • “The Expert Knowledge of Frederick Courteney Selous,” Britain and the World Conference, British Scholar Society, March 2013.
  • “On Holiday in ‘Wild’ Africa,” North American Victorian Studies Association Annual Meeting, Nov. 2011.
  • “Nothing but Cold Meat and Weak Tea: roughing it in British Colonial Africa,” Food and Drink: their Social, Political and Cultural Histories, University of Central Lancashire International Conference, June 2011.
  • “Imperial Taxidermy: International Conservation and the African Landscape,” American Historical Association Annual Meeting, Jan. 2011. (panel organizer)
  • “Where ‘unprincipled character is laid bare in all its naked ugliness’: African Big Game Hunting and the Assessment of a Nation’s Worth,” North East Conference on British Studies Annual Meeting, Boston College, Nov. 2008.
  • “The Adventurer at Home: Living a Frontier Life in the Metropole,” North American Conference on British Studies Annual Conference, Oct. 2008.
  • “Nimrods and Amazons: British Big Game Hunters in fin-de-siècle Africa,” Doing Gender History: Methods and Models, Women’s History Association of Ireland Annual Meeting, Centre for Research on Women and Gender, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, April 2005.

Current Projects

• Dr. Thompsell is researching exploration and conquest during the Scramble for Africa.