Contact Information
Research Areas
Additional Campus Affiliations
Associate Professor, History
Associate Professor, Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Associate Professor, Center for African Studies
External Links
Honors & Awards
Conrad Humanities Scholar, 2019-2024, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois
Helen Corley Petit Scholar, 2013-2014, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, University of Illinois
Bethwell A. Ogot Book Award, 2013, African Studies Association
Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship, 2012-2015, ACLS
Moody Research Grant, 2013, LBJ Presidential Library
Highlighted Publications
Brennan, J. R. (2012). Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania. (New African Histories). Ohio University Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/16003
Brennan, J. R., Burton, A., & Lawi, Y. (Eds.) (2007). Dar es Salaam: Histories from an Emerging African Metropolis. African Books Collective. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/16829
Recent Publications
Brennan, J. R. (Accepted/In press). Islam, Politics and the Limits of Authority in Mainland Tanzania, 1955-1968. In F. Topan, K. Kresse, E. Stiles, & H. Mwakimako (Eds.), Governance and Islam in East Africa (pp. 112-142). University of Edinburgh.
Brennan, J. R. (2022). Print Culture, Islam and the Politics of Caution in Late Colonial Dar es Salaam: A History of Ramadhan Machado Plantan's Zuhra, 1947-1960. Islamic Africa, 12(1), 92-124. https://doi.org/10.1163/21540993-01201003
Brennan, J. R. (2021). Review: E. Callaci, Street Archives and City Life: popular intellectuals in postcolonial Tanzania. Africa, 91(2), 337-338. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972021000115
Brennan, J. R. (2021). Review: Shravan Vidyarthi and Erin Haney, editors. Priya Ramrakha: The Recovered Archive. American Historical Review, 126(3), 1204-1206. https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhab513
Brennan, J. R. (2021). The Secret Lives of Dennis Phombeah: Decolonization, the Cold War, and African Political Intelligence, 1953-1974. The International History Review, 43(1), 153-169. https://doi.org/10.1080/07075332.2020.1776750