Publications

Books

Ocean of Letters: Language and Creolization in an Indian Ocean Diaspora

Cambridge University Press, 2009. 378p. Critical Perspectives on Empire Series. Winner: 2010 Wesley-Logan Book Prize in African Diaspora History, The American Historical Association. Finalist: 2010 Melville Herskovits Book Prize in African Studies, African Studies Association of the U.S.

History and Memory in the Age of Enslavement

Heinemann, James Currey, and David Philip, 2000. 414p. Social History of Africa Series.

Ratsitatanina's Gift

University of Mauritius Press, 2009. 63p. Centre for Research on Slavery and Indenture Series. Local Mauritius publication for a public audience.

Articles and Chapters

“Slaving in Africa,” in The Princeton Companion to Atlantic History, edited by Joseph C. Miller (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 425-429.

“African Slave Trades in Global Perspective,” in The Oxford Handbook of Modern African History, edited by Richard Reid and John Parker (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013), 56-76.

“La rue coloniale: Ratsitatanina et la créolité dans l’océan Indien,” in Henri Médard, Marie-Laure Derat, Thomas Vernet and Marie Pierre Ballarin, eds., Traites et esclavages en Afrique Orientale et dans l'océan Indien (Paris: Karthala, 2013), 441-460.

“Fragments of an Indian Ocean Life: Aristide Corroller between Islands and Empires,” Journal of Social History, Volume 45, Number 2 (Winter 2011), 366-389.

“Promiscuous Translation: Working the Word at Antananarivo,” in The Power of Doubt: Essays in Honor of David Henige, edited by Paul S. Landau (Madison, Wisconsin.: Parallel Press, 2011), 89-111.

"Horrid Journeying: Narratives of Enslavement and the Global African Diaspora," Journal of World History, Volume 19, Number 4 (December 2008), 431-464.

"The Vernacular Life of the Street: Ratsitatanina and Indian Ocean Créolité,” Slavery and Abolition, Volume 29, Number 3 (September 2008), 327-359.

“Enslaved Malagasy and Le Travail de la Parole at the Pre-Revolutionary Mascarenes,” Journal of African History, Volume 48, Number 3 (November 2007), 457-479.

“Malagasy at the Mascarenes: Publishing in a Servile Vernacular before the French Revolution,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Volume 49, Number 3 (July 2007), 582-610.

“Colonies Lost: God, Hunger, and Conflict in Anosy (Madagascar) to 1674,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Volume 27, Number 2, (2007), 345-366.

“African Diasporas and the Atlantic,” in Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Erik R. Seeman, eds., The Atlantic in Global History, 1500-2000 (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2007), 129-147.

“La diaspora malgache aux Mascareignes (XVIIIe et XIXe siècles): notes sur la démographie et la langue,” Revue Historique de l'Océan Indien, Volume 1 (2005), 143-155.

“Larceny in Madagascar and Beyond,” Slavery and Abolition, Volume 24, Number 1 (April 2003), 153-172.

“Austronesian Mortuary Ritual in History: Transformations of Secondary Burial (Famadihana) in Highland Madagascar,” Ethnohistory, Volume 48, Number 1-2 (Winter-Spring 2001), 123-155.

“The Origins of Malagasy Arriving at Mauritius and Réunion, 1770-1820: Expanding the History of Mascarene Slavery,” in Vijaya Teelock and Edward Alpers, eds., History, Memory and Identity (Port Louis, Mauritius: University of Mauritius, 2001), 195-236.

“The Route of the Slave from Highland Madagascar to the Mascarenes: Commercial Organization, 1770-1820,” in Ignace Rakoto and Eugène Mangalaza, eds., La route des esclaves: système servile et traite dans l'est malgache (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001), 119-180.

“Reconsidering Trauma, Identity, and the African Diaspora: Enslavement and Historical Memory in Nineteenth-Century Highland Madagascar,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d Series, Volume 56, Number 2 (April 1999), 335-62.

“A Cultural Politics of Bedchamber Construction and Progressive Dining in Antananarivo: Ritual Inversions During the Fandroana of 1817,” in Karen Middleton, ed., Ancestors, Power and History in Madagascar (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 37-70.

“‘Capacities and Modes of Thinking’: Intellectual Engagements and Subaltern Hegemony in the Early History of Malagasy Christianity,” The American Historical Review, Volume 102, Number 4 (October 1997), 969-1002.

“A Cultural Politics of Bedchamber Construction and Progressive Dining in Antananarivo: Ritual Inversions During the Fandroana of 1817,” Journal of Religion in Africa, Volume 27, Number 3 (August 1997), 239-269.

“A Census of Slaves Exported from Central Madagascar to the Mascarenes Between 1769 and 1820,” in Rakoto Ignace, ed., L’esclavage à Madagascar: aspects historiques et résurgences contemporaines (Antananarivo: Institut de Civilisations, Musée d’Art et d’Archéologie, 1997), 131-145.

“Desperately Seeking ‘the Merina’ (Central Madagascar): Reading Ethnonyms and their Semantic Fields in African Identity Histories,” Journal of Southern African Studies, Volume 22, Number 4 (December 1996), 541-560.

“Multiple Narratives, Gendered Voices: Remembering the Past in Highland Central Madagascar,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies, Volume 28, No. 2 (1995), 295-325.