About
I am interested in many aspects of African (but particularly Southern African) history and politics, and am currently researching how the South African state coped with domestic political dissent during the 1940s.
Biography
Keith joined CWAS in 1999 shortly after obtaining his doctorate from Northwestern University in Chicago. He has a Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education from Birmingham University and is closely involved in the work of the Journal of Southern African Studies, where he has been a Reviews Editor and then Editor since 2006.
Teaching
At the undergraduate level, Keith teaches introductory and advanced courses on general African history and politics, and a series of modules on nineteenth century, twentieth century and post-1994 South Africa. For graduate students he offers a module on the history and politics of southern Africa and co-convenes the Advanced Perspectives seminar.
Postgraduate supervision
In the past few years Keith Shear has supervised to completion MPhil and PhD students working on modern Nigeria, Sierra Leone, the Gambia, Malawi and South Africa. Currently he is working with:
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Charles Mugisha: Gender and Racism: Social Work Practices with Asylum Seekers in South London
Research
Keith works on policing, state formation and politics in early twentieth century South Africa. He is interested in the relationships between political monitoring, bureaucratisation and developments in the legal system during that period — issues that speak to very current concerns about the surveillance, political repression, and ousting or limiting of judicial oversight that governments today practise in the name of public safety and countering terrorism
Other activities
Publications
Authored books
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In preparation, Policing, Law, and the State in South Africa, 1900-1939.
Articles in scholarly journals
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2010, ‘Legal Liberalism, Statutory Despotism and State Power in Early Twentieth-Century South Africa’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 38, 4 (December 2010), 523-48.
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1996, “‘Not Welfare or Uplift Work’: White Women, Masculinity and Policing in South Africa,” Gender & History, 8, 3 (November 1996), 393-415. Also in Nancy Rose Hunt et al, eds., Gendered Colonialisms in African History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 71-93
Chapters in edited books
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2003, “‘Taken as Boys’: The Politics of Black Police Employment and Experience in Early Twentieth-Century South Africa,” in Lisa A. Lindsay and Stephan F. Miescher, eds., Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann), 109-127.
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2000, “Police Dogs and State Rationality in Early Twentieth-Century South Africa,” in Saul Dubow, ed., Science and Society in Southern Africa (Manchester: Manchester University Press), 143-163. Reprinted in Lance van Sittert and Sandra Swart, eds. Canis Africanis: A Dog History of Southern Africa (Leiden: Brill, 2008) 193-216.
Reviewed books
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For Africa, African Affairs, Journal of Modern African Studies and Journal of Southern African Studies