Kathleen Keller

Professor Keller is on leave from teaching in spring 2023. 

Professor Kathleen Keller specializes in the history of France and French West Africa in the 20th century. Her current book project is titled A Magnificent Fraud: The Life of Mamadou Kane. The book tells the story of a a Senegalese man who reinvented himself as a wizard, prince, and marabout over the course of his life in France. 

Dr. Keller's first book Colonial Suspects: Suspicion, Imperial Rule, and Colonial Society in Interwar French West Africawas published in April 2018 by University of Nebraska Press. It recounts the surveillance of "suspicious persons" by French colonial police in the interwar era. The book delves into the politics of colonial rule, the role of the "civilizing mission," and understandings of urban people and space.

Prof. Keller has also published articles in the journals French Historical Studies, French Colonial History, and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History.

She recently published an essay about anti-colonial protest in the Washington Post.

Prof. Keller teaches courses on Africa, Europe, women's history, world history, and imperialism. 

Courses Taught