Caterina Scalvedi
Wake Forest University, History, Department Member
- History, Education, Colonialism, Eritrean History, Istruzione, African Studies, and 16 moreHistory of Education in Eritrea, Horn of Africa, History Didactics, Eritrea, Italian colonialism, Histoire des Vaudois, Colonialism in Somalia, Somalia, Dodecanese, Italian Colonialism, Colonial Education, History of Missions, Colonialism and Christian Missions, Libya, Fascism, and World Historyedit
Research Interests:
This article explores the history of Italian-language education in Somalia from fascist rule through the early years of the UN Trusteeship (1922–50s). It relies on the rich unpublished documentation produced by Catholic missionaries, who... more
This article explores the history of Italian-language education in Somalia from fascist rule through the early years of the UN Trusteeship (1922–50s). It relies on the rich unpublished documentation produced by Catholic missionaries, who played a crucial role in the organization of schools throughout the period under examination. Under fascist rule (1922–41), the state did not issue any school-focused law, so missionaries remained the primary leaders in the organization of schools, refining social and conceptual engineering strategies intended to transform students, mostly orphans, into skilled workers. By the outbreak of World War II, missionaries had become the "experts" in education in Somalia. After a decade of tensions with British administrators, missionaries were tapped in the 1950s by the new Italian administration of the UN Trusteeship of Somalia to help create a postcolonial school system. The latter grew out of the preexisting missionary school network and incorporated colonial-era buildings, teachers, and pedagogic methods—thus sustaining these elements beyond the fascist period and into the new UN order. This history shows that missionaries acted as skilled migrant workers specialized in professional education under colonial and postcolonial regimes in northeast Africa, emphasizing the continuities in educational discourses and practices from the prewar to the postwar period. Ultimately, it uncovers the primary role nonstate grassroots actors played in the construction of Somalia, both as a colony and as a soon to be independent Trust Territory.
Link to full article: https://muse-jhu-edu.proxy.cc.uic.edu/issue/48880
Link to full article: https://muse-jhu-edu.proxy.cc.uic.edu/issue/48880
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This edited volume offers an analysis of the entangled histories of education and development in twentieth-century Africa. It deals with the plurality of actors that competed and collaborated to formulate educational and developmental... more
This edited volume offers an analysis of the entangled histories of education and development in twentieth-century Africa. It deals with the plurality of actors that competed and collaborated to formulate educational and developmental paradigms and projects: debating their utility and purpose, pondering their necessity and risk, and evaluating their intended and unintended consequences in colonial and postcolonial moments. Since the late nineteenth century, the “educability” of the native was the subject of several debates and experiments: numerous voices, arguments, and agendas emerged, involving multiple institutions and experts, governmental and non-governmental, religious and laic, operating from the corridors of international organizations to the towns and rural villages of Africa. This plurality of expressions of political, social, cultural, and economic imagination of education and development is at the core of this collective work.
Research Interests: History, African Studies, Education, Development Studies, History of Education, and 15 moreAfrican History, Africa, Imperial History, Portuguese Colonialism and Decolonizaton, Colonialism, Luso-Afro-Brazilian Studies, The Lusophone World, Post-Colonialism, French colonialism, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), History of Imperialism, British Imperialism, Empire, Imperialism, and Colonialism and Imperialism
Review: Guidi, Pierre, Éduquer la Nation en Ethiopie. École, État et identités dans le Wolaita (1941-1991), Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2020, 350 p.