EDUCATION
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
Ph.D. History, December 2015
Dissertation: Building the Colonial Border Imaginary: German Colonialism, Race, and Space in East Africa, 1884-1895.
Teaching in Higher Education Certification, 2013
University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA
B.A. European History, with honors, June 2007
PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS
SUNY Oneonta, Oneonta, NY
2021-present Assistant Professor of History
Jacksonville University, Jacksonville, FL
2018-2021 Assistant Professor of History
Washington State University, Pullman, WA
2016-2018 Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, Department of History
2012-2016 Adjunct Faculty, Department of History
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
University of the Sciences, Philadelphia, PA
2016 Adjunct Faculty, Department of History
PUBLICATIONS
Books
2022
Colonial Geography: Race and Space in German East Africa, 1884-1905 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2022).
In progress
Contesting Colonial Memory: The Struggle over a Shared Past in Tanzania and Divided Germany, 1953-1989.
Refereed Journal Articles and Book Chapters
2025
“Infamy and Scandal: Public Trials and the Mass Media in the Belle Epoque,” in A Cultural History of Fame in the Age of Revolution, ed. Eva Giloi (London: Bloomsbury, 2024), 173-190.
2023
“(De)Colonial Historical Geography and Historical GIS,” The Journal of Historical Geography 79 (January 2023): 76-86.
2022
“Mapping Empire,” in Staging Authority: Presentation and Power in Nineteenth Century Europe. A Handbook, ed. Eva Giloi, Martin Kohlrausch, Heikki Lempa, Heidi Mehrens, and Philipp Nielsen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022), 303-337.
“Hinterland: The Political History of a Geographic Category from German Colonialism to Afro-Asian Solidarity,” Journal of Global History 17, no. 3 (November 2022): 496-514.
2020
“Manufacturing Crisis: Anti-slavery ‘Humanitarianism’ and Imperialism in East Africa, 1888-1890,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 48, no. 5 (December 2020): 805-825.
“Emin Pasha and the German Imagination of the Heart of Darkness,” in After the Imperialist Imagination: 25 Years of Research on Global Germany and Its Legacies, eds. Sara Pugach, David Pizzo, and Adam Blackler(Oxford: Peter Lang, 2020), 73-87.
2019
“Re-Inventing the Heart of Darkness for the 21st Century: African Studies and the War on Terror since 9/11,” in 9/11 and the Academy: Responses in the Liberal Arts and the 21st-Century World, ed. Mark Finney and Matt Shannon (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 213-242.
2017
“Men of Science and of Action: The Celebrity of Explorers and German National Identity, 1870-1895” Central European History 50, no. 3 (September 2017): 305-327.
2016
“Changes in German Travel Writing about East Africa, 1884-1891,” Colloquia Germanica 46, no. 2 (2016): 266-283.
Book Reviews
2025
Review of Life, Earth, Colony: Friedrich Ratzel’s Necropolitical Geography, by Ian Klinke. Monatshefte 117, no. 2 (2025): 324-326.
2024
Review of An Imperial Homeland: Forging German Identity in Southwest Africa, by Adam Blackler. Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 60, no. 1 (February 2024): 70-73.
2023
Review of Colonialism in Global Perspective, by Kris Manjapra. American Historical Review 128, no. 1 (March 2023): 540-542.
2022
Introduction to H-German roundtable on Germany: A Nation in Its Time Before, During, and After Nationalism, 1500-2000, by Helmut Walser Smith (co-authored with Jasper Heinzen).
2020
Review of Violence as Usual: Policing and the Colonial State in German Southwest Africa, by Marie Muschalek. George L. Mosse Program in History Blog, University of Wisconsin Madison.
2014
Review of Slavery and Emancipation in Islamic East Africa: From Honor to Respectability, by Elisabeth McMahon. Stichproben – Wiener Zeitschrift für kritische Afrikastudien 27 (2014): 113-116.
Public Writing
2017
Blog series about Raphael Gross, Carl Schmitt and the Jews, George L. Mosse Program in History Blog, University of Wisconsin Madison. https://mosseprogram.wisc.edu/category/carl-schmitt-and-the-jews/.
FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS
2024-2025
Faculty Research & Creative Activity Grant, SUNY Oneonta
2023-2024
Research Grant, Gerda Henkel Stiftung
Richard Siegfried Junior Faculty Prize for Academic Excellence, SUNY Oneonta
2022-2023
Course Enhancement Grant, African Studies Center, Boston University
Faculty Development Grant, SUNY Oneonta
UUP Individual Development Award, SUNY Oneonta
2021-2022
UUP Individual Development Award, SUNY Oneonta
Research, Creative Activities, and Scholarship Grant, SUNY Oneonta
Faculty Development Grant, SUNY Oneonta
2019-2020
International Fellowship, State Museums of Berlin (postponed until Summer 2022)
Research, Creative Activities, and Scholarship Grant, Jacksonville University
2018-2019
Summer of Scholarship Grant, Jacksonville University
2016-2017
Bernadotte E. Schmitt Grant, American Historical Association
Research Grant, Central European History Society
2015-2016
Dr. Arthur N. Cook Award, Temple University
Travel Grant, German Historical Institute
2014-2015
Senior Doctoral Fellowship, Temple University
2013-2014
Library Research Travel Grant, Columbia University
Okamoto Award, Temple University Department of History
Travel Award, Temple University College of Liberal Arts
2012-2013
Research Grant, Hertog Program in Grand Strategy
Department of History Travel Grant, Temple University
2009-2010
Sergeant Major William F. Berger Prize Endowed Fellowship for War and Society, Temple University
INVITED TALKS
2024
“Lettow-Vorbeck, Carl Peters, or Robert Koch: The Colonial Past, National Identity, and a Debate over Imperialism in Divided Germany” Max Kade Research Institute, Penn State University, October 8, 2024.
“Why Did It Take So Long for Germany to Recognize Majimaji?: History and Memory in Tanzanian-German Relations,” Isaria Kimambo Seminar Series, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, June 20, 2024.2023
German Imperial Projects, University of Wisconsin-Madison and College of Charleston Zoom event, February 6, 2023
2018
“Creating the Indian Ocean World: Historical Space and Narratives of the Swahili Coast in the 1880s,” University of North Florida, November 15, 2018
CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS
Conferences Organized
2015
The Scholar as Activist, the Activist as Scholar, Center for the Humanities at Temple, March 24, 2015
2012
James A. Barnes Club Graduate Student Conference, Temple University, March 16-17, 2012
Panels organized
2025
“Between Two Continents: Africans’ Real and Imagined Connections to Europe after Empire,” American Historical Association Conference, New York, NY, January 3-6, 2025.
2019
German Africas: Postcolonial Strategies across Three Regimes, German Studies Association Conference, Portland, OR, October 3-6, 2019
2017
“Diplomacy and Imperialism in Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany,” American Historical Association Conference, Denver, CO, January 5-8, 2017
Papers presented
2025
“Adam Sapi Mkwawa, East Germany, and the Memory of the Hehe War in Tanzania,” American Historical Association Conference, New York, NY, January 3-6, 2025.
2024
“Readying Germans for Empire: Georg Schweinfurth as a Public Intellectual in 1880s Germany,” Georg Schweinfurth’s Collection of Plant Remains from Ancient Egypt Revisited and (Re-)contextualized, Berlin, Germany, December 4-6, 2024.
2023
“New Books in Black German Studies” roundtable discussion, German Studies Association Conference, Montreal, QC, October 5-8, 2023
2022
“Emily Ruete and International Audiences for Women’s History in Tanzania,” African Studies Association Conference, Philadelphia, PA, November 17-19, 2022
2021
“Overcoming the Challenges of Transnational Scholarship” roundtable discussion, German Studies Association Conference, Indianapolis, IN, September 30-October 3, 2021
“Representing Colonial History across the Cold War Divide,” Southeast German Studies Workshop, Zoom, March 18-19, 2021
“Mapping Mobilities in Precolonial and Colonial Africa,” Southeastern Regional Seminar in African Studies Conference, Zoom, March 12-13, 2021
2019
“Battling for the Historical Memory of German Colonialism: The West German Microfilming of the Tanzanian National Archives,” German Studies Association Conference, Portland, OR, October 3-6, 2019
“Trans-Imperial Anti-Slavery and Anti-Islam in the 1880s,” Empire and Globalisation(s). Circulations, Exchanges and Trans-Imperial Cooperation in Africa, 19th-20th Centuries Conference, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, May 9-10, 2019
“Borders and Regional Identities in Precolonial Tanganyika,” Florida Conference of Historians, Sarasota, FL, February 19-20, 2019
2018
“Racial Thinking and German Colonial Forestry,” German Studies Association Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, September 27-30, 2018
2017
“Friedrich Ratzel and Human Geography in German East Africa,” German Studies Association Conference, Atlanta, GA, October 5-8, 2017
“Appropriating the Hinterland: The Indian Ocean World and German Colonial Geographies,” Spatialisation under the Global Condition Conference, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany, September 29-October 2, 2017
“Protestant Culture versus African Superstition: Racial Thinking in Anglo-German Relations during the Maji Maji War, 1905-1907,” American Historical Association Conference, Denver, CO, January 5-8, 2017
2016
“Mapping Imperial Geographies in East Africa: Digital Mapping in African History,” Creating Spatial Historical Knowledge: New Approaches, Opportunities and Epistemological Implications of Mapping History Digitally, German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, October 21, 2016
“Swahili Geographies and the Invention of Hinterland,” Greater New York African History Workshop, Philadelphia, PA, April 8, 2016
“The Charismatic Explorer and German (Pre-)Colonialism, 1870-1895,” Philadelphia Area Modern Germany Workshop, Philadelphia, PA, March 26, 2016
2015
“Drawing and Redrawing Internal Legal Borders in German East Africa, 1885-1895,” African Studies Association Conference, San Diego, CA, November 19-22, 2015
“ASMEA and Changes in African Studies since September 11th, 2001,” 9/11 and the Academy Conference, Emory and Henry College, Emory, VA, November 6-7, 2015
“Hinterland”: A German Word Becomes International in East Africa,” German Studies Association Conference, Washington, DC, October 1-4, 2015
2014
“Reconstructing the Swahili Coast in the Wake of the Bushiri War,” African Studies Association Conference, Indianapolis, November 20-23, 2014
“Changes in Form and Content of Reports of German Travel to East Africa, 1884–1895,” German Studies Association Conference, Kansas City, MO, September 18-21, 2014
“Debating the Future of German Empire: The Bushiri War and Emin Pasha Expeditions, 1888-1890,” German Historical Institute Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar in German History, Washington, DC, May 7-10, 2014. Attendance sponsored by the German Historical Institute, Washington, DC
“Performing the Conquest of Africa: Theatricality in the German Emin Pasha and Bushiri War Expeditions, 1889-1891,” Stage and Performance – Theatricality in International History since 1500 conference, Berlin, Germany, April 28-30, 2014. Attendance sponsored by the German Research Council
2013
“Intensive or Extensive Colonization: The Debate Over French and British Models of Rule in German East Africa, 1890-1894,” African Studies Association Conference, Baltimore, MD, November 21-24, 2013
“Expeditionary Colonialisms in East Africa: The Hermann Wissmann and Emin Pasha Expeditions of 1889,” German Studies Association Conference, Denver, CO, October 3-6, 2013
“Writing the Divide between East and Central Africa: German Accounts of the Bushiri Rebellion and the Emin Pascha Expedition of 1888-1890,” Bridging Histories of East and Central Africa Conference, Bayreuth, Germany, June 7-8, 2013. Attendance sponsored by Institute of African Studies, University of Bayreuth and Centre for Area Studies, University of Leipzig
2012
“Making East Africa African: The German Colonial Geography of the Swahili Coast,” African Studies Association Conference, Philadelphia, PA, November 29-December 1, 2012
“Race and Slavery” Roundtable, African Scholar for a Day featuring Jonathon Glassman, Philadelphia, PA, November 28, 2012
“Muslim and Traditional Space in German East Africa,” German Studies Association Conference, Milwaukee, WI, October 4-7, 2012
Seminar participant
2021
LGBTQ+ Histories of the Holocaust, Jack and Anita Hess Faculty Seminar, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, January 4-8, 2021
Commenter
2023 German Studies Association Conference, Montreal, QC
2019 Florida Conference of Historians, Sarasota, FL
2011-2015 James A. Barnes Club Graduate History Conference, Temple University
CAMPUS TALKS
2023
“Then Is Now: History as Politics in Germany, Tanzania, and Beyond,” Richard Siegfried Memorial Lecture, SUNY Oneonta, December 5, 2023
“Race and Geography in Colonial Africa,” Alden Scholar Series Speaker, SUNY Oneonta, February 21, 2023
2022
“The Politics of History in Tanzania and the Two Germanies, 1959-1989,” Life of the Mind, SUNY Oneonta, November 16, 2022
Faculty Community at SUNY Oneonta: Lessons from the First Cohort Hire roundtable discussion, Fall Teaching Institute, SUNY Oneonta, October 21, 2022
“Elizabeth II’s Legacies on the African Continent,” Reflections on the Death and Legacy of Queen Elizabeth II, SUNY Oneonta, September 27, 2022
We Walk to Remember speaker, SUNY Oneonta Chabad, April 27, 2022
2020
Your Voice Matters roundtable discussion of race, gender, and privilege on campus, Jacksonville University, October 21, 2020
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
100/1000-level courses
Introduction to African History, SUNY Oneonta
Europe since 1500, SUNY Oneonta
Modern World History, Jacksonville University
Freshman Seminar: The Past of the Present, Jacksonville University
Roots of Contemporary Issues, Washington State University
Hitler and Nazi Germany, University of the Sciences
History of Nazi Germany, Temple University
Modern Europe, Temple University
Gender and World Societies, Temple University
Turning Points in Human History: Modern World, Temple University
Upper-division courses
Genocide in the Twentieth Century, SUNY Oneonta
World War I, SUNY Oneonta
The Global Cold War, SUNY Oneonta
Europe from Napoleon to WWI, SUNY Oneonta
Nation and Race, SUNY Oneonta
History of the Holocaust, SUNY Oneonta
European History through Film, Temple University
Berlin: Capital of the Twentieth Century, SUNY Oneonta
Ecology and Empire in the Modern World, SUNY Oneonta
Twentieth-Century Europe, Jacksonville University
Africa, Jacksonville University
Intermediate Writing Seminar in European History, Temple University
Revolutionary Europe, Temple University
400/4000-level courses
The Technique of History (methods seminar), Jacksonville University
Historiographic Seminar, SUNY Oneonta
SERVICE TO PROFESSION
Board member at-large, Tanzanian Studies Association, 2018-2025
Advanced Placement World History Visiting Fellow in Assessment, 2024
Manuscript reviewer: Oxford University Press; Journal of African History; Routledge; Transactions in GIS; Emotion, Space and Society; Journal of Contemporary African Studies
Review Editor, H-German, 2020-2023
Judge, New York State History Day, 2022-2023
Reader, European History Advanced Placement Test, 2016
DEPARTMENTAL/UNIVERSITY SERVICE
Academic Excellence Committee, SUNY Oneonta, 2024-2027
Faculty Associate for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, SUNY Oneonta, 2024-2027
Ethics Committee, State University of New York Faculty Senate, 2024-2026
University Academic Assessment Committee, SUNY Oneonta, 2022-2028
Facilitator, Folks with Disabilities (FWD) affinity group, SUNY Oneonta 2022-present
Facilitator, Accessible Pedagogy community of practice, SUNY Oneonta 2025-present
Membership Development Officer, Oneonta United University Professions, 2023-present
President’s Council on Diversity, Advocacy and Support Subcommittee, SUNY Oneonta, 2021-present
Department Representative, Oneonta United University Professions, 2022-2023
Maynard Redfield History Essay Competition committee, SUNY Oneonta, 2021-2022
Secretary/Treasurer, Jacksonville University AAUP, 2021
University Standards Committee, Jacksonville University, 2019-2021
Award committee for Faculty Excellence in Scholarship and Professional Activities, 2020-2021
University Diversity Committee, Subcommittee on structural racism, Jacksonville University, 2020-2021
University Experiential Learning Committee, Jacksonville University, 2019-2020
Award committee for Faculty Excellence in Teaching, Jacksonville University, 2018-2019
Temple University Graduate Student Association, Co-President 2012-2013, Business Manager 2011, Treasurer 2010-2011
James A. Barnes Club, Temple University Department of History Graduate Student Organization, Treasurer 2009-2010
COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT/OUTREACH
Faculty Discussion Leader, Great Decisions discussions program, Mandarin High School, Jacksonville, FL, 2020-2021
Discussion Facilitator, Cultural Diversity in America: Separating Fact from Fiction, Zoom event, 904ward and Duval County Public Schools, 2020-2021
Discussion Facilitator, Great Decisions discussion program, Duval County Libraries, February 20, 2020
MATTHEW UNANGST 