The History department has recently hired a new visiting professor, Abbey Warchol, to begin teaching next year. Her area of research focuses on the history of the African continent and the French colonial empire. This comes at a time when Oberlin faculty and students have criticized how little the African continent is covered as a subject of academic focus. 

Associate Professor and Chair of History Ellen Wurtzel said courses on the African continent have never been extensively available during her time at Oberlin.

“I’ve been here almost 17 years, and we have never had a position in African history other than a postdoc,” she said. “It has long been a desire of the History department, certainly since I’ve been here, to have a position in African history, but we’ve not been able to get one.”

Wurtzel said that although the History department has long desired to have a long-term Africanist working in the department, there are a number of priorities for the department to focus on before they are in a position to establish a long-term African-focused professorship. She cited the History department’s intent to rebuild its Latin American and U.S. history section after losing two professors of the former focus and three of the latter. 

“Those positions are the ones that we’re requesting as tenure-track positions, which we have been requesting for the past four years,” Wurtzel said.

Warchol will be the first professor in Oberlin’s History department to focus on an African region not related to the Middle East or Northern Africa since 2021. The last was Etana Dinka, visiting professor and Mellon postdoctoral fellow in African history, who left Oberlin following the end of his two-year term to join James Madison University’s history department.

Next year, Warchol will be teaching a slate of courses examining modern Africa, the gendered dynamics of colonialism, and the vestiges of imperialism persisting within the continent to the present. 

She classifies herself as a “historian of modern Africa.” Her historical research on colonialism in Africa interrogates present-day dynamics in Africa and how these dynamics might evolve in the future. Her current academic focus lies in the politics of charity, which is a prevalent dynamic around the African continent today.

Warchol’s visiting professorship offers new areas of academic focus on the African continent. Students have expressed frustration over a lack of faculty focusing exclusively on this area of academic focus. In a 2022 article entitled “Courses on Africa are Embarrassingly Limited in Oberlin’s Offerings,” former students Chemutai Ruto, OC ’25, and Kambura Kinoti, OC ’24, argued that Oberlin College’s academic field was failing to adequately educate students because of the dearth in lessons centering the African continent students had access to (The Oberlin Review, Nov. 11, 2022).

“How can Oberlin claim to educate on the realities of the world we live in with such limited learning options on such a complex continent?” the writers asked in the article. “On its website, Oberlin recognizes that ‘diversity broadens perspectives.’ How exactly does this work when a whole continent is significantly underrepresented?”

Current students reflected this sentiment when asked about the state of academic focus on the African continent at Oberlin. Multiple students praised Associate Professor of Africana Studies Darko Opoku, who teaches classes on the political, economic, and religious contours of modern Africa. 

“I’ve had the pleasure of taking a class with Professor Opoku,”  College fourth-year Daniel Chian, who is minoring in Africana Studies, said. “I think he’s truly an invaluable presence at this school.” 

Conservatory fourth-year Ellison Allen echoed that sentiment.

“It was a really amazing class in terms of understanding Africa.”

As much as students had to say in praise for Opoku’s work, they critiqued how much of a burden it is for one professor alone to exclusively cover as dynamic a topic as the African continent.

“Each country in Africa could have its own history and its own class,” Jayden Tarr, a College fourth-year and Africana Studies major, said. “For there to only be one professor who’s really talking about [the continent], he has to split his thoughts in a way that is safe for people first getting introduced to the topic. … There needs to be more institutional support.”

Students were critical about how this gap in coverage represented more than just a problem of gaps in academic opportunities. 

“I think it’s really important that people have the necessary context in order to engage with African politics and history, because it is so central to a global ideal of liberation,” Allen said. “Exploitation of the global south is exploitation of the whole.” 

Students affirmed that they see this new professorship as the starting point to a multi-step process to bolster the opportunities and resources available to faculty and students. 

“I’m really looking forward to this [new] position,” Chian said. “I think that hopefully the discourse about this can talk about other inconsistencies with the hiring at Oberlin College.”

Warchol expressed her excitement about the opportunities this new position can represent in expanding the pathways available for people to deeply engage with the continent in novel ways. 

“I grew up in northeastern Ohio, and I know well Oberlin’s reputation for attracting curious, creative, and socially engaged students,” Warchol said. “I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to teach courses about the history of Africa and the French empire in this kind of community. African history has often been relegated to the periphery of a student’s high school education, but Africa has always been central to global history. I hope that students who are curious to discover more about the histories of this part of the world will consider taking a class.”