Upcoming Lecture: Making the Cyclonic Family: Gender and Disaster in Late-Colonial Mauritius

Please join Robert Rouphail, a doctoral student in history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and alumni of NC State (MA, ’13), for his talk on the history of cyclones, imperialism, and gender in Mauritius on Tuesday, March 29 in 331 Withers Hall. The talk will begin at 4:00pm with a Q&A to follow. After graduating from NC State in 2013 with his master’s in history, Rob enrolled as a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His areas of specialization include Africa, the Indian Ocean, Global and Environmental History, Labor, Race, and Gender. His dissertation examines the ways in which cyclones reshaped the contours of British imperial power in the Mascarene Isalnds and in Zanzibar, as well as how these storms affected the everyday lives of indigenous and immigrant communities in the southwest Indian Ocean. More broadly, Rob is interested in global histories of mobility and technology, as well as Afro-Asian politics, decolonization, and the making of the “Third World.” This lecture is co-sponsored by History and Marine, Earth, and Atmospheric Studies.