Civilizations Past and Present, Volume 1

About our authors Robert R. Edgar is Professor of African Studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C. and a Senior Fellow in the Department of History at Stellenbosch University. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Virginia, Georgetown University, National University of Lesotho, University of Cape Town and University of Western Cape. He specializes in modern religious and political movements in southern Africa. Among his books are An African American in South Africa: The Travel Notes of Ralph Bunche (1992), African Apocalypse: The Story of Nontetha Nkwenkwe, a Twentieth Century South African Prophet (2000) (co-authored with Hilary Sapire), and The Finger of God: Enoch Mgijima, the Israelites and the Bulhoek Massacre (2018).

Neil J. Hackett is Associate Professor Emeritus at Oklahoma State University. He has also served as Adjunct Professor of History at St. Louis University. He received his PhD in history and classics from the University of Cincinnati. He served as Associate and Interim Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Oklahoma State, and for 5 years as Director of Oklahoma State's branch campus in Kyoto, Japan.

George F. Jewsbury is Professor Emeritus of History at Oklahoma State University. He earned his PhD from the University of Washington in Russian and East European history. He has also served as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Nancy II, Senior Associate Member at St. Antony's College, Oxford, and as an Associate Researcher at the School for the Advanced Study of the Social Sciences in Paris. He has published The Russian Annexation of Bessarabia: 1774 to 1828, and several articles dealing with French influence in Russia from 1770 to 1828 and Russian-Romanian relations from 1800 to the present.

Barbara Molony, Professor of Japanese History at Santa Clara University, co-President of the Coordinating Council for Women in History, and past president of the American Historical Association Pacific Coast Branch, specializes in research on women's rights, transnational feminisms, and the construction and representation of gender in Japan and East Asia. She has published more than 2 dozen articles and chapters on these topics. She has also co-authored or co-edited Women's Activism and "Second Wave" Feminism: Transnational Histories (with Jennifer Nelson, 2017), Gender in Modern East Asia (with Janet Theiss and Hyaeweol Choi, 2016), Modern East Asia: An Integrated History (with Jonathan Lipman and Michael Robinson, 2010), Asia's New Mothers: Crafting Gender Roles and Childcare Networks in East and Southeast Asian Societies (with Ochiai Emiko, 2008), and Gendering Modern Japanese History (with Kathleen Uno, 2005). She is an associate editor of Women and Social Movements in Modern Empires since 1820. She is currently co-authoring Ichikawa Fusae: A Political Biography (in progress).

Matthew S. Gordon is Professor of Middle East and Islamic studies at Miami University, where he is the Philip R. Shriver Professor of History. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1993. Among his publications on the history of the Islamic Near East are 2 edited volumes, including Concubines and Courtesans: Women and Slavery in Islamic History (2017); a series of textbooks, including The Rise of Islam (2005); and a monograph on the Abbasid caliphate, The Breaking of a Thousand Swords (2001). Gordon is a co-editor of the online journal, Al-Usur al-Wusta, and is presently at work on a history of the early Abbasid Empire.