Marissa Moorman is Associate Professor of African History at Indiana University. She is an historian of Central and Southern Africa whose research focuses on the intersection between politics and culture in colonial and independent Angola. Intonations (Ohio University Press 2008) explores music as a practice in and through which Angolans living under extreme political repression imagined the nation and how the particularities of music and historical moment cast this process of imagining in gendered terms. The book argues that cultural practice is productive of politics and not just derivative of it. Her current book project, Tuning in to Nation, looks at the relationship between the technology of radio and the shifting politics of southern Africa as anti-colonial movements established independent states in a regional context newly charged by Cold War politics. She has written articles on Angolan cinema, dress and nation, and the contemporary Angolan music and dance genre “kuduro.”

Please see Dr. Moorman’s full biography on the Department of History website.