Faculty

Edward Kissi

Professor

Contact

Home Campus: Tampa
Office: FAO 265
Telephone: (813) 974-7784
Email

Education

Ph.D. History - Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, 1997
M.A. History - Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada, 1991
B.A. (History, Classics) - University of Ghana, 1987

• Curriculum Vitae

Courses

African History to 1850
African History since 1850
History and Theory of Genocide
Graduate Seminar on Genocide and Human Rights
Contemporary Africa
African Historiography

Research Interests

History of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa
Famine and the politics of relief aid
History of US relations with Africa
Human Rights in Africa
Comparative Genocide
The Holocaust and sub-Saharan Africa 

Available to direct graduate work and/or assist on graduate committees in any of the above research areas.

Selected Publications

Africans and the Holocaust: Perceptions and Responses of Colonized and Sovereign Peoples (Routledge, 2020); Revolution and Genocide in Ethiopia and Cambodia (Lexington Books, 2006); “Africa and Human Rights” in Toyin Falola and Martin S. Shanguhyia, eds., The Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial and Postcolonial History (2018); “Reducing Genocides, One Region at a Time,” in Samuel Totten, ed., Last Lectures on the Prevention and Intervention of Genocide (Routledge, 2018); “Obligation to Prevent (02P): proposal for enhanced community approach to genocide prevention in Africa,” African Security Review (July 2016); “Paradoxes of American Development Diplomacy in the Early Cold War Period,” Past and Present (May 2012); “Beneath International Famine Relief in Ethiopia: The United States, Ethiopia, and the Debate over Relief Aid, Development Assistance, and Human Rights,” African Studies Review (2005); “Rwanda, Ethiopia and Cambodia: links, fault-lines, and complexities in a comparative study of genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research (March 2004); “The Uses and Abuses of the Holocaust Paradigm in Ethiopia: 1980-1991,” BRIDGES: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Theology, Philosophy, History, and Science (2000).

Bio

Edward Kissi is Professor of Africana Studies at the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies. He completed his undergraduate studies in the Departments of Classics and History at the University of Ghana, in 1987.  He earned his MA in History from Wilfrid Laurier University, in Canada, in 1991, and a Ph.D. in History from Concordia University, in Montreal, Canada, in 1997 under the eminent pioneer of genocide studies Professor Frank Chalk. Kissi’s doctoral dissertation examined the history of famine in Ethiopia, and the political tensions that emerged between the Imperial Ethiopian Government, under Emperor Haile Selassie, and its successor revolutionary military regime, under Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, and successive US administrations in their efforts to respond to lethal famines in Ethiopia, between 1950 and 1991. Kissi was an Andrew W. Mellon post-doctoral fellow in the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University from 1998 to 1999, and served as Visiting Assistant Professor at the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, from 2000 to 2003. Since 2004 Kissi has been teaching and conducting research at USF. Although he continues to study famines and international humanitarian interventions, he has expanded his interests to include the uses of famine and food relief as unconventional weapons of war and genocide. He has published on a wide range of issues in his listed areas of research interest. In recent years, he has worked on Africa’s complicated embrace of international human rights norms, the comparative history of genocide and human rights in global affairs, and the prospects and challenges of genocide prevention and global Holocaust and Genocide Education. In 2009, Kissi was invited by the United Nations to write “The Holocaust as a Guidepost for Genocide Detection and Prevention in Africa” for the landmark United Nations’ Discussion Papers Journal.  He has since been involved in major national and international activities on Holocaust and Genocide Education, including  UNESCO’s on-going initiatives on Holocaust and Genocide Education in Africa. His latest book Africans and the Holocaust is a pioneering effort to integrate sub-Saharan African perspectives on the Holocaust into Holocaust Studies and incorporate Holocaust content into African history, and Africana Studies. Kissi has also been featured in the new National Geographic documentary Nazis at Nuremberg: The Lost Testimony which made its US debut in January 2023.

Media Interview Archives

Interviewed for Al Jazeera article on the inauguration of King Charles III of England          New Books Network Podcast on Africans and the Holocaust
Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State (BBC/PBS Documentary) 
Holocaust Denial
The Importance of Teaching about the Holocaust in Africa                                                     Nazis at Nuremberg: The Lost Testimony (National Geographic)                                              

News Reports & International Activities

Teaching to prevent atrocity crimes: A guide for teachers in Africa
African scholars say it's time to discuss the Holocaust, again
New Book Reveals New Perspectives about the Holocaust and World War II
Educating Against Genocide