History Department

Education

• Ph.D., Stanford University
• M.A., Stanford University
• A.B., History and French, Bryn Mawr College

About

Rachel Jean-Baptiste is a historian of 20th and 21st century French-speaking Central and West Africa, and the Atlantic World. Her research interests include the histories of: gender, women and sexuality; marriage and family law; race; citizenship; and urbanization.

Co-President (through 2024) of Coordinating Council for Women in History, an affiliate organization of the American Historical Association.

Board of Directors (through 2025) of African Studies Association. 

UK Editorial Collective, Gender and History.

Research Focus

Cross-Cultural Women's and Gender History; Ethnicity and Race; Law, Culture and Society; History of Sexuality; Marriage and Family Law; African History; Global History

Publications

• Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood and Citizenship.  In press June 2023, Cambridge University Press. African Identities: Past and Present Series
• Conjugal Rights: Marriage, Sexuality, and Urban Life in Colonial Libreville, Gabon. New African History Series: Ohio University Press, 2014. 
• “‘The Right To My Daughter’: African Women, French Men, and Custody of Métis Children in Twentieth Century French Colonial Africa.” In The Routledge Companion to Sexuality and Colonialism, edited by Dagmar Herzog, and Chelsea Schields, Routledge Taylor and Francis Group, 2021
• “‘To Save Eurafrican Children’: Métis Children, African Mothers, and the Reluctant French Colonial Welfare State in post-World War II Senegal.” In Enjeux postcoloniaux de l'enfance et de la jeunesse. Espace francophone 1945-1980, edited by Yves Dencher, PIE Peter Lang Press, Outre-Mer Series, 2019
• “Love, Marriage, and Families in Africa,” co-authored with Emily S. Burrill. In Holding the World Together: African Women in Changing Perspective, edited by Nwando Achebe and Claire Robertson.  University of Wisconsin Press, 2019
• “‘The Ancient and The Modern’: Customary and Civil Marriage and Family Law and Gender Equity in Post-Colonial Gabon.” In Marriage, Law and Modernity: Global Histories, edited by Julia Moses, Bloomsbury Press, 2017
• "Miss Eurafrica: Men, Women’s Sexuality, and Métis Identity in Late Colonial French Africa, 1945-1960.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, Volume 20, Number 3, 2011, pp. 568-593
• “A Black Girl Should Not Be With A White Man: Sex, Race, and African Women's Social and Legal Status in Colonial Gabon, c. 1900–1946.” Journal of Women's History, Volume 22, Number 2, 2010, pp. 56-82 
• “These Laws Should Be Made By Us: Customary Marriage Law, Codification And Political Authority in Twentieth-Century Colonial Gabon.” The Journal of African History, Volume 49, Issue 02, 2008, pp. 217-240
• “The Option of the Judicial Path: Disputes over Marriage, Divorce, and Extra-Marital Sex in Colonial Courts in Libreville, Gabon (1939-1959).” Cahiers d'études africaines, Volume 187-188, 2007, pp. 643-670

Teaching

African History Since 1945; Africa, Africans, and The Atlantic World; History of West and West-Central Africa; Slavery, Africa and the Atlantic World; Global History of Race; Marriage, Sex, and The Law in Global History; Women, Gender and Sexuality in African History