Awards and Honors
Conrad Humanities Scholar, 2019-2024, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois
Helen Corley Petit Scholar, 2013-2014, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, University of Illinois
Bethwell A. Ogot Book Award, 2013, African Studies Association
Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship, 2012-2015, ACLS
Moody Research Grant, 2013, LBJ Presidential Library
Additional Campus Affiliations
Professor, History
Professor, Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
External Links
Highlighted Publications
Brennan, J. R. (2012). Taifa: Making Nation and Race in Urban Tanzania. (New African Histories). Ohio University Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/16003
Brennan, J. R., Burton, A., & Lawi, Y. (Eds.) (2007). Dar es Salaam: Histories from an Emerging African Metropolis. African Books Collective. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/16829
Recent Publications
Brennan, J. R. (2025). African Worldmaking on a Global Stage: The Ideological Scramble for Africa: How the Pursuit of Anticolonial Modernity Shaped a Postcolonial Order, 1945–1966 Frank Gerits. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023. The Journal of African History, 65(3), 467-469. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021853725000052
Brennan, J. R. (2025). Polyglossia and Loanwords in the Tanganyikan Press, 1916-1961. In S. Newell, & K. Barber (Eds.), African Literature in Transition: Print Cultures and African Literature 1860-1960 (pp. 39-46). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009622318
Brennan, J. R. (2024). Islam, Politics and the Limits of Authority in Mainland Tanzania, 1955–1968. In F. Topan, K. Kresse, E. E. Stiles, & H. Mwakimako (Eds.), Governance and Islam in East Africa: Muslims and the State (pp. 112-142). (Exploring Muslim Contexts). Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474482998-008
Brennan, J. R. (2023). Chosen Peoples: Christianity and Political Imagination in South Sudan by Christopher Tounsel (review). Journal of Africana Religions, 11(1), 144-146. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/2/article/889934/pdf
Brennan, J. R. (2022). Print Culture, Islam and the Politics of Caution in Late Colonial Dar es Salaam: A History of Ramadhan Machado Plantan's Zuhra, 1947-1960. Islamic Africa, 12(1), 92-124. https://doi.org/10.1163/21540993-01201003