Contact Information
Research Areas
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
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