Joan Vincent Papers, 1847-2015, bulk 1925-2015

Collection context

Creator:
Vincent, Joan
Abstract:
This collection consists of fieldwork and research materials generated by Joan E. Vincent, Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College. The collection includes ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, drafts and unpublished manuscripts, correspondence, and photographs. Vincent's work focused primarily on the impact of British colonization on the people of Uganda and Northern Ireland.
Extent:
14.34 Linear Feet 32 document boxes and 1 record carton
Language:
Collection materials are predominantly in English. Some materials in Series 1, Uganda Research, feature a Nilotic language that might be Ateso, Luganda, or Lusoga, languages spoken in the Teso region of Uganda; however, archivists are not certain.
Scope and content:

This collection consists of fieldwork and research materials generated and collected by Joan E. Vincent, Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College. The collection includes ethnographic fieldwork, research notes, annotated copies of primary and secondary sources, drafts of published and unpublished works, correspondence, 19th-century documents, and photographs. Vincent's work focused primarily on the impact of British colonization on the people of Uganda and Northern Ireland, and these regional focuses comprise the bulk of her professional materials. Additionally, the collection includes teaching materials, research notebooks and datebooks, and limited personal materials, including photographs and scrapbook pages.

Biographical / historical:

Joan E. Vincent (November 18, 1928-April 21, 2018) was an anthropologist and professor at Barnard College known for her ethnographic fieldwork and research on British colonialism and its impact on colonized peoples' social, economic, and political relations. Most of her research was focused on Uganda and Northern Ireland, resulting in publications such as African Elite: The Big Men of a Small Town (1971), and Teso in Transformation: The Political Economy of Peasant and Class in Eastern Africa (1982). In 1995, she was granted the title of Professor Emeritus at Barnard and continued producing research until she died in 2018.

Joan Eveline Vincent was born in Surrey, England, on November 18, 1928. Her parents were involved in the war effort during World War II; her father, from Alsace-Lorraine, was employed by the anti-fascist French government under Charles de Gaulle, and her mother, born in India, was a former teacher turned civilian volunteer member of the Air-Raid Wardens Service. She remarked that her father's Alsatian identity and antiquarian interests influenced her focus on questions of ethnic identity and history (Nugent 1999, 531). Vincent attended teacher training college at Whitelands College in London before she traveled to the British protectorate Northern Rhodesia, modern-day Zambia, where she wrote and published fiction. She lectured in history for the remainder of her time in Northern Rhodesia before she obtained a B.Sc. in Economics at the London School of Economics in 1957, the first in her family to receive a university degree.

After graduation, she taught at the Teacher Training College of the Sultanate of Zanzibar, modern-day Tanzania. While in Zanzibar, she and her students, whom she noted were not segregated by race, conducted oral history interviews in the field, capturing perspectives of a soon-to-be former British protectorate. Outside of her teaching, she was a member of a reserve British police unit, the "B Specials," and a hospital volunteer (Nugent 1999, 532). These experiences informed her later approach to fieldwork. She left Zanzibar in 1963 to earn her master's degree in political science from the University of Chicago. As a graduate student, Vincent was critical of the representation of Africa in anthropology and focused on comparative politics and class analysis to study phenomena like labor migration and military force. In 1964, she published her MA thesis, "The Social Bases of Party Conflict in Zanzibar, 1956-1963," and began a Ph.D. in Anthropology at Columbia University (Vincent 1996, 127).

In 1966, Joan Vincent returned to Africa as a doctoral candidate and took a faculty position at Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda, funded by a grant from the UK's Ministry of Overseas Development. While at Makerere, Vincent conducted extensive fieldwork in the Teso region. This research shaped her understanding of agrarian social systems, colonialism, and political economy, themes that would permeate her later works. Her first major publication, African Elite (1971), is a case study of societal change in sub-Saharan Africa. While organized around conventional anthropological themes—such as settlement, ethnicity, and political dynamics—it was novel in its attention to the historical impacts of monetization, colonial rule, and the development of class relations. Vincent's second book, Teso in Transformation (1982), marks a significant evolution in her analytical approach, drawing from Marxist and neo-Marxist theories. In this work, she investigates how the British colonial cash crop economy established a dependent relationship between the Teso people and the colonial state, exacerbating local inequalities and fostering a rural bourgeoisie. Vincent's analysis reflected her shift towards a historically conscious anthropology that engages with capitalist dynamics. This self-described "Africanist" period, spanning from 1966 to 1973, ultimately laid the foundation for her later research on the colonial situation in Ireland.

The regional focus of Vincent's research shifted when military dictator Idi Amin took power over Uganda in 1971. In 1973, Vincent began to research the roots of the continued political conflict in Northern Ireland after receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship (Nugent 1999, 534). In an interview, she expressed that as an Englishwoman, studying Northern Ireland allowed her work to take on a critical perspective on the history of British colonialism in Irish territory (Nugent 1999, 535). Vincent's research in this area focused primarily on Fermanagh, a county in Northern Ireland characterized by a population with political and demographic affiliations with the South (Karakasidou 1996, 2). Vincent's contributions to this subject include a critical examination of the religious arguments that have traditionally explained Ireland's conflict and political analysis of the role of British colonialism in Ireland's Great Famine (Nugent 1999, 536). Vincent also studied twentieth-century political hunger strikes in Ireland as a form of resistance to imperial domination (Karakasidou 1996, 3). In an unpublished book tentatively titled Seeds of Revolution: The Culture and Politics of the Great Famine in the Irish Northwest, she argues that British relief policy in Ireland had underlying political motives and established new class divisions in the area.

After she completed her PhD at Columbia in 1968, Vincent became an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Barnard College that fall, where she was on the faculty for the following three decades. She was also a visiting professor at several institutions, including Hunter College, the New School for Social Research, and the University of Cape Town. She was granted the title of Professor Emeritus at Barnard in 1995 and became less active in teaching at Barnard and Columbia but continued writing, editing, and presenting her research well into the 2010s. Following a short illness, Vincent died on April 21, 2018 (New York Times, 2018).

Sources: Joan E. Vincent Papers. Barnard Archives and Special Collections, Barnard Library, Barnard College.

Karakasidou, Anastasia. "Joan Vincent: The Identity of a Scholar." Political and Legal Anthropology Review 19, no. 2 (1996): 1–3. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24497847. Note: Anastasia Karakasidou was one of Vincent's students and mentees.

The New York Times (New York, NY). Obituary of Joan Vincent. May 6, 2018. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/nytimes/name/joan-vincent-obituary?id=16942813.

Nugent, David. "A Conversation with Joan Vincent." Current Anthropology 40, no. 4 (1999): 531-41. https://doi.org/10.1086/200050. Note: David Nugent was one of Vincent's students and mentees.

Vincent, Joan. "CURRICULUM VITAE." Political and Legal Anthropology Review 19, no. 2 (1996): 127–46. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24497860.

Access and use

Restrictions:

This collection has no restrictions.

Terms of access:

While the materials within this collection are the property of Barnard Archives and Special Collections, the institution holds no copyright or intellectual property rights over the materials, according to the deed of gift. All copyright and other intellectual property rights of Joan Vincent's work are maintained by Vincent's estate. The copyright status of secondary sources/third-party materials within the collection is undetermined. The Barnard Archives and Special Collections approves permission to publish that which it physically owns; the responsibility to secure copyright permission rests with the patron. Please contact the archives for more guidance.

Reproductions may be made for research purposes.

Preferred citation:

Joan Vincent Papers, 1847-2015, bulk 1925-2015; Box and Folder; Barnard Archives and Special Collections, Barnard Library, Barnard College.

Location of this collection:
Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning 423
Barnard College
3009 Broadway
New York, NY 10027, USA
Before you visit:
Please contact archives@barnard.edu with research requests or to schedule a visit; see our website for more information.
Contact:
archives@barnard.edu