Elizabeth Jacob

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Elizabeth Jacob is a historian of modern West Africa, with a focus on gender, family, and politics in Côte d’Ivoire. Her first book project examines how ideas about African motherhood shape possibilities for Ivoirian women's civic action, and how expectations of civic motherhood change over time. Other research interests include decolonization, pan-Africanism, and global feminisms.

Professor Jacob holds a PhD in History from Stanford University, with a minor in Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies and a certificate in African Studies. She also received a BA in History and French & Francophone Studies from Columbia University. Her research has been supported by institutions such as the American Philosophical Society, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, the Fulbright Program, and the Stanford Humanities Center, among others. In 2022-23, she held a postdoctoral teaching fellowship at Providence College.

At UMass Amherst, Professor Jacob will offer courses covering African history from 1500 to the present; modern West Africa; gender and sexuality in African history; African decolonizations; French-African relations; and global feminisms. 

• “Militant Mothers: Gender and the Politics of Anticolonial Action in Côte d’Ivoire,” The Journal of African History 63, no. 3 (2022): 348–67.
• “‘The Ministry of Women’s Affairs will not be feminist’: Jeanne Gervais and Gender Complementarity in Côte d’Ivoire,” Journal of Women’s History 35(3) 2023, 39-61.