Children and Childhood in Colonial Senegal - Kelly Duke Bryant

How did French colonial institutions seek to define, regulate, and ‘‘protect’’ childhood in Senegal, and how did children respond?

In this talk based on her recent book, Negotiating Childhood: French Colonialism and African Children in Senegal, 1848–1940, Kelly Duke Bryant explores the lived realities of African children across courts, schools, streets, reformatories, vaccine clinics, and other sites of colonial intervention. Rather than treating children as passive subjects, Bryant illuminates the ways children limited or negotiated colonial reforms and how the colonial state’s reliance on cooperation produced unexpected forms of resistance and accommodation. The talk highlights long-term consequences of colonial governance, such as the privileging of chronological age and the centrality of official documentation, that continue to shape Senegalese childhoods.

Speaker Details

Kelly Duke Bryant is chair of the History Department at Rowan University, where she has taught since 2009. She earned her MA in history from the University of Wisconsin and her Ph.D., also in history, from Johns Hopkins University. A specialist in the history of West Africa, she has published scholarly articles and book chapters on the history of education, childhood, and youth in colonial Senegal. She is the author of two books, Education as Politics: Colonial Schooling and Political Debate in Senegal, 1850s-1914 (University of Wisconsin Press, 2015) and Negotiating Childhood: French Colonialism and African Children in Senegal, 1848-1940 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2026). She recently began a term as president of the French Colonial Historical Society.