Larson, Pier M. 1961- (Pier Martin Larson)

PERSONAL:

Born 1961, in Courbevoie, France; son of missionaries and teachers. Education: University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, B.A., 1985; University of Wisconsin, Madison, M.A., 1987, Ph.D. 1992.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, Johns Hopkins University, 312 Gilman Hall, Baltimore, MD 21218; fax: 410-516-7586. E-mail—larson@jhu.edu.

CAREER:

Historian, educator, and writer. Stanford University, Stanford, CA, visiting assistant professor, 1993-94; Pennsylvania State University, University Park, assistant professor of history, 1994-98; John Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, assistant professor, 1998-2003, associate professor of history, 2003—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 1985-1988, 1990-91; National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Research, fellowship, 2003-04; Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship, 2003-06. Also recipient of numerous research grants.

WRITINGS:

History and Memory in the Age of Enslavement: Becoming Merina in Highland Madagascar, 1770-1822, Heinemann (Portsmouth, NH), 2000.

Contributor to books, including L'Esclavage à Madagascar: Aspects historiques et résurgences contemporaines, edited by Rakoto Ignace, Institut de Civilisations, Musée d'Art et d'Archéologie (Antananarivo, Madagascar), 1997; La route des esclaves: Système servile et traite dans l'est malgache, edited by Ignace Rakoto and Eugène Mangalaza, L'Harmattan (Paris, France), 2001; and History, Memory and Identity, edited by Vijaya Teelock and Edward Alpers, University of Mauritius (Port Louis, Mauritius), 2001. Contributor of articles and book reviews to periodicals, including Slavery and Abolition, William and Mary Quarterly, American Historical Review, Journal of Southern African Studies, and the International Journal of African Historical Studies.

SIDELIGHTS:

Born near Paris, France, Pier M. Larson grew up in Madagascar, where his American parents were teachers, and came to the United States in the early 1980s to begin his college education. As a historian, his research specialty is the history of Madagascar during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He is also interested in African history and the history of slavery. In his book History and Memory in the Age of Enslavement: Becoming Merina in Highland Madagascar, 1770-1822, Larson "discusses socio-economic, political, and cultural change in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century highland Madagascar within the context of comparable developments elsewhere in pre-colonial Africa," wrote Richard B. Allen in the Journal of African History. Focusing on the external slave trade and how it impacted the central highlands of Madagascar, primarily those people who were left behind, the author discusses such topics as the origins of the slave trade and how it was organized. He also delves into how the slave trade influenced the local culture in terms of identity and various social practices. In his review of History and Memory in the Age of Enslavement, Allen noted: "This is an excellent book that merits a wide readership among not only Africanists, but also students of slavery elsewhere in the non-western world." Margaret L. Brown, writing in Africa Today, noted that the author "provides insights into how slavery transformed everyday life in highland Malagasy society." Brown also wrote: "Larson provides a compelling case study of the process by which social identities are formed, challenged, and reconstituted."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Africa Today, spring, 2005, Margaret L. Brown, review of History and Memory in the Age of Enslavement: Becoming Merina in Highland Madagascar, 1770-1822, p. 132.

Journal of African History, July, 2002, Richard B. Allen, review of History and Memory in the Age of Enslavement, p. 326.

ONLINE

Johns Hopkins University Department of History Web site,http://web.jhu.edu/history/ (February 23, 2007), faculty profile of author.

Pier M. Larson Home Page, http://jhunix.hcf.jhu.edu/˜plarson/index.htm (February 23, 2007).