Stanford Humanities Center
Chepchirchir Tirop is an historian of Kenya, East Africa and the Indian Ocean world. She is primarily interested in questions of post-independence nationalism. Specifically, she seeks to understand how different understandings of Kenyan identity and Kenyanness have been articulated through culture. Her previous work has looked at how Indian diaspora in Kenya uses different cultural forms and sites such as museum exhibits, music and literary forms to craft and claim Kenyan identity. Her current work and dissertation project explores the role of athletics in nation building in Kenyan history. In addition to histories of sports and nationalism, this dissertation is in conversation with labor histories and histories of the body to think through athletes' work and performance on local and global stages.
SHC Project
Athletics and the Politics of State and Nation Building in Kenya, 1945–2016
Chepchirchir's dissertation considers the place of African popular culture in histories of decolonization, nationalism, globalization, and the body. Leveraging Kenya's fifty-year international reputation in middle- and long-distance running, her research project highlights how issues of race, citizenship, labor and autonomy, and international relations all defined decolonization and nation building in Kenya. In doing so, she shows how a cast of non-traditional actors move the story of Kenyan nation building beyond the boundaries of the nation-state.
Tirop, C. (2022). Reconciling National and Communal Identity in Kenya through the Asian African Heritage Exhibit. Eastern African Literary and Cultural Studies, 9(2), 111–131. https://doi.org/10.1080/23277408.2022.2120241
