Arts & Sciences

Born in Boston, but drawing on southern roots, Dr. Reynolds received his BA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he graduated in 1988 with majors in Honors History, Anthropology, and Ancient Mediterranean Civilizations.  During his latter years as an undergraduate, he served as site anthropologist and camp manager for the Kavousi excavations on Crete. After a short stint in the "Grey Collar" world of bookstore management, he enrolled in the African History Program at Boston University, completing his PhD in 1995.  His dissertation focused on Islam and political legitimacy in Northern Nigeria.  Other areas of graduate research included Islam, slavery, and Development Anthropology.  He also completed graduate study in both Hausa and Yoruba. 

Since 1990, he has traveled to West Africa 11 times -- with most of his fieldwork being undertaken in Nigeria, Niger and Ghana.  Before coming to NKU, he taught in the African and African-American Studies Program at the University of Tennessee and at Livingstone College in North Carolina (where he received the Aggrey Award for Excellence in Teaching in 1998). He received the "Outstanding Junior Faculty" award at NKU in 2001. 

At NKU, Dr. Reynolds teaches courses in African, World, and Middle Eastern History, as well Historical Methods and various courses in the Honors program. He has the honor of advising the History Department’s award-winning Phi Alpha Theta chapter, and in the past has advised both the NKU International Student Union and the campus Amnesty International chapter.  Reynolds also serves on the Editorial Boards of H-Hausa, H-Africa, and the ABC-Clio Encyclopedia of World History.  In 2005 he was elected to the Executive Board of the World History Association.

Reynolds has published in various journals, including the International Journal of African Historical Studies, History Compass, Historically Speaking, the Journal of Asian and African Studies, Comparative Studies in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Middle East.  His "bookertation" The Time of Politics (Zamanin Siyasa): Islam and the Politics of Legitimacy in Northern Nigeria, 1950-1966, was published in its second edition in the Spring of 2001.  Reynolds (along with cool co-author Dr. Erik Gilbert) published the second edition of Africa in World History: From Prehistory to the Present a core text for African History survey courses. A Chinese Edition of the text was also released in 2007.  The Gilbert and Reynolds team have also finished a World History volume entitled Trading Tastes: Culture and Commodity to 1750, which was the first in a new Prentice Hall series called “Connections in World History.”