Dr. Rhonda Gonzales has one eye on the past and the other on the future.
As a professor and chair of the Department of History at the University of Texas, San Antonio (UTSA), Gonzales is passionate about sharing the diverse histories and cultures of societies in pre-colonial Africa for future generations.
Africa’s stories and cultures before colonialism typically are not taught at the K-12 level, Gonzales says, meaning students rarely learn about the “depth of [Africa’s] history, not just from the origins of humankind and its diversity, but also the breadth and complexity of achievements of people who populated the continent and built societies.”
Through her research, however, she works to recover those rich histories.
In 2008, she authored Societies, Religion, and History: Central East Tanzanians and the World They Created, highlighting the vibrant, prosperous — but often forgotten — societies of early Tanzania. In 2018, she co-authored Bantu Africa: 3500 BCE to Present, exploring the complex history of the Bantu languages and Bantu region of Africa, an area larger than the United States. And, to top it all off, she is co-author of the forthcoming book Family Before Gender: History in Central and Eastern Africa.
Yet, despite carrying a heavy research load, Gonzales isn’t sequestered to her books. She’s a vocal leader and active administrator, too, who’s not only passionate about how we understand the past, but also about how we envision the future.
“What ties all of my thinking about the world and people — whether it’s first-generation students … or people’s histories thousands of years ago — is my belief that we have to support both the production of representation in the past and also be part of creating systems that reflect our diversity and can serve to retain our students, faculty, staff and administration in ways that inspire and empower their successes,” says Gonzales, who was a first-generation student herself.
