ABSTRACT
After spending three years in the MCC-Teachers Abroad Program in Zaire/Congo, John Yoder studied African history, receiving his PhD for his work on the pre-colonial Kanyok of Congo’s southern savanna. In addition to this specialized early research, he has incorporated wide-ranging and geographically diverse African settings to enrich and inform his classes, workshops, and study tours. He identifies himself as a career-long liberal arts teacher by choice, an eclectic “slash-and-burn” Africanist. His research interests and publications have covered traditional kingdoms in Zaire/Congo, origin myths in Uganda, social control in Liberia and 18th-century Mennonite Pennsylvania, and comparisons of African and Ancient Near Eastern politics as depicted in the Hebrew Bible’s book of Judges. These diverse topics have in common the author’s long-term interests in ideology, high context cultures, patron-client relationships, and peace, all of which resonate with his Mennonite upbringing and continuing convictions.
