Marking Nuer Histories: Gender, Gerontocracy, and the Politics of Inclusion in the Upper Nile from 1400-1931

What kind of knowledge about the past qualifies as history? This thesis reveals how a Nilotic people of South Sudan known as the Nuer developed their own way of knowing the past by memorizing the names of their ancestors as well as gendered rites of passage that literally mark history on their bodies. Marking Nuer Histories then uses these source to reveal histories than have been invisible to scholars who have relied on written sources.