Alum completes doctorate in African history

Elizabeth Timbs, who graduated from the History M.A. at Mason in 2009 (she wrote her M.A. thesis under the direction of Dr. Benedict Carton), has now completed her doctoral degree at Michigan State University.  On February 19 she defended her doctoral dissertation, "The Regiments: Cultural Histories of Zulu Masculinities and Gender Formation in South Africa, 1816-2018." The dissertation examines the history of Zulu martial heritage through the prism of the amabutho (regiments, age-grades) in South Africa, from the era of Shaka Zulu (ca. 1816) to the present.