Ralph A. Austen, scholar of African Studies known for his keen focus, depth of knowledge, and far-reaching curiosity, passed away on Aug. 23. He was 87.
A professor emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Chicago, Austen’s scholarly endeavors were driven by his focus on the dynamics of historical change in Africa, and how these impacted wider, global processes. One of Austen’s most enduring legacies is his key role in establishing the African Studies Workshop at UChicago more than 40 years ago.
“The study of Africa at the University of Chicago, to the extent that it has been established and it has developed, that’s due to Ralph,” said former student Michael Gomez, now a professor of History and Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies at New York University.
“It has grown, it has stabilized — and that was Ralph’s work,” agreed Assoc. Prof. Emily Lynn Osborn, who succeeded Austen in the department as a historian of Africa. “Austen launched the Africanist tradition at UChicago, and it is one that continues to thrive, in the department and beyond.”
Austen was also known for being generous with his time for others and pressed both students and colleagues to think comparatively, embark on original research and to engage broadly with big questions.
His colleague Jennifer Cole, professor in the Department of Comparative Human Development, described Austen as “very Chicago old-school.” She and others recall his regular and engaged attendance at UChicago workshops.
“Ralph was just an incredibly good colleague,” she said. “He was tremendously erudite.”
“A scholar’s scholar”
Austen was born on Jan. 9, 1937 in Leipzig, Germany, and left when he was 2 years old. His father, Norbert Hans Oesterreicher, secured visas for the family to leave the country when he was arrested and detained by the Nazis — saying later that he was released because they thought he was too tall to be a Jew. The family lived for a year in Sweden before moving to New York in 1940, where they changed their last name to Austen. As a young man, Austen wanted to travel; he crossed the Atlantic again by working on a cargo ship alongside a crew from across the globe.
Austen earned his undergraduate degree from Harvard University, an M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and then returned to Harvard for his Ph.D. While working as an assistant professor of history at New York University in the 1960s, he met his future wife, Ernestine Stotter — also an educator — at a party.
Upon joining the University’s Department of History as an assistant professor in 1967, Austen became the first tenure-track historian of Africa to be hired by the school. It was a period of transformation on the continent, as colonial rule in many African countries ended in the 1960s and the world looked to better understand the effects of European colonization and the force of African social and political processes.
His writings included the early observation that Africa possessed a rich history “apart” from its colonization by European powers, one critical to how independent African nation-states emerged. In his first book, Northwest Tanzania Under German and British Rule (1969), he described how the political project of independent Tanzania depended “not only upon the actions of Tanzanians in the present, but also on their understanding of the past.”
Over the next six decades he wrote, co-authored, or edited seven other books and published more than 100 scholarly articles and papers. Austen’s studies pulled from the fields of economic, imperial, and cultural history, and included comparative analyses that brought Africa together with Europe and India. He explored many geographic regions, including Tanzania, Cameroon, the Mande world of West Africa, the Saharan desert, and the Atlantic world.
“Ralph was both a ‘scholar's scholar,’ in the sense that he had an incomparable expertise in his chosen field of study — African economic history — and a Renaissance intellectual, in the sense that he read widely, thought deeply, and participated in the life of the University across the social sciences and humanities,” said former student James M. Vaughn, now an assistant instructional professor in the Department of History.
Cultivating community
Austen was a key figure in establishing the African Studies Workshop at UChicago. This regular gathering was one of the first devoted to interdisciplinary graduate student training, bringing together generations of students and faculty across the Social Sciences and Humanities disciplines to engage in scholarly debate. Austen actively participated in the workshop well into his retirement.
He also was instrumental in the evolution of the Master of Arts Program in the Social Sciences (MAPSS), alongside his colleague, anthropologist John J. MacAloon. Austen considered it his greatest administrative contribution to the university, appreciating that MAPSS then functioned as a “teachers training program,” largely for those going into secondary education — many in Chicago Public Schools — and providing a foundational understanding of the social sciences that would be taken out to the broader world.
His students and colleagues remember not just his active mind, but his active lifestyle: Austen traveled to the university by bicycle, even in the winters, and kept regular appointments with colleagues for a midday meal and chat — often toting the same, simple lunch.
One colleague, Paul Cheney, also in the Department of History, recalls lunch gatherings with Austen and Osborn on the fifth floor of the Social Sciences building.
“He was almost compulsively sociable as an academic,” Cheney said. “He encouraged me to think comparatively. He was just curious about everything he did. And he had an amazing memory.”
Austen and his wife Ernestine lived in South Shore’s Jackson Park Highlands neighborhood for 50 years, where they raised their two sons, Jacob and Ben, and were active members of the community. Jacob and Ben attended public schools and graduated from Kenwood Academy. Austen joined the University of Chicago Hillel and later Hyde Park’s KAM Isaiah Israel. He also taught English at the Hyde Park Refugee Project.
“He was an intellectual: deeply curious, very serious, very hardworking,” Cheney said. “But this is someone who knew how to put his work in its proper place. And he was a real family man and a community man.”
Austen is survived by his wife of 56 years, Ernestine; his sons, Jacob and Ben; his daughters-in-law, Jacqueline Stewart and Danielle Austen; his grandchildren Maiya, Lusia, Noble and Jonah; and his sister Judith.
—Adapted from an article first published by the Division of Social Sciences.
—Prof. Jacqueline Stewart
