Jill E. Kelly

Dr. Kelly is a historian of South Africa. She writes about violence, women, and traditional authority during colonialism and apartheid. Dr. Kelly mentors undergraduate and graduate researchers in oral history, including the Voices of SMU Oral History Project. Her new work in medical humanities considers an isiZulu-speaking medical doctor interested in culturally relevant mental health under apartheid. She is also a PI on the Global Oral History of PEPFAR project with the SMU Center for Presidential History. She is a recipient of the M Award, SMU’s highest honor bestowed upon students, faculty and staff who give unselfishly of their talents to better the University.

Educational Background

Ph.D., Michigan State University, 2012

B.A., Saint Vincent College, 2004

Kelly CV 2025

Awards, Fellowships, and Grants

2023 The New York Public Library Short-Term Fellowship, Schomburg Center
2023-24 Tom Tunks Distinguished University Citizen Award
2023 Dedman College Dean’s Research Council Grant
2023 Center for Presidential History’s History Department Writing Fellowship
2023 Sam Taylor Research Fellowship
2023 Southern Methodist University Research Council Travel Grant
2022 Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study Writing Fellowship
2020 Altshuler Distinguished Teacher Professor Award
2020 M Award
2018-2019 Fulbright U.S. Scholar Grant
2018 Dedman College Dean’s Research Council Grant
2017-2018 Southern Methodist University Research Council Research Grant
2016-2017 Sam Taylor Research Fellowship
2016 Engaged Learning Excellence in Mentoring Award
2015 Southern Methodist University Research Council Travel Grant
2015 Southern Methodist University Golden Mustang Teaching Award
2015 American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship

Publications 

Books

• No Ordinary Letter: A Gendered History of Rural Violence and Shame in Apartheid South Africa.Under contract with Ohio University Press New African Histories series.
• To Swim with Crocodiles: Land, Violence, and Belonging in South Africa, 1800-1996 (Michigan State University Press, 2018 and University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, 2019).

Articles and Chapters

• “Les récits de la terre spoliée: Quand la mémoire des conflits locaux façonne la fin de l’apartheid,” 20&21e siècle: Revue d'Histoire. Special Issue on Transitions(April-June 2025): 119-132.
• “Nokukhanya Luthuli as First Lady of the African National Congress.” International Journal of African Historical Studies 57, no. 3 (2024): 287-306.
• “Nokukhanya Luthuli: South African Women’s Leader,” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History. Oxford University Press (2024).
• “Mdluli Backstories and Biographies: Shaka Zulu and the Persistence of Amalala Identities.” Historia 69, no. 1 (2024): 77-100.
• “Land Reform for a Landless Chief in South Africa: History and Land Restitution in KwaZulu-Natal,”African Studies Review 64, no. 4 (2021): 884-908.
• “King Zwelithini and the Historians,” with Jabulani Sithole and Liz Timbs, in South African Historical Journal 73, no. 2 (2021).
• “In Peace and Rebellion: Inkosi Mhlabunzima Maphumulo” in Born out of Sorrow: Essays on Pietermaritzburg and the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands under Apartheid (1948-1994), Natal Society Foundation (2021): 211-228.
• “Teaching South African History in the Digital Age: Collaboration, Pedagogy, and Popularizing History,” with Omar Badsha, Special Issue, History in Africa 47 (2020): 297-325.
• “Gender, Shame, and the ‘Efficacy of Congress Methods of Struggle’ in 1959 Natal Women’s Revolts,” South African Historical Journal 71, no. 2 (2019).
• “Bantu Authorities and Betterment: The Ambiguous Responses of Natal’s Chiefs and Regents, 1955-1970,” Journal of Southern African Studies 41, no. 2 (2015).
• “Women Were Not Supposed to Fight”: The Gendered Uses of Martial and Moral Zuluness during uDlame (1990-1994) in Jan Bender Shetler (ed.), Gendering Ethnicity in African Women’s Lives. University of Wisconsin Press (May 2015).
• “‘It is because of our Islam that we are there’: The Call of Islam in the United Democratic Front,” African Historical Review 41, no. 1 (2009): 118-139.

Current Research

“No Ordinary Letter: A Gendered History of Rural Violence and Shame in Apartheid South Africa” documents rurally-based South African women’s organizing in 1959. Across the province of Natal that year, women campaigned to end apartheid policies of Bantu Authorities, agricultural planning schemes that included cattle culling and maintenance of dipping tanks, low wages, influx control that limited access to the city, and the extension of passes to women. The book considers what women knew and drew upon to inform their decisions to act or not, as well as the nature of those actions, both violent and peaceful. This repertoire included the everyday violence of apartheid and the cultures of honor that enabled them to shame others into action. It highlights how women articulated new knowledge based on their experiences, theorizing their positions as women under apartheid law and navigating the patriarchies that shaped their lives. The manuscript thus takes seriously rural women’s theoretical and tactical contributions to the daily struggle for dignity and the fight for equality in apartheid South Africa.