Sara Byala is a Senior Lecturer in Critical Writing and a scholar of modern African history. South African born, Byala holds a PhD from Harvard University and a BA from Tufts University. Her research into the ways in which capitalist systems intersect with social and cultural forces in Africa culminated in Bottled: How Coca-Cola Became African (Hurst, 2023). Based upon extensive archival research and fieldwork in Africa, Bottled suggests that the history and footprint of Coca-Cola in Africa is best understood as evidence of the company’s localness.
Byala’s early work explored the import of colonial archives in postcolonial times through the biography of a cultural history museum and resulted in A Place that Matters Yet: John Gubbins’s MuseumAfrica in thePostcolonial World (University of Chicago Press, 2013). She is currently embarking on new projects relating to religion and migration on the African continent.
Byala has taught a wide range of writing seminars about Africa, including ones on Coca-Cola, soccer, truth commissions, and cocoa. She also teaches Craft of Prose and Penn Global Seminars, which include travel to countries in Africa.
Email: sarabyala@gmail.com
