Robert Harms, who received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1978, is the author of River of Wealth, River of Sorrow: The Central Zaire Basin in the Era of the Slave and Ivory Trade (1981), Games Against Nature: An Eco-Cultural History of the Nunu of Equatorial Africa (1988/1999), and The Diligent: Worlds of the Slave Trade (2001). His graduate courses include reading seminars on African environmental history and African agrarian history, and a research seminar on African History.