Dan Magaziner is a historian of 20th century Africa. An intellectual historian specializing in South Africa, he published his first book, The Law and the Prophets: Black Consciousness in South Africa, 1968 – 1977, in 2010. The Law and the Prophets is a history of political thought in 1970s South Africa, focusing especially on the ways that young South African activists deployed radical Christian, indigenous African and global 1960s ideas to reinvigorate resistance to the apartheid state.
His second book, The Art of Life in South Africa, is about the intellectual history of art education in 20th century South Africa, focusing especially on black teachers who were trained and employed by the white minority apartheid. The book reframes our image of black cultural and intellectual life under apartheid; it is a meditation on the nature of creativity and about how historical actors work with the possible to fashion beauty from their time and place.