2nd Annual AADS Humanities Afternoon
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| Venue: | GL 100B |
"Crossing The Sahara and Back: African Feminisms in Dialogue"
2nd Annual AADS Humanities Afternoon
Crossing the Sahara and Back: African Feminisms in Dialogue brings together international scholars who are interrogating, theorizing and actively engaging gender issues within a transnational perspective. Being a feminist is sometimes considered synonymous with being from the Global North. And yet, if we think about feminist movement in North and Sub-Saharan Africa, we see how feminists are acting locally, pushing feminist theory forward, and giving it a new “local turn,” as it were. Moving across, within, and against local, national, transnational, and epistemological borders, African feminists are translating theory into practice according to the specificity of local and national contexts.
The panel will explore a number of questions, among which are the following: Given the rich diversities of the Continent, how are African scholars and activists articulating and enacting different ways of being feminist (such as Secular and Islamic Feminism) in order to build a pragmatic and convivial feminism? What political, economic, social, and cultural agendas might be forged between feminists across the Sahara to empower African women and promote gender justice? What do institutions like NGOs, aid agencies, Government bodies, and regional and international organizations need to know about gender regimes and the influence of idealized masculinities, femininities and socio-sexual norms to more effectively and ethically engage various African developing nations? And, more broadly, how might these various African feminist praxes interface with, interrogate, and rework current models of development, democracy, nationalism and postcoloniality - processes that are always and profoundly gendered? In crossing geographic, epistemological, gendered, ideological, and disciplinary boundaries we hope to create a dialogue that is both materially and discursively useful for questioning how African women and men throughout the continent can live lives of decency, dignity, equity and fairness.
Invited Speakers:
- Prof. Fatima Sadiqi, Linguistics and Gender Studies, University of Fez, Morocco
- Prof. Obioma N. Nnaemeka, Chancellor's Professor of French and Women's Studies, Indiana University, Indianapolis
- Prof. Abena P. A. Busia, English and African Studies, Rutgers University, New Jersey Aziza Chaouni, Architect and Artist, Bureau E.A.S.T., Ontario, Canada
with responses by:
- Edmund Abaka, University of Miami
- Maya Boutaghou, Florida International University
- Donna Aza Weir-Soley, Florida International University
Time: Friday, November 18, 2011 @ 01:00 PM
Venue: FIU Modesto A. Maidique Campus, GL 100B
