African Gender Studies

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

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2. Transcending the Body of Knowledge

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1

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   2. Visualizing the Body: Western Theories and African Subjects

      • Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí

      Pages 3-21

   3. Spirituality, Gender, and Power in Asante History

      • Emmanuel Akyeampong, Pashington Obeng

      Pages 23-48

3. Decolonizing Feminisms

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 49-49

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   2. Bringing African Women into the Classroom: Rethinking Pedagogy and Epistemology

      • Obioma Nnaemeka

      Pages 51-65

   3. Decolonizing Feminism

      • Marnia Lazreg

      Pages 67-80

4. Reconceptualizing Gender

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 81-82

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   2. Theorizing Matriarchy in Africa: Kinship Ideologies and Systems in Africa and Europe

      • Ifi Amadiume

      Pages 83-98

   3. (Re)constituting the Cosmology and Sociocultural Institutions of Òyó-Yorùbá

      • Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí

      Pages 99-119

   4. Kò Sóhun tí Mbe tí ò Nítàn (Nothing Is that Lacks a [Hi]story): On Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí’s

      • Adélékè Adéèkó

      Pages 121-126

   5. Women’s Roles and Existential Identities

      • Igor Kopytoff

      Pages 127-144

   6. Revisiting “Woman-Woman Marriage”: Notes on Gikuyu Women

      • Wairimu Ngaruiya Njambi, William E. O’Brien

      Pages 145-165

5. Gender Biases in the Making of History

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 167-167

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   2. Making History, Creating Gender: Some Methodological and Interpretive Questions in the Writing of Oyo Oral Traditions

      • Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí

      Pages 169-205

   3. Gender Biases in African Historiography

      • Paul Tiyambe Zeleza

      Pages 207-232

   4. Senegalese Women in Politics: A Portrait of Two Female Leaders, Arame Diène and Thioumbé Samb, 1945–1996

      • Babacar Fall

      Pages 233-241

6. Writing Women: Reading Gender

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 243-243

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   2. Miscegenation as Metonymy: Sexuality and Power in the Colonial Novel

      • Abena P. A. Busia

      Pages 245-257

   3. Gender, Feminist Theory, and Post-Colonial (Women’s) Writing

      • Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi

      Pages 259-278

This is the first comprehensive reader that brings African experiences to bear on the ongoing global discussions of women, gender, and society. Bringing together the essential writing on this topic from the last 25 years, these essays discuss gender in Africa from a multi-disciplinary perspective.

• Africa
• children
• feminism
• gender
• gender studies
• identity
• methodology
• Nation
• organization
• social change
• society
• Tradition
• transformation
• violence
• women

'Contributors to African Gender Studies address, in very valuable ways, a variety of theoretical and methodological issues regarding study of the status of women in Africa as contrasted with notions of feminism in the North. Among those issues are the construction of gender in different African contexts, innovative development strategies, the role of the African academic, pedagogies in the North and South, insider and outsider perspectives, and revisionist historiography. This volume should be required reading for all students of Africa and its diaspora.' - Betty J. Harris, University of Oklahoma

'For the diversity and renown of its authors as well as the breadth of its topical coverage, this book deserves a wide reading. Its subject matter, African gender studies, is important not only for Africa but also for its ability to affect both the discourse about and action on global issues dealing with gender, 'development,' and social and economic justice. ' - Cheryl Johnson-Odim, Columbia College Chicago; author of For Women and the Nation: Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti of Nigeria

OYERONKE OYEWUMI is Associate Professor of Sociology, State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA. She is author of The Invention of Women: Making Sense of Gender Discourses (University of Minnesota Press, 1997).

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