African Feminist Scholars in Women’s Studies: Negotiating Spaces of Dislocation and Transformation in the Study of Women

Citation:

Beoku-Betts, Josephine A., and Wairimu Ngaruiya Njambi. 2005. “African Feminist Scholars in Women’s Studies: Negotiating Spaces of Dislocation and Transformation in the Study of Women.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 6 (1): 113–32.

Authors: Josephine A. Beoku-Betts, Wairimu Ngaruiya Njamb

Abstract:

This paper examines some of the dilemmas and problems experienced by some African women scholars in U.S. academic institutions and how such experiences in turn inform of the nature of their relationships with colleagues and students, and the pedagogical and resistance strategies that they practice in such situations that we encounter. We are aware that concerns and perspectives that we bring to our work are marked by our historical, educational, political, and cultural location as Africans and feminists, as well as by our experience of living in the United States with our newly acquired identities as “Black women,” and as “third world immigrants." Additionally, our usage of the phrase "African women” is not intended to imply that there is such a thing as a coherent or unitary group that can be identified as such. Just as the term “women of color” or “third world women,” African women is employed here to emphasize a political constituency rather than a biological bond. For both of us, learning how to see ourselves as Africans has been largely shaped by our similar political struggle and desires to name and resist oppressive conditions the we find in U.S. academia.

Topics: Feminisms, Gender, Women Regions: Africa, Americas, North America Countries: United States of America

Year: 2005