African and Black Diaspora Women Intellectuals: African history written by Black Women - Detailseite

This course deals with African and Black diaspora women’s histories of the twentieth century. We will exclusively read texts written by African women or Black diaspora women. There will also be a part in which we discuss primary sources authored by eastern and central African women of the twentieth century. Through these writings, the course engages with important themes in African women’s histories centering on gender and sexuality in the 20^th century. The main contributions of the course, however, are methodological ones. There are two goals in particular. First, the course is designed to make visible Black female voices in African histories, which still tend to be sidelined, and to discuss the reasons for the conspicuous absence of Black women’s writings in Africanist historiography and teaching. Secondly, we will address the central question of positionality in historical knowledge production about Africa, including the one of the white German lecturer of this course. Among the women intellectuals we will read are gender historians of Africa such as Abosede George, Amina Mama, Adwoa Opong and Oyeronke Oyewumi; feminist theorists of critical race theory such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Regina Austin; as well as scholars of Black Germany such as Tiffany Florvil and May Ayim. I expect the students to read in German and English, Swahili is welcome but not obligatory for the sessions on primary sources.