Gender Pols in African Culture

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

The study of gender politics in Africa is a growing field in cultural and political analysis. It raises significant questions with respect to culture, power, and representation. While in most representations of African women in various feminist writings, they are often portrayed as victims of patriarchal dominance and violence, there is important body of work that challenges these epistemologies and common stereotypes by highlighting their agency and sustained struggle for justice. Gender Politics in African Cultures and Societies introduces fundamental theoretical and methodological approaches that situate the study of gender within broader institutional historical, political and cultural arrangements and structures in African societies. We will examine in-depth anthropological discourses and concepts in order to understand gender as both a category of analysis and a subject of powerful social movements in Africa. We will explore wide-ranging subjects pertaining to the study of democracy, development, ethnicity, marginality, and the nature of political power in Africa. Methodologically, we will discuss several African feminist ethnographies that represent important investigations of gender politics and its intersections with broader patterns and processes of cross-cultural constructions of identity, difference, and politics. We will review major transformations and critiques that feminist anthropology has brought to bear in the analysis of culture, citizenship, modernity and tradition, women's rights. These topics will be arranged thematically and discussed in depth.