Feminist Knowledge | Bibliography: African Women's Studies II

History  

Historical writing has made tremendous inroads in expanding the range and meanings of women's struggles during the pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial periods. Research into different periods has sought, on one hand, to avoid defining African women as helpless victims and on the other, resisting earlier tendencies to laud their agency in untheorised and reductive ways. An important comprehensive historical study is Coquery-Vidrovitch's African Women: A Modern History (1997).

Key interventions into history have been made by an anthology edited by Hunt and Quataert (1997), in which contributors' attention to the complexities of reading rebellion and resistance, raise suggestive conceptual and methodological issues for research, especially in anthropology and history. The recent wave of historical writing has been strongly cross-disciplinary, with connections and exchanges between different disciplines sensitising and expanding scholarly insights into past processes.

Nancy Hunt's work has been especially rich methodologically. Focusing on the inevitable mediation of scholarly knowledge of African women, she highlights the role of life history and the implications of interpreting resistance in African women's struggles.

Scholars within Africa have concentrated on contributory “herstory" that remedies the heavy male biases in nationalist and post-independent historiography. Notable interventions include work by Johnson-Odim, Ogbomo and Onaiwu. Zeleza (1997) has written a comprehensive review article on gender biases within African history and recent developments within gender-oriented work.  

Assie-Lumumba, N. 1997. "Educating Africa's Girls and Women: A Conceptual and Historical Analysis of Gender Inequality", in Imam, A. M., Mama, A. and Sow, F. eds. Engendering African Social Sciences. Dakar: CODESRIA.

Badran, M. 1996. Feminists, Islam and Nation: Gender and the Making of Modern Egypt. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press.

Bar-Yosef, O. and Belfer-Cohen, A. 1998. "Views of Gender in African Prehistory From a Middle Eastern Perspective", in Kent, S. ed. Gender in African Archaeology. Walnut Creek, California: Alta Mira Press.

Barnes, S. 1997. "Gender and the Politics of Support and Protection in Precolonial West Africa", in Kaplan, F. ed. Queens, Queen Mothers, Priestesses, and Power: Case Studies in African Gender. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.

Barnes, T. 1999. We Women Worked So Hard: Gender, Urbanization and Social Reproduction in Colonial Harare, Zimbabwe 1930–1956. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, London: James Currey.

Baxter, J. 2000. A Serious Pair of Shoes: An African Journal. East Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia, Canada: Pottersfield.

Becker, H. 2000. “A Concise History of Gender, 'Tradition' and the State in Namibia”, in Keulder, C. ed. State, Society and Democracy. A Reader in Namibian Politics. Windhoek: Gamsberg MacMillan.

Becker, H. 2001. “‘We Want Women to be Given an Equal Chance' - Post-independence Rural Politics in Northern Namibia”, in Meredeth T., Meintjes, S. and Pillay, A. eds. The Aftermath. Women in Postconflict Societies. London & New York: Zed Books.

Berger, I. and White, F. 1999. Women in Sub-Saharan Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Bosch, M. 1999. "Colonial Dimensions of Dutch Women's Suffrage: Aletta Jacob's Travel Letters From Africa and Asia, 1911–1912." Journal of Women's History, 11, 2 (Summer):8–34.

Bradford, H. 2000. “Regendering Afrikanerdom: The 1899–1902 Anglo-Boer War”, in Blom, I., Hagemann, K. and Hall, C. eds. Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century. New York: Berg.

Brouwer, R. 1998. "Books for Africans: Margaret Wrong and the Gendering of African Writing, 1929–1963." International Journal of African Historical Studies. 31, 1, 1998:53–71.

Coquery-Vidrovitch, C. 1997. African Women: A Modern History. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

Dunbar, R. 2000. "Muslim Women in African History", in Levtzion, N. and Pouwels, R. eds. The History of Islam in Africa. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press.

Geiger, S., Musisi, N. and Allman, J. Eds. 2001. Women in African Colonial Histories: An Introduction. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.

Gewecke, H. 1996. Women Carry More Than Half the Burden: Texts From a Workshop on the History of the Basel Mission and Its Partner-Churches in the 20th Century. Basel, Switzerland: Basel Mission. Texts and Documents 2.

Greene, S. 1997. "A Perspective From African Women's History: Comment on 'Confronting Continuity'." Journal of Women's History, 9, 3, (Fall):95–104.

Greene, S. 1996. Gender, Ethnicity and Social Change on the Upper Slave Coast: A History of the Anlo-Ewe. London: James Currey.

Grosz-Ngate, M. and Omari H. Eds. 1997. Gendered Encounters: Challenging Cultural Boundaries and Social Hierarchies in Africa. New York: Routledge.

Hassan, F. 1998. "Toward an Archaeology of Gender in Africa", in Kent, S. ed. Gender in African Archaeology. Walnut Creek, California: Alta Mira Press.

Hodgson, D. and McCurdy, S. 1996. "Wayward Wives, Misfit Mothers, and Disobedient Daughters: 'Wicked' Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa." Canadian Journal of African Studies, 30, 1:1–9.

Hodgson, D. and McCurdy, S. Eds. 2001 "Wicked" Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, Oxford: James Currey.

Hunt, N., Liu, T. and Quataert, J. Eds. 1997. Gendered Colonialisms in African History. Oxford/Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell.

Johnson-Odim, C. 1998. "Actions Louder than Words: The Historical Task of Defining Feminist Consciousness in Colonial West Africa", in Pierson, R. and Chaudhuri, N. eds. Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race.  Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Kaplan, F. Ed. 1997. Queens, Queen Mothers, Priestesses, and Power: Case Studies in African Gender. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.

Kapteijns, L. 1998. "New Studies on Women, Gender and Islam: Contextualizing and Historicizing Muslim Women's Lives." Canadian Journal of African Studies, 32, 3.

Kent, S. Ed. 1998. Gender in African Archaeology. Walnut Creek, California: Alta Mira Press.

Lewis, J. E. 2000. ”’Tropical East Ends' and the Second World War: Some Contradictions in Colonial Office Welfare Initiatives." Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 28, 2, May.

Liddell, J. and Kemp, Y. 1999. Arms Akimbo: African Women in Contemporary Literature. Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press.

Maclean, R. 1998. "Gendered Technologies and Gendered Activities in the Interlacustrine Early Iron Age", in Kent, S. ed. Gender in African Archaeology. Walnut Creek, California: Alta Mira Press.

Mager, A. 1999. Gender and the Making of a South African Bantustan: A Social History of the Ciskei, 1945-1959. Portsmouth, New Hampshire/London/Cape Town: Heinemann/James Currey/David Philip.

McFadden, P., Chiriga, J. et al. 1998. Southern Africa in Transition: Gendered Perspectives. Harare: SAPES.

McFadden, P. Ed. 1999. Reflections on Gender Issues in Africa. Harare: SAPES Books.

Nzegwu, N. 1999. "Chasing Shadows: The Misplaced Search for Matriarchy." Canadian African Studies Association Journal (Fall 1999).

Ogbomo, O. 1997. When Men and Women Mattered: A History of Gender Relations among the Owan of Nigeria. Rochester: University of Rochester Press.

Oyewumi, O. 1998. "Making History, Creating Gender: Some Methodological and Interpretive Questions in the Writing of Yoruba Oral Traditions." History in Africa, 25.

Palriwala, R. and Risseeuw, C. Eds. 1996. Shifting Circles of Support: Contextualizing Gender and Kinship in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press.

Robertson, C. 1999. "Theory in Practice: Cultural Materialism: Reflections on a Theoretical Odyssey From Africa to the West Indies." Journal of Women's History 11, 1:167–180.

Robertson, C. 2001. "Age, Gender, and Knowledge Revolutions in Africa and the United States." Journal of Women's History. 12, 4:174–183.

Schmidt, P. 1998. "Reading Gender in the Ancient Technology of Africa", in Kent, S. ed. Gender in African Archaeology. Walnut Creek, California: Alta Mira Press.

Scully, P. 1997. Liberating the Family? Gender and British Slave Emancipation in the Rural Western Cape, South Africa, 1823–1853. Cape Town: Heinemann/David Philip.

Strobel, M. 1998. "Gender, Race and Empire in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Africa and Asia", in Bridenthal, R., Stuard, S. and Weisner, M. eds. Becoming Visible. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

White, E., Berger, I., Skidmore-Hess, C. Eds. 1999. Women in Sub-Saharan Africa: Restoring Women to History. Indiana University Press.

Zeleza, P. 1997. "Gender Biases in African Historiography", in Imam, A., Mama, A. and Sow, F. eds. Engendering African Social Sciences. Dakar: Council for the Development of Economic and Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA).