Sexualities and Queer Studies in/from Africa

Rachel Spronk, Thomas Hendriks, S.N. Nyeck, Hakima Abbas, Andrea Cornwall

This seminar takes the recent publication of two edited volumes on sexuality/queer studies in Africa as a timely occasion for reflecting on this quickly growing field in relation to the longer tradition of African gender studies. The Routledge Handbook of Queer African Studies (ed. S.N. Nyeck, 2019, Routledge) and Readings in Sexualities from Africa (eds R. Spronk and T. Hendriks, 2020, Indiana University Press) capture new directions that build on, as well as extend, previous research orientations – from women and African feminism, through gender and sexuality, towards LGBT and queer topics. As a new generation of scholars and activists joins older voices, exciting possibilities open up, while explicit and implicit tensions – old and new – manifest themselves. What are the resonances and frictions between these partially overlapping bodies of scholarship? How to think them together without domesticating their unique affordances? What has come into sight? What has been lost on the way? And which blind spots stubbornly remain?

Speakers

Andrea Cornwall is Pro-Director (Research and Enterprise) at SOAS and editor of Readings in Gender in Africa (2005) among many publications.

Thomas Hendriks is a postdoctoral researcher at the KU Leuven University.

S.N. Nyeck is a visiting scholar at Emory School of Law.

Rachel Spronk is associate professor at the University of Amsterdam.

Hakima Abbas co-edited the Queer African Reader (Pambazuka Press 2013).

Chair

Awino Okech , Reader at the Centre of Gender Studies

Registration

This event is open to the public, however registration is required. Online Registration

Organiser: International African Institute and SOAS Centre of African Studies

Contact email: cas@soas.ac.uk