Journey into Being: Africanist, Gender and Oral Historian

Saturday, January 6, 2018: 8:00 AM
Marriott Ballroom, Salon 1 (Marriott Wardman Park)
Nwando Achebe, Michigan State University
"Journey Into Being—Africanist, Gender and Oral Historian," details the scholar's personal journey into becoming an Africanist and gender historian. Along the way, she considers questions relating to the ownership and production of Africanist knowledge; while highlighting several influential interpretive voices that have shaped received canon in ways that are at best, problematic; and at worst, Eurocentric. These voices have worked to interrupt and/or disrupt true understanding and knowing about African women and gender. She ends by offering up her own African- and gender-centered intervention into existing discourse and production of history.