140377 SE T IV - Gender Theory and Research methods in Africa (2010W)

By offering a historical and critical study of contemporary gender theory applied to the study of Africa, this seminar aims to explore the challenge of feminist and gender theory research methods for research in Africa. Students will be introduced to a variety of theoretical perspectives allowing them to confront feminist and gender theory with the historical and cultural diversity of Africa. The course especially focuses on the African context, however most of the topics discussed during the semester are still relevant for Asia and Latin America.
This course takes as a basic premise that theory is valuable only as it relates to and affects conditions in the real world. Thus, students will have to explore diverse feminist and gender studies research methods in order to develop research and interpretative skills for undertaking their own quantitative and qualitative cross-cultural research. In that sense, field and archival research and the methodological issues they raised in the African context will be especially stressed. Topics to be discussed include, but are certainly not limited to: Essentializing and its discontents; The Other and otherness; "Third World" feminism; Feminist readings of postcolonial theories; African Gender and Women's History; Gender and development in Africa; Gender and the African diaspora. Theorists will include Oyèrónké Oyewúmí, Gayatri Spivak, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, bell hooks, Anne McClintock, etc.