11:00 U.S. Pacific, 14:00 US Eastern, 20:00 CET
Abstract
Knowing Women is an ethnography on friendship, desire, and same-sex intimacy among urban, working-class women in southern Ghana. The intersectional analysis of these women’s life narratives situates them in relation to political, economic and social developments affecting Ghana and other postcolonial and African countries, including anti-gay policies and queer activist movements. Paying close attention to the women’s practices of self-reference, Dankwa refers to them as “knowing women” in a way that both distinguishes them from, and relates them to such categories as lesbian or supi a southern Ghanaian term for female friend(ship). In doing so she critically refutes both African nationalist homophobic claims and universalizing claims that categories of LGBTI identities can be translated between all languages and cultures. Engaging queer-feminist and postcolonial theories of gender, kinship, and sexuality, the book contributes to the field of global queer studies in which both women and Africa have been largely underrepresented.
Biography
serena o. dankwa is an Associate Researcher in the Institute of Social Anthropology and the Interdisciplinary Center for Gender Studies at the University of Bern and is affiliated with the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. She previously held the Sarah Pettit Fellowship at Yale University and worked as a music journalist with Swiss Radio and Television. Today, she advocates for the rights and dignity of migrant sex workers and women of color in Switzerland. She is a co-founder of the Black women’s network Bla*Sh and a co-editor of the book Racial Profiling: Struktureller Rassismus und antirassistischer Widerstand (2019).
Co-sponsors:
African Feminist Initiative, Penn State
African Studies, Penn State
Department of Feminist, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Scripps College
Program in African Studies, Princeton University
Instituto de Genero, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Florianopolis-SC-Brasil
Transnational Black Feminisms, Center for the Study of Social Difference, Columbia University