Women's Mobilization in Francophone Africa: Sources, Struggle, and Social Change

African women's participation has fueled key forms of political and social mobilization in colonial and postcolonial Africa. These roundtable discussions provide perspectives on the sources we use to study these movements, as well as research questions oriented on gender-based mobilization across Francophone Africa.

Date: April 21, 2023

This event will be held in-person at the following venue and time.

Venue & Time:

11:00-12:15 pm (NYU Africa House): Women's Mobilizations in Cameroon and the Réunion, with Myriam Paris and Rose Ndengué. Moderated by Liz Fink (NYU).

1:45-3:00 pm (NYU Africa House): The Archive des Femmes du Mali Project, with Devon Golaszewski, Oumou Sidibé, and Madina Thiam. Moderated by Julia Woods (NYU).

Speakers:

Rose Ndengué is Assistant Professor of History at York University - Glendon. Her research focuses on African decolonization, gender and Black feminisms in a colonial and postcolonial context, and in particular the mobilization of African and Afro-descendant women in Europe and Cameroon. 

Myriam Paris is a sociologist and researcher at the CNRS (Centre universitaire de recherche sur l’action publique et le politique, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens). Her first book, Nous qui versons la vie goutte à goutte » : féminismes, économie reproductive et pouvoir colonial à la Réunion (Paris, Dalloz, 2020) focuses on anticolonial feminism in La Réunion. 

Liz Fink, editor of the IFS’s academic journal French Politics, Culture & Society, is a historian of decolonization, specializing in the history of social movements, democracy, and mobilization in West Africa and France.

Devon Golaszewski Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Program in the History of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai Hospital, and Visiting Assistant Professor of History at UCLA. Her research focuses on the history of global health, indigenous medicine, and gender in 20th century Mali. She is one the founders of the Projet Archives des Femmes du Mali.

Oumou Sidibé is Elementary School Teacher at New York French American Charter School (NYFACS) and one the founders of the Projet Archives des Femmes du Mali.

Madina Thiam is Assistant Professor of History at NYU. She is a historian of West Africa and the African Diaspora in the 19th and 20th centuries. Her work explores the circulations of West African people and ideas; social histories of Islam in Mali; race-making in the Sahel; Malian women’s histories; anti-colonial movements; and pan-Africanism.

Julia Woods is a Ph.D. candidate in the joint program between the History Department and the Institute of French Studies at New York University.