Gender and Power in Modern African History
Prof. Stephan Miescher
UCSB, History 147G
Fall 2009
T/Th: 3:30-4:45, HSSB 4020
Office: HSSB 4241
Office hrs: Wed 2-4 pm, or by appt.
E-mail: miescher@history.ucsb.edu
Phone: x7676
Course Description:
Welcome to History 147g! In this course we will explore studies on gender and power in
African history. Since the 1970s, feminist scholarship has challenged and profoundly
changed the writing of African history. Initially, feminist scholars, all women and
newcomers to the academy, sought to include African women and their social actions into
historical studies, revealing inequalities between men and women. Scholars focused on
questions about women’s access to economic resources, women’s subordination, and
women’s resistance to patriarchy and colonial rule. Africa’s historians also began
exploring gender in relation to domesticity, customary law, motherhood and reproduction,
sexuality and the body. In this first body of work, gender was used as synonym for
women. More recently, gender has been understood as a relational category referring to
differences between men and women, as well as among women and among men.
Subsequently gender studies in African history have broadened: scholars are now asking
questions about social and cultural constructions of femininity and masculinity, about the
formation of subjective, social, and institutional gendered identities; a multitude of
genders are no longer determined by two sexed bodies.
In this course we examine gender and power, understood as a set of inequalities, in
relation to socioeconomic and cultural transformations that shaped the history of modern
Africa during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Guided by a chronological outline,
we discuss the following themes: African gender systems; gendered impact of colonial
conquest and rule; women’s challenge to male authorities; female migration and
contested urban areas; sexualities; gendered men and competing discourses of
masculinities; colonial education and medicine; marriage and widowhood; gender
inequities and debates about feminism in post-colonial Africa. In case studies about
Kenya and Ghana, we will deepen our understandings of these issues. Our main focus
will be on social histories, i.e. on the experiences of ordinary men and women with little
representation in conventional historical records. Based on two recent collections, we
explore how women and men as gendered subjects were affected by historical
transformations, generated by colonialism, capitalism, modernity, yet also pushed
boundaries to alter acceptable patterns of behavior and produced changes in the dynamics
of power and gender. Finally, we will view one film and read one novel--artistic
productions that raise similar questions about gender and power in modern African
history.
2
Requirements:
This is not a conventional lecture course; there will be neither a midterm nor a final.
Instead, the course is organized around seminar sessions with a strong emphasis on
discussion accompanied by brief lectures providing further context. Students are
expected to do the assigned readings before class, participate in class discussions, and
write four short response papers and two book reviews.
The four response papers (500 words each, max two pages) will stimulate class
discussion. In your opening paragraph, you should summarize the main arguments of the
assigned readings. For the remaining sections, you may follow different strategies. You
can compare the readings in terms of evidence, subject matter, and location; you can
show whether the authors are successful in proving their points; you can engage with
previous class readings; or you can raise questions about aspects of the readings you did
not understand (it might be helpful to copy a quote or specific terms and invite the class
discuss their meanings). Response papers are due on your assigned date in class. Late
papers cannot be accepted, since these papers and subsequent discussion are a crucial part
of this course. I will read papers rather for content than style--still they should be free of
typographical errors (use your spell check and proof-read the paper). Each week, I will
provide additional instructions of how to approach the assigned readings.
The first book review (1,000 words) will engage either with Worries of the Heart:
Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya (assigned for week seven), or with Making
Men in Ghana (assigned for week eight). This review (due in class on Thursday,
November 5, or Thursday, November 12) should not be merely a summary of the book,
but include a descriptions of the author’s arguments, a discussion of sources, and an
engagement of how he/she deals with some of the issues--such as gender system,
women’s and men’s positions and struggles, and strategies in response to colonial rule-discussed in the previous weeks. The second book review (and final assignment of 1,500
words) examines a monograph selected by each student with assistance by the instructor
(monographs must be selected by week nine). As part of this final assignment, you must
consult two published reviews and attach copies of them. Your paper should summarize
and evaluate the main arguments in response to the findings of this class, discuss the
author’s evidence, and engage with the assessment offered in the two published reviews
(due on Tuesday, December 8). Double space papers your papers and include page
numbers.
If you are unable to attend a class, I would appreciate to be informed. Frequent absences
will lower your grade. Each response paper counts as 10% of your final grade, the first
book review as 15%, and the second one as 25%; your class participation counts as 20%.
Readings:
Readings marked “ERes” will be available on electronic reserves; the password is
“renovate.” Students should purchase the following books from the UCSB Bookstore
(these books are also on reserve at the Davidson Library).
3
Jean Allman, Susan Geiger, and Nakanyike Musisi, eds., Women in African Colonial
Histories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002)
Mariama Ba, So Long a Letter (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1981 [1980]).
Iris Berger and E. Francis White, Women in Sub-Saharan Africa (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1999).
Lisa A. Lindsay and Stephan F. Miescher, eds. Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa
(Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003).
Stephan F. Miescher, Making Men in Ghana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2005).
Kenda Mutongi, Worries of the Heart: Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007)
* * * * *
Week 1: Introductions
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Getting started...
C. Johnson-Odim & M. Strobel, “Series Editors’ Introduction,” in I. Berger & E.
F. White, Women in Sub-Saharan Africa (Indiana University Press, 1999),
xxvii-lxi.
I: NINETEENTH CENTURY AND COLONIAL CONQUEST
Week 2: African Gender Systems
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Lecture/Discussion: The Study of Women and Gender in African History
Berger & White, 5-31 (esp. 25-31).
M. Kinsman, “‘Beast of Burden’: The Subordination of Southern Tswana
Women, ca. 1800-1840,” Journal of Southern African Studies 10, 1
(1983), 39-54. (ERes)
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Lecture/Discussion: African Gender Systems: “Male Daughters” and “Female Husbands”
Berger & White, Women in Sub-Saharan Africa, 63-96 (esp. 83-96).
I. Amadiume, Male Daughters, Female Husbands: Gender and Sex in an African
Society (London: Zed Books, 1987), 27-50, 89-98. (ERes)
Week 3: Queen Mothers and End of Slavery
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Lecture/Discussion: Women’s Political Powers and “Queen Mothers”
A.A. Aidoo, “Asante Queen Mothers in Government and Politics in the
Nineteenth Century,” in The Black Woman Cross-Culturally, ed. F.C.
Steady (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman, 1981), 65-77. (ERes)
H. Hansen, “Queen Mothers and Good Government in Buganda: The Loss of
Women’s Political Power in Nineteenth-Century East Africa,” in Women
4
in African Colonial Histories, ed. J. Allman et al. (Indiana University
Press, 2002), 219-36.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Lecture/Discussion: Women and the End of Slavery
Berger & White, 31-6, 96-101.
M. Wright, “Bwanikwa: Consciousness and Protest Among Slave Women in
Central Africa, 1886-1911, in Strategies on Slaves and Women (New
York: Lilian Barber, 1993), 151-178. (ERes)
B. Cooper, “Reflections on Slavery, Seclusion and Female Labour in the Maradi
Region of Niger in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” Journal of
African History 35, no. 1 (1994), 61-78. (ERes)
Week 4: Masculinities and Indirect Rule
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Lecture/Discussion: The Study of Masculinity
M. McKittrick, “Forsaking their Fathers? Colonialism, and Coming of Age in
Ovamboland, Northern Namibia, in Men and Masculinities in Modern
Africa, ed. L.A. Lindsay & S. F. Miescher (Heinemann, 2003), 33-51.
N. Achebe, “‘And She Became a Man’: King Ahebi Ugbabe in the History of
Enugu-Ezike, Nsukka Division, 1880-1948, Southeastern Nigeria,” in Men
and Masculinities, 52-68.
II: HIGH COLONIAL ERA, 1920-1960
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Lecture/Discussion: Indirect Rule and and Contesting Power
Berger & White, 41-3, 101-114.
C. Ifeka-Moller, “Female Militancy and Colonial Revolt: The Women’s War of
1929, Eastern Nigeria,” in Perceiving Women, ed. S. Ardener (London:
Malaby, 1975), 127-57. (ERes)
M. L. Bastian, “‘Vultures of the Market Place’: Southeastern Nigerian Women
and Discourses of the Ogu Umunwaanyi (Women’s War) of 1929,” in
Women in African Colonial Histories, 260-81.
Week 5: Migration and (Re)Making Women
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Lecture/Discussion: Migration and Contested Urban Spaces
Berger & White, 36-41.
T. Barnes, “Virgin Territory? Travel and Migration by African Women in
Twentieth-Century Southern Africa,” in Women in African Colonial
Histories, 164-90.
L. Jackson, “‘When in the White Man’s Town’: Zimbabwean Women Remember
Chibeura,” in Women in African Colonial Histories, 191-215.
5
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Lecture/Discussion: Gendered Education and Colonial Medicine
N. Musisi, “The Politics of Perception or Perception as Politics? Colonial and
Missionary Representations of Baganda Women, 1900-1945” in Women in
African Colonial Histories, 95-115.
J. Turritin, “Colonial Midwives and Modernizing Childbirth in French West
Africa,” in Women in African Colonial Histories, 71-91.
G. Mianda, “Colonialism, Education, and Gender Relations in the Belgian
Congo,” in Women in African Colonial Histories, 144-63.
Week 6: (Re)Making Men and Nationalist Struggles
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Lecture/Discussion: Industrial Man in Colonial Africa
C. Brown, “A ‘Man’ in the Village is a ‘Boy’ in the Workplace: Colonial Racism,
Worker Militance, and Igbo Notions of Masculinity in the Nigerian Coal
Industry, 1930-1945,” in Men and Masculinities, 156-74.
L. Lindsay, “Money, Marriage, and Masculinity on the Colonial Nigerian
Railway,” in Men and Masculinities, 138-55.
West African Pilot (1945/46), excerpts. (ERes)
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Lecture/Discussion: Gendered Nationalism
Berger & White, 47-50, 59-62
E. Schmidt, “‘Emancipate Your Husbands!’ Women and Nationalism in Guinea,
1953-58,” in Women in African Colonial Histories, 282-304.
T. Lyons, “Guerilla Girls and Women in Zimbabwean National Liberation
Struggle,” in Women in African Colonial Histories, 305-26.
Week 7: Case Study I: Widows in Kenya
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Lecture/Discussion: Historical Ethnography and Widows in Twentieth-Century Kenya
K. Mutongi, Worries of the Heart: Widows, Family, and Community in Kenya
(Chicago University Press, 2007), Introduction, chaps. 1-7.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Discussion: Widows in Twentieth-Century Kenya
Mutongi, Worries of the Heart, chaps. 8-15, Conclusion
* First Book Review due (Group A)
Week 8: Case Study II: Masculinities in Ghana
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Lecture/Discussion: Life Histories and Masculinities in Twentieth-Century Ghana
S. F. Miescher, Making Men in Ghana (Indiana University Press, 2005), Prologue,
chaps. 1-3.
6
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Discussion: Masculinities in Twentieth-Century Ghana
Miescher, Making Men in Ghana, chaps. 4-6, Epilogue.
* First Book Review due (Group B)
III. POST-COLONIAL AFRICA
Week 9: Masculinity and Modernity
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Lecture/Discussion: Challenging Gender: Money, Love, and HIV/AIDS
A. Cornwall, “To Be A Man is More Than A Day’s Work: Shifting Ideals of
Masculinity in Ado-Odo, Southwestern Nigeria,” in Men and
Masculinities, 230-48.
Margarethe Silberschmidt, “Masculinities, Sexuality and Socio-Economic Change
in Rural and Urban East Africa,” in Re-Thinking Sexualities in Africa, ed.
S. Arnfred (Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute, 2004), 233-48. (ERes)
D. Mills, R. Ssewakiryanga, “No Romance Without Finance: Commodities,
Masculinities & Relationships amongst Kampalan Students,” in Readings
in Gender in Africa, ed. A. Cornwall (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 2005), 90-95. (ERes)
** Topic of Final Assignment due
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Non-Class-Room Instruction
Work on final assignment
Week 10: African Feminisms
Tuesday, November 24: Feminism and Gender Activism in Ghana
Takyiwaa Manuh, “Doing Gender Work in Ghana,” in Africa After Gender?, ed.
C. Cole et al. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 125-49.
(ERes)
M. Prah, “Ghana’s Feminist Movement: Aspirations, Challenges, Achievements”
(Institute for Democratic Governance, 2007). (ERes)
“The Women’s Manifesto for Ghana” (2004), excerpt. (ERes)
Thursday, November 26
Happy Thanksgiving
Week 11: Case Study III: Gender and Elite Marriage in Post-Colonial Senegal
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Non-Class-Room Instruction
Film: Ousmane Sembène, “Faat Kine,” Senegal (2001)
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Final Discussion
7
M. Ba, So Long a Letter (Heinemann 1981).
*** Final Assignment (Second Book Review) due Tuesday, December 8, 2009