Short Abstract

How can knowledge across the humanities, arts, and social sciences be leveraged to advance African feminist and queer studies as intersectional modes of analysis? How can these analyses create global solidarities to counter the attack on African and Women’s and Gender Studies?

Long Abstract

Though many African nations have yet to guarantee gender parity and still others have laws criminalizing LGBTQ+ populations, an exclusive focus on inequalities obscures intersectional African feminist and queer scholarship and activism contesting such inequalities. These include Senegalese sociologist Fatou Sow’s analyses of women’s rights in the context of the global resurgence of fundamentalism, political participation and academia (2003; 2026); Nigerian British scholar Amina Mama’s crucial interrogation of what does it mean to do feminist research in African contexts (2011); Ugandan human rights lawyer Sylvia Tamale’s assertion that feminism, anti-colonialism and sex positivity are embedded in African cultures (2011); and Cameroonian-American scholar SN Nyeck’s suggestion that countering that epistemic and real world violence that ensures queer survival involves a politics of relationality and negotiation (2021). With recent institutional and political threats to African studies and Women’s and Gender studies it is crucial to discuss how interdisciplinarity and intersectionality offer prospects for “multi-layered” research. In this panel African feminist and queer thought are the prisms to question “boundaries between disciplines, and between academia, activism, policy, and artistic expression” to address the following or related concerns:

• How can knowledge across the humanities, arts, and social sciences be leveraged to advance African feminist and queer studies as intersectional modes of analysis?

• What are the forms of these intersectional forms of knowledge: scientific and empirical analyses, literature, artistic expressions, media or others?

• How can intersectional analyses create global solidarities to counter the attack on African studies in particular?

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