The UCI Working Group on Africa and Middle East, History Department, Anthropology Department, and Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies present

"Trans-Saharan Trade: The Geopolitics of African Homophobia"
with Rudolf Gaudio, Associate Professor of Anthropology, SUNY Purchase
 
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
2:00–4:00 p.m.
Humanities Gateway, Room 1002

Gaudio is the author of Allah Made Us: Sexual Outlaws in an Islamic African City (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). His talk will build on arguments from the last chapter of Allah Made Us regarding the global cultural/religious/political rivalries that underlie the Christian vs. Muslim divide in Nigeria (and elsewhere), and the ways these rivalries get played out through debates about sexuality. A number of observers have talked about contemporary African (& Arab) homophobias in terms of anticolonial backlash. He'd like to shift the terms of this analysis a bit, to take into account not just the "Africa vs the West" or "Islam vs the West" binaries, but also the complicated historical & contemporary relationships between "Africa" and "Islam." He says we need to take the latter into account in order to gain a fuller understanding of the cultural politics that have given rise to homophobic "African" publics in Nigeria and elsewhere.

Reception with light refreshments to follow the talk.

For further details, please contact L.J. Mitchell, 949.824.3841.