They define the world differently”: Decolonization and the Making of the New African Woman
About the talk:
African anti-colonial movements often invoked a New Woman—free, educated, and politically
conscious—who would emerge from the rubble of colonialism. This talk examines how
this figure emerges in the midst of several historical currents: the rise of Third
World feminism, the Marxist-Leninist turn of African anti-colonial struggles, and
consumer culture which marketed a transnational aesthetic befitting the New African
Woman. Using Zimbabwe as a case study, Mudiwa explores the New African Woman’s circulation
in Pan-African media, party propaganda, and fiction. She argues that through this
figure and the attempt to resignify black womanhood, we see the problems and contradictions
of decolonization being worked out.
About the speaker:
Rudo Mudiwa’s scholarship focuses on the promise that decolonization movements held
for women across Africa. She is an assistant professor of gender and sexuality studies
at the University of California, Irvine. At present, she is at work on a manuscript
titled A Nation of Prostitutes: Gender, Urban Space, and the Invention of Zimbabwe. This book will examine how the prostitute--a symbol of the mobile and transgressive
black woman--mediated anxieties regarding the challenge of remaking urban space, policing,
and gender relations in the wake of colonial rule. This research was supported by
the Social Science Research Council and the Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship at
Princeton. In addition to her academic work, Mudiwa has published essays in Transition, Chimurenga, New Frame, Ebony, and Africa is a Country.
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