Gender Studies 206AF - African Women: Food & Power

This course uses archival records, fiction, life histories, and outstanding recent scholarship to investigate African women's actions in a century that encompassed women's loss of agency and authority but the endurance of their responsibility for the production of food. We investigate the erosion of women's economic power and the loss of women's work of governing at conquest, in the early colonial period, and as a consequence of Africa's integration into the world economy as its least powerful player. We examine women's efforts to sustain productive activities in the face of opposition and the gendered tensions these efforts provoke. Optional fourth hour discussions.