Important Dates

ICDL Round Table: "African Masculinities"

presented by the Africa Multiple Cluster Gender and Diversity Office

Round Table Participants:

• Prof. Olajamuke Yacob-Hailiso, Brandeis University, Boston, USA
• Dr. Gavaza Maluleke, University of Capetown, South Africa
• Dr. Christabel Sam, University of Cape Coast, Ghana,
• Sabelo Mcinziba, Independent Scholar, Artist, Activist, South Africa
  

Very often an unmarked ‘universalist’ androcentric, masculinist lens is deployed as the generic, normative, ‘objective’, qualitatively superior knowledge production perspective and criteria of best practice in African Studies. Indeed a frequent approach citing ‘the African man’ as the template for African citizenship and African humanity elides and erases the realities of African women’s lifeworlds. The question of ‘women’s issues’ however clearly stands in complex relation to men’s matters – be these in heteronormative or non-normative contexts, where cis-heteropatriarchal power should be part of the relational equations examined in the complex purview of African Studies research agendas. Questions around the identities of - and identity politics - of African men, as (un)belonging citizens, marginal vulnerable persons, indigenous continental and diasporic subjects, decision-makers, family and community members are rendered in greater relief in their complexities through robust gender studies approaches, alongside other disciplinary methodologies.

The round table aims to facilitate a broader conversation between African masculinity studies with a view to generating necessary visions of reconfiguring African Studies (Doing African Studies with African Scholars) for the 21^stcentury. The Round Table will focus on shared intersectional concerns including, among others:

• interrogations of modes of African patriarchy through recognition of colonial and neo-colonial influences on African masculinities
• available modes and models of masculinity for young Africans (children and adolescents, girls and boys),
• potentials for decolonising African masculinities
• indigenous and diasporic impacts on continental masculinities across religious, class and socio-economic backgrounds as well as  heteronormative and non-normative sexual orientations

The conversation is not envisioned as an exhaustive tour de force – rather it hopes to implement a more conscious mobilizing of the Cluster’s principles of relationality and reflexivity, while providing impulses for thicker scholarship through fruitful implementations of critical gender lenses.

The event will be chaired by Dr. Christine Vogt-William, Director, GDO, Africa Multiple Cluster, University of Bayreuth, Germany.

• Date: Thursday 21 Dec 2023 Time: 2 – 4 PM
• Venue: RW I, Room S58, UBT Campus, Germany
• This is a hybrid event

• Link: https://uni-bayreuth.zoom.us/j/66815848399?pwd=bFAyQ0Uyb1RNOFdvT09oRVc3MXoyUT09
  Meeting ID: 668 1584 8399
  Passcode: 897688