International Scholars Highlight ‘Recovering Black Women’s Voices’ Symposium at UA

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — An international gathering of scholars highlights The University of Alabama’s third annual Recovering Black Women’s Voices and Lives Symposium beginning at 8:30 a.m. Thursday, Oct. 20, in the Ferguson Center’s Heritage Room.

The event is free and open to the public. A reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Oct. 20 will follow at UA’s Gorgas House.

The theme this year is “Transnational Feminisms: Women in the African Diaspora.” The symposium, presented by UA’s department of gender and race studies, offers the opportunity for scholars and activists to highlight the contributions of African-American women to culture, literary studies, intellectual history and feminist thought and theory.

This year’s keynote speaker is Dr. M. Jacqui Alexander, Cosby Endowed Chair in the Humanities at Spelman College in Atlanta and professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Toronto. Participants include faculty and graduate students from the United States, Canada, France, Algeria and Nigeria.

Topics explore the experiences of women of African descent in colonial and post-colonial contexts; geographic regions covered include the Caribbean, Europe, Canada, the United States and West Africa.

Presentations include “Colonial Imaginaries of Cuban Women: Good Manners, Dance and Sexuality in 19^th century Havana” by Pilar Equez Guevara of The University of Illinois; “Violence Against Women in Selected Nigerian Video Films and Novels” by Chioma L. Enwerem of Imo State University in Nigeria; and “African Women in France, Entrepreneurship in Migration: The Case of Malian Women” by Bréma Ely Dicko of the Paris Diderot University.

“The symposium will offer the larger Alabama community the opportunity to discover the global contributions of women of African descent to history and culture,” says Dr. Maha Marouan, assistant professor of religious studies.

Co-sponsors of the symposium are UA’s College of Arts and Sciences’ Diversity Committee, Arts and Sciences’ Dean’s Office, the Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration, the UA Cuba Initiative, UA’s department of American studies, Capstone International, New College, the department of religious studies, the Women’s Resource Center, the department of anthropology and the department of modern languages and classics.

For details on the symposium, contact Marouan at mmarouan@bama.ua.edu or 205/348-9841.

The department of gender and race studies is part of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Its students have won national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.