Call for Papers: "Women and the Reconfiguration of Gender in Africa"

* * * CALL FOR PAPERS* * *

*"WICKED" WOMEN AND THE RECONFIGURATION OF GENDER IN AFRICA* Edited by Dorothy L. Hodgson (Rutgers) & Sheryl McCurdy (Penn State)

We are soliciting abstracts for papers to include in *"WICKED" WOMEN AND THE RECONFIGURATION OF GENDER IN AFRICA* a volume we are editing for publication in 1998. The book will be a substantially expanded version of a special issue of the *Canadian Journal of African Studies* that we co-edited, which included six papers from diverse disciplinary perspectives, different geographical areas, and a range of historical periods. We are seeking unpublished papers based on extensive ethnographic and/or historical research which address the book's theme, broaden its geographic coverage, and deepen its theoretical insights. Tanzania is already well represented in the volume and we are interested in studies from other countries, particularly papers which address the theme in francophone and lusophone Africa, urban contexts, and contemporary or precolonial times.

THEME: *"WICKED" WOMEN AND THE RECONFIGURATION OF GENDER IN AFRICA* will feature current scholarship on gender in Africa which foregrounds female agency and issues of gender, power and social change. Articles will examine the myriad ways in which African women, individually and collectively, push the boundaries of "acceptable" behavior, and thereby challenge and transform gender relations. Such women are often stigmatized, labeled as "wicked" or "misfit," and dismissed as mavericks by their communities and, all too often, by scholars as well. In contrast, our purpose in *"WICKED" WOMEN* is to analyze the ways in which these women are central to configurations and theories of gender in Africa. Whether accused of adultery, abandonment, infanticide, or insubordination, their lives and actions often reflect and produce contradictions and contestations of power within their local communities, and between the communities and the state, missionaries, and other actors. Located within the intersecting and shifting landscapes of power of the individual, family, community, nation-state, and global arena, articles will explore how such "wicked" women and the paradoxes they generate become sites for debate over, and occasionally transformations in, definitions of gender ideas and practices, morality, authority and other concepts. SUBMISSION INFORMATION: If you are interested in contributing a paper to the book, please send a 1-2 page abstract (or a draft of the paper) and a current C.V. by JULY 1st 1997 to:

Dorothy Hodgson
Department of Anthropology
Rutgers University
Box 270
Douglass Campus
New Brunswick, NJ 08903-0270

We will notify everyone as to our decision by August 1st, 1997. Contributors whose abstracts have been accepted are expected to submit their completed manuscript (7,500 words maximum, not including notes and bibliography) by January 1st, 1998. Please contact us if you would like more information or have any questions:

* Dorothy Hodgson dhodgson@rci.rutgers.edu; off: (908)932-0633
* Sheryl McCurdy mccurdy@pop.psu.edu; off: (814)865-6802

* * * CALL FOR PAPERS * * *

Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.970430165802.27286A-100000@blalock.pop.psu.edu> Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 17:00:41 -0400 (EDT) From: Sheryl McCurdy <mccurdy@pop.psu.edu> Subject: call for papers