“Kenyan Muslim Women Leadership in Education” Ousseina Alidou

This lecture is part of the Monday African Studies Center Seminar (MASCS) organized this fall by the graduate students in the Master's program in African Studies (MAAS).

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Ousseina Alidou is Associate Professor in the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Her research focuses mainly on the study of women’s discourses and literacy practices in Afro-Islamic societies; African women’s agency; African women’s literatures; Gendered discourses of identity and the politics of cultural production in Francophone Muslim African countries. In 2006 Professor Alidou was awarded the Rutgers University Board of Trustees Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence "in recognition of her significant contributions in the areas of linguistics, literature and culture and gender studies, particularly her highly innovative interpretations of Islam relating to women and of new individual and collective social practices in Africa." She was the 2010-2011 Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching. Named in honor of the memory of the noted historian and Rutgers Professor, Warren I. Susman Her book, Engaging Modernity: Muslim Women and the Politics of Agency in Postcolonial Niger (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2005) was a runner-up for The ASA 2007 Women's Caucus Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize, explores women’s agency through their contribution in religious and secular education, public politics and the performing arts. Her other publications include Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Africa, Co-edited with Ahmed Sikainga (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2006); A Thousand Flowers: Social Struggles Against Structural Adjustment in African Universities, Co-edited with Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis (Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2000). Her forthcoming book is Muslim Women’s Rights Activisms in Kenya (under contract with UWP).

Published: Wednesday, December 9, 2015