Stanlie Myrise James is an American social scientist specializing in human rights, black feminism and black families. In 2016 she was appointed Vice Provost for Inclusion and Community Engagement at Arizona State University (ASU). [1] [2] She has been a Professor of African and African-American Studies at ASU since 2011. She is also a professor emerita in the Department of Afro-American Studies and the Women’s Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. [3]
James is co-editor of Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women (1993), Genital Cutting and Transnational Sisterhood: Disputing U.S. Polemics (2002), and Still Brave: The Evolution of Black Women's Studies (2009). [3] [4]
James obtained her BA in sociology and history in 1971 from Spelman College, Atlanta, and her MA in 1972 from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where she specialized in British colonial history in West Africa. She returned to the United States and in 1984 completed a second MA, this time in international studies, at the University of Denver. In 1989 she was awarded her PhD, also from Denver, for a thesis entitled Black Feminism: A Comparative Study of Women in Ghana and the United States. [3]
James has written about "othermothering" within African-American and West African communities, arguing that they are "critical to the survival of black communities". [5]
In Genital Cutting and Transnational Sisterhood (2010), she criticizes as insensitive the Western approach to eliminating female genital mutilation (FGM). She also argues that feminist approaches to FGM suffer from a "colonial flaw", a failure to recognize that similar practices, in the form of clitoridectomy and surgery on intersex children, have taken place in the United States. [6]
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is the ritual cutting or removal of some or all of the vulva. The prevalence of FGM varies worldwide, but is majorly present in some countries of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and within their diasporas. As of 2024, UNICEF estimates that worldwide 230 million girls and women had been subjected to one or more types of FGM.
Transnational feminism refers to both a contemporary feminist paradigm and the corresponding activist movement. Both the theories and activist practices are concerned with how globalization and capitalism affect people across nations, races, genders, classes, and sexualities. This movement asks to critique the ideologies of traditional white, classist, western models of feminist practices from an intersectional approach and how these connect with labor, theoretical applications, and analytical practice on a geopolitical scale.
Pratibha Parmar is a British writer and filmmaker. She has made feminist documentaries such as Alice Walker: Beauty in Truth and My Name is Andrea about Andrea Dworkin.
International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation is a United Nations-sponsored annual awareness day that takes place on February 6 as part of the UN's efforts to eradicate female genital mutilation. It was first introduced in 2003.
Conditions was a lesbian feminist literary magazine that came out biannually from 1976 to 1980 and annually from 1980 until 1990, and included poetry, prose, essays, book reviews, and interviews. It was founded in Brooklyn, New York, by Elly Bulkin, Jan Clausen, Irena Klepfisz and Rima Shore.
An othermother is a woman caring for children who are not biologically her own.
Nawal M. Nour is an Obstetrician/Gynecologist who directs the Ambulatory Obstetrics Practice at the Brigham and Women's Hospital. Her research and practice focus on providing the right care to women who have undergone female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C), also called female circumcision, and she founded the first and only hospital center in the U.S. that focuses on the medical needs of African women who have undergone FGM/C. In 2017, she was listed in Forbes among 40 Women To Watch.
Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting (FGC), female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and female circumcision, is practiced in 30 countries in western, eastern, and north-eastern Africa, in parts of the Middle East and Asia, and within some immigrant communities in Europe, North America and Australia. The WHO defines the practice as "all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons."
Fran P. Hosken was an American designer, writer, feminist, and social activist. She founded the Women's International Network in 1975, and published a quarterly journal on women's health issues that became known, in particular, for its research into female genital mutilation (FGM).
Tobe Levin Freifrau von Gleichen, a multi-lingual scholar, translator, editor and activist, is an Associate of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University; a Visiting Research Fellow at the International Gender Studies Centre, Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford; an activist against female genital mutilation (FGM) and professor of English Emerita at the University of Maryland, University College.
Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female circumcision or female genital cutting, includes any procedure involving the removal or injury of part or all of the vulva for non-medical reasons. While the practice is most common in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, FGM is also widespread in immigrant communities and metropolitan areas in the United States, and was performed by doctors regularly until the 1980s.
Female genital mutilation in Sierra Leone is the common practice of removing all or part of the female's genitalia for cultural and religious initiation purposes, or as a custom to prepare them for marriage. Sierra Leone is one of 28 countries in Africa where female genital mutilation (FGM) is known to be practiced and one of few that has not banned it. It is widespread in part due to it being an initiation rite into the "Bondo," though initiation rite-related FGM was criminalised in 2019. The type most commonly practised in Sierra Leone is Type IIb, removal of part or all of the clitoris and the labia minora. As of 2013, it had a prevalence of 89.6%.
Abena Pokua Adompim Busia is a Ghanaian writer, poet, feminist, lecturer and diplomat. She is a daughter of the former prime minister of Ghana, Kofi Abrefa Busia, and is the sister of actress Akosua Busia. Busia is an associate professor of Literature in English, and of women's and gender studies at Rutgers University. She is Ghana's ambassador to Brazil, appointed in 2017, with accreditation to the other 12 republics of South America.
Nigeria has the highest rate of female genital mutilation (FGM) in the world in total numbers. It is usually experienced by girls aged 0 to 15 years old. It involves either partial or complete removal of the vulva or other injury to the female genital organs and has no medical benefit.
Awa Thiam is a Senegalese politician, academic, writer, and activist. She serves as Senegal's Director of the National Center for Assistance and Training of Women under the Ministry of Women and Children. She is an advocate against female genital mutilation (FGM), which she speaks on in her 1978 book La Parole aux négresses. She has a body of work published internationally, in both French and English. In 1982, she founded the Commission pour l'Abolition des Mutilations Sexuelles, which fights for the abolition of FGM. Thiam is among the women featured in the anthology Daughters of Africa.
Soraya Miré is a Somali writer, filmmaker and activist against female genital mutilation.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is highly prevalent in Sudan. According to a 2014 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), 86.6 percent of women aged 15–49 in Sudan reported living with FGM, and said that 31.5 percent of their daughters had been cut. The most common FGM procedure in that country is Type III (infibulation); the 2014 survey found that 77 percent of respondents had experienced Type III.
Amina Mahmoud Warsame is a Somali social scientist who served as executive director of Nagaad, a women's group in Hargeisa Somaliland. Co-author of Social and Cultural Aspects of Female Circumcision and Infibulation: A Preliminary Report (1985), she was one of the early voices raised in Africa against female genital mutilation, along with Raqiya Abdalla, Asma El Dareer, Efua Dorkenoo, and Nahid Toubia.
Freida High Wasikhongo Tesfagiorgis is a painter, art historian, and visual culturalist who focuses on African American, modern and contemporary African art, African Diaspora, and modern European Art and Primitivism. She is Professor Emerita, Departments of African-American Studies, Gender & Women’s Studies, and Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2021 she was the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 31st Annual James A. Porter Colloquium on African American Art at Howard University.
La Parole aux négresses is a founding book of Francophone African feminism by Awa Thiam published in 1978 with a foreword by Benoîte Groult. It is considered a founding essay of intersectionality exposing the specificity of black women's feminism in the feminist movement from a francophone point of view. It is composed of interviews giving voices to the concerned black women.