Teresa de Lauretis is an Italian author and Distinguished Professor Emerita of the History of Consciousness at the University of California,Santa Cruz. Her areas of interest include semiotics,psychoanalysis,film theory,literary theory,feminism,women's studies,lesbian- and queer studies. She has also written on science fiction. Fluent in English and Italian,she writes in both languages. Additionally,her work has been translated into sixteen other languages.
Womanism is a social theory based on the history and everyday experiences of Black women. It seeks,according to womanist scholar Layli Maparyan (Phillips),to "restore the balance between people and the environment/nature and reconcil[e] human life with the spiritual dimension". Writer Alice Walker coined the term "womanist" in a short story,Coming Apart,in 1979. Since Walker's initial use,the term has evolved to envelop a spectrum of varied perspectives on the issues facing Black women.
Chioma Ajunwa-Opara,MON,OLY –also known as Chioma Ajunwa –is a Nigerian former track and field athlete and football player,notable for becoming the first Nigerian to win gold at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta,and the first black African woman to win an Olympic gold medal in a field event. A member of the Nigerian Police Force,Ajunwa remains only woman to compete at both the FIFA Women's World Cup as a footballer and the Olympics as a track and field athlete.
Amina Mama is a Nigerian-British writer,feminist and academic. Her main areas of focus have been post-colonial,militarist and gender issues. She has lived in Africa,Europe,and North America,and worked to build relationships between feminist intellectuals across the globe.
Silvia Federici is a scholar,teacher,and feminist activist based in New York. She is a professor emerita and teaching fellow at Hofstra University in New York State,where she was a social science professor. She also taught at the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria. In 1972,with Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James,she co-founded the International Feminist Collective,the organization that launched the campaign for Wages for Housework. In 1990,Federici co-founded the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa (CAFA),and with Ousseina Alidou was the editor of the CAFA bulletin for over a decade. She was also a member of The Academic Association of Africa Scholars (ACAS) and among the voices generating support for the struggles of students across the African continent,and in the US. In 1995,in the course of the campaign to demand the liberation of Mumia Abu-Jamal,she cofounded the Radical Philosophy Association (RPA) anti-death penalty project,an organization intended to help educators become a driving force towards its abolition. From 1979 to 2003 she was a member of the Midnight Notes Collective.
Although men have generally dominated philosophical discourse,women have been philosophers throughout the history of the discipline. Ancient examples include Maitreyi,Gargi Vachaknavi,Hipparchia of Maroneia and Arete of Cyrene. Some women philosophers were accepted during the medieval and modern eras,but none became part of the Western canon until the 20th and 21st century,when some sources indicate that Susanne Langer,G.E.M. Anscombe,Hannah Arendt and Simone de Beauvoir entered the canon.
Catherine Obianuju Acholonu was a Nigerian author,researcher and political activist.
Omolara Ogundipe-Leslie,also known as Molara Ogundipe,was a Nigerian poet,critic,editor,feminist and activist. Considered one of the foremost writers on African feminism,gender studies and literary theory,she was a social critic who came to be recognized as a viable authority on African women among black feminists and feminists in general. She contributed the piece "Not Spinning on the Axis of Maleness" to the 1984 anthology Sisterhood Is Global:The International Women's Movement Anthology,edited by Robin Morgan. She is most celebrated for coining the term STIWA or Social Transformation in Africa Including Women.
African feminism is a type of feminism innovated by African women that specifically addresses the conditions and needs of continental African women. African feminism includes many strains of its own,including Motherism,Femalism,Snail-sense Feminism,Womanism/women palavering,Nego-feminism,and African Womanism. Because Africa is not a monolith,these feminisms are not all reflective of the experiences African women have. Some of the feminisms are more specific to certain groups of African women. African feminism is sometimes aligned with,in dialogue or in conflict with,Black Feminism or African womanism as well as other feminisms and feminist movements,including nationally based ones,such as feminism in Sweden,feminism in India,feminism in Mexico,feminism in Japan,feminism in Germany,feminism in South Africa,and so on.
"Africana womanism" is a term coined in the late 1980s by Clenora Hudson-Weems,intended as an ideology applicable to all women of African descent. It is grounded in African culture and Afrocentrism and focuses on the experiences,struggles,needs,and desires of Africana women of the African diaspora. It distinguishes itself from feminism,or Alice Walker's womanism. Africana womanism pays more attention to and focuses more on the realities and the injustices in society in regard to race.
Gender essentialism is a theory that is used to examine the attribution of distinct,fixed,intrinsic qualities to women and men. In this theory,based in essentialism,there are certain universal,innate,biologically or psychologically based features of gender that are at the root of observed differences in the behavior of men and women. In Western civilization,it is suggested in writings going back to ancient Greece. With the advent of Christianity,the earlier Greek model was expressed in theological discussions as the doctrine that there are two distinct sexes,male and female created by God,and that individuals are immutably one or the other. This view remained essentially unchanged until the middle of the 19th century. This changed the locus of the origin of the essential differences from religion to biology,in Sandra Bem's words,"from God's grand creation [to] its scientific equivalent:evolution's grand creation," but the belief in an immutable origin had not changed.
Zaynab Alkalipronunciation was born into the Tura-Mazila family of Borno and Adamawa States. For secondary education,she attended Queen Elizabeth Secondary School,Ilorin. Zaynab Alkali went on to obtain both her first and second degrees from Ahmadu Bello University (ABU)/BUK,Zaria. At Bayero University Kano (BUK),she studied English to a doctorate level.
The Man of Reason:"Male" and "Female" in Western Philosophy is a book about the association between maleness and reason in western philosophy by the Australian philosopher Genevieve Lloyd. The work received positive reviews. It has been called a twentieth century classic of feminist thought,and is widely read in the Nordic countries.
Oyèrónkẹ́Oyěwùmí is a Nigerian gender scholar and full professor of sociology at Stony Brook University. She acquired her bachelor's degree at the University of Ibadan in Ibadan,Nigeria and went on to pursue her graduate degree in Sociology at the University of California,Berkeley. Oyewumi is the winner of the African Studies Association's 2021 Distinguished Africanist Award,which recognizes and honours individuals who have contributed a lifetime of outstanding scholarship in African studies combined with service to the Africanist community.
Obioma Nnaemeka is a Nigerian-American academic. She is the Chancellor’s Professor of French at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis.
Chandra Talpade Mohanty is a Distinguished Professor of Women's and Gender Studies,Sociology,and the Cultural Foundations of Education and Dean's Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University. Mohanty,a postcolonial and transnational feminist theorist,has argued for the inclusion of a transnational approach in exploring women’s experiences across the world. She is author of Feminism Without Borders:Decolonizing Theory,Practicing Solidarity,and co-editor of Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism,Feminist Genealogies,Colonial Legacies,Democratic Futures,Feminism and War:Confronting U.S. Imperialism,,and The Sage Handbook on Identities.
Hauwa Alipronunciation was a Nigerian writer known for her novels exploring the lives of Muslim women and raising questions about Islamic values and women's independence. Her best-known novel,Destiny,won the Delta prize for fiction.
Nwando Achebe is a Nigerian-American academic,academic administrator,feminist scholar,and multi-award-winning historian. She is the Jack and Margaret Sweet Endowed Professor of History and the Associate Dean for Diversity,Equity,and Inclusion in the College of Social Science at Michigan State University. She is also founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of West African History.
Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi is a Nigerian academic,a literary critic and writer. She taught at Sarah Lawrence College and she is best known for her articles and books concerning the theory of Womanism and the African Diaspora. She attended Queen's School Ede where she wrote and passed her final exams in 1957.
Juliana (Julie) Omonukpon Omoifo Okoh is a Nigerian playwright,educator and feminist activist who was professor of theatre theory at the University of Port Harcourt from 2004 to 2017. Dealing with issues concerning women in society,her plays include The Mannequins (1997),Edewede (2000) and Closed Doors (2007). She was a Fulbright Scholar and in 2011 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Nigerian Theatre Artists (SONTA)
