Stanlie James

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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]

Contents

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]

Education

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]

Research

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]

Selected works

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Female genital mutilation</span> Ritual cutting or removal of some or all of the external female genitalia

Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting, female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) and female circumcision, is the ritual cutting or removal of some or all of the external female genitalia. The practice is found in some countries of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and within their respective diasporas. UNICEF estimated in 2016 that 200 million women in 30 countries—Indonesia, Iraq, Yemen, and 27 African countries including Egypt—had been subjected to one or more types of female genital mutilation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genital modification and mutilation</span> Permanent or temporary changes to human sex organs

The terms genital modification and genital mutilation can refer to permanent or temporary changes to human sex organs. Some forms of genital alteration are performed on adults with their informed consent at their own behest, usually for aesthetic reasons or to enhance stimulation. However, other forms are performed on people who do not give informed consent, including infants or children. Any of these procedures may be considered modifications or mutilations in different cultural contexts and by different groups of people.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Efua Dorkenoo</span>

Efua Dorkenoo, OBE, affectionately known as "Mama Efua", was a Ghanaian-British campaigner against female genital mutilation (FGM) who pioneered the global movement to end the practice and worked internationally for more than 30 years to see the campaign "move from a problem lacking in recognition to a key issue for governments around the world."

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.

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.

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.

<i>Conditions</i> (magazine)

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Prevalence of female genital mutilation</span>

Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting (FGC), 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."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tobe Levin</span>

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 in the United Kingdom is the ritual removal of some or all of the external female genitalia of women and girls living in the UK. According to Equality Now and City University London, an estimated 103,000 women and girls aged 15–49 were thought to be living with female genital mutilation (FGM) in England and Wales as of 2011.

Abena Pokua Adompim Busia is a Ghanaian writer, poet, feminist, lecturer and diplomat. She is a daughter of 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.

Female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as Female Genital Cutting (FGC) in Nigeria accounts for the most female genital cutting/mutilation (FGM/C) cases worldwide. The practice is customarily a family tradition that the young female of the age 0-15 would experience. It is a procedure that involves partial or completely removing the external females genitalia or other injury to the female genital organs whenever for non-medical reasons.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Awa Thiam</span>

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.

Asma Abdel Rahim El Dareer is a Sudanese physician known for her research in the 1980s into female genital mutilation. She was one of the first Arab women and feminist doctors to speak out publicly against the practice.

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.

The legal status of female genital mutilation (FGM), also known as female genital cutting (FGC), differs widely across the world.

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.

References

  1. "Stanlie James", Arizona State University.
  2. "ASU's Stanlie James to guide university's commitment to inclusion", Arizona State University.
  3. 1 2 3 "Stanlie James: Curriculum vitae", Arizona State University.
  4. "Stanlie M. James", The Feminist Press at CUNY.
  5. King, Deborah K. (2010). "Mom-in-Chief: Community Othermothering and Michelle Obama, the First Lady of the People's House". In Bruce, Marino Anton; Cunnigen, Donald (eds.). Race in the Age of Obama. Emerald Group Publishing. p.  89.
    Barnes, Marian (2005). Caring and Social Justice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p.  153.
    James, Stanlie M. (1993). "Mothering: A Possible Black Feminist Link to Social Transformation". In Stanlie M. James and Abena P. A. Busia (ed.). Theorizing Black Feminisms: The Visionary Pragmatism of Black Women. New York: Routledge. p. 45. ISBN   0-415-07336-7.
  6. Pedwell, Carolyn (2010). Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice: The Rhetorics of Comparison. New York: Routledge. p. 64.
    James, Stanlie M. (2002). "Listening to Other(ed) Voices: Reflections around Female Genital Cutting". In Stanlie M. James and Claire C. Robertson. Genital Cutting and Transnational Sisterhood: Disputing U.S. Polemics. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp.  87–113.