Christine Cynn and Kim F. Hall, "Introduction"
(page 5 of 5)

"Rewriting Dispersal" is very much tied to its conditions of production: it originated from conversations between the Africana Studies Program at Barnard College and the Barnard Center for Research on Women (BCRW). Despite claims of inclusivity within and beyond the academy, all too frequently women of color, particularly women of the African diaspora, disappear in discussions of "women" or evocations of "sisterhood." Many Africana studies and black studies programs have thus struggled over issues of gender, even as they evolve to reflect scholarly growth in African diaspora studies. As Noliwe Rooks noted in the 1990s, a number of African-American and black studies programs transformed into Africana or black diaspora (160-61), a change that reflects an increased focus on diaspora as process and an acknowledgement of the differences between peoples within the black diaspora, even while maintaining a commitment to social change advanced by the study of race, black lives, and black culture. It is a welcome mark of our progress that we were invited by BCRW to develop this volume as one way to make visible the necessary institutional and intellectual links between women's/gender studies and African diaspora studies. The Ford Foundation's Difficult Dialogues Initiative also provided crucial funding for the effort. We hope that electronic fora committed to transnational dialogue, such as The Scholar & Feminist Online, can become important venues for the "global" rethinking of the relation between gender, sexuality, and African diaspora.

Works Cited

Ajani, Asale-Angel. "Displacing Diaspora: Trafficking, African Women, and Transnational Practices." In Diasporic Africa: A Reader. Ed. Michael A. Gomez. New York: New York University Press, 2006. 290-308.

Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. New York and London: Routledge, 1996.

Braziel, Jana Evans and Anita Mannur, eds. Theorizing Diaspora: A Reader. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.

Butler, Kim D. "Defining Diaspora, Redefining a Discourse." Diaspora 10.2 (Fall 2001): 189-219.

Byfield, Judith. "Introduction: Rethinking the African Diaspora." African Studies Review. 43:1 (2000): 1-9.

Campt, Tina and Deborah A. Thomas. "Gendering Diaspora: Transnational Feminism, Diaspora and Its Hegemonies." Feminist Review 90 (2008): 1-8.

Clifford, James. "Diasporas." Cultural Anthropology 9.3 (1994): 302-338.

Edwards, Brent Hayes. "Langston Hughes and the Futures of Diaspora." American Literary History 19.3 (Fall 2007): 689-711.

——. The Practice of Diaspora. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003.

Gunning, Sandra, Tera W. Hunter and Michele Mitchell, eds. Dialogues of Dispersal: Gender, Sexuality and African Diasporas. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004.

Lewis, Earl with Jeanne Theoharis. "Teaching Race in a World of Overlapping Diasporas." Teaching History in Higher Education. Eds. Alan Booth and Paul Hyland. London: Blackwell, 1996: 39-54.

Patterson, Tiffany Ruby and Robin D. G. Kelley. "Unfinished Migrations: Reflections on the African Diaspora and the Making of the Modern World." African Studies Review (April 2000): 11-45.

Rooks, Noliwe. White Money/Black Power. New York: Beacon Press, 2006.

Safran, William. "Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return." Diaspora 1 (1991): 83-99.

Sheftall, Beverly Guy. "Speaking for Ourselves: Feminisms in the African Diaspora." Decolonizing the Academy: African Diaspora Studies. Eds. Carole Boyce Davies, Meredith Gadsby, Charles F. Peterson, Henrietta Williams. Trenton: Africa World Press, 2003.

Shepperson, George. "African Diaspora: Concept and Context." Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora. Ed. Joseph E. Harris. 41-49.

Steady, Filomena Chioma. "Women of Africa and the African Diaspora: Linkages and Influences." Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora. Ed. Joseph E. Harris. Washington, D.C.: Howard University Press, 1982.

Tölölyan, Khachig. "The Contemporary Discourse of Diaspora Studies." Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27.3 (2007): 647-655.

Wright, Michelle. Becoming Black: Creating Identity in the African Diaspora. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe. "Rewriting the African Diaspora: Beyond the Black Atlantic." African Affairs 104:414 (2005): 35-68.

Page: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5