Oyeronke Oyewumi is an associate professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she has taught courses on gender and globilization and feminist theory.
The Nigerian-born scholar studied at the University of Ibadan and at the University of California at Berkeley. She is the author of African Women and Feminism: Reflecting on the Politics of Sisterhood, Africa World Press, Trenton: New Jersey (2003), available on diversebooks.net
Publisher’s book description: “The relationship between African women and feminism is a contentious one. Embedded in this connection is the question of whether sisterhood—a mantra assuming a common oppression of all women and signifying feminist international/cross-cultural relations—describes the symbolic and functional representation of African women. The contributors in this book are aware of the global discourse on women as articulated by Western feminists and interrogate the issues raised by the misinterpretation of African women of both black and white American feminists. The implications of the dominance of Western men and women in the production of knowledge about Africa are also explored.”
The author has received Rockefeller fellowships, a Presidential fellowship, and a Ford Foundation grant for research.
She lists her research interests as the sociology of gender, knowledge and culture, comparative historical-sociology, feminist theory, transnational feminisms, social theory, social inequalities in local, regional, and global systems, African studies, post-colonial studies and modernities.
Oyewumi is also the author of Gender Epistemologies in Africa: The Gendering of African Traditions, Spaces, Social Identities, and Institutions (New Approaches to Conflict Analysis) Palgrave Macmillan, due out January 4, 2011. She was the editor of African Gender Studies: A Reader, Palgrave /Macmillan: New York (2005) and author of The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis: Minnesota (1997).
