Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí

Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí is a Nigerian feminist scholar and associate professor of sociology at Stony Brook University.^[1] She attended the University of Ibadan and the University of California at Berkeley.^[2]

Her 1997 monograph, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, won the American Sociological Association's 1998 Distinguished Book Award in the Gender and Sex category. In the book, she offers a postcolonial feminist critique of Western dominance in African studies, writing for instance that "despite voluminous scholarship to the contrary, gender was not an organizing principle in Yoruba society prior to colonization by the West."^[3][4]

Works

• Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónkẹ́ (1997). The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-2441-6.
• Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónkẹ́ (2003). African Women and Feminism: Reflecting on the Politics of Sisterhood. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. ISBN 978-0-86543-628-2.
• Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónkẹ́ (2010). Gender Epistemologies in Africa: Gendering Traditions, Spaces, Social Institutions, and Identities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-62345-3.

Work

Oyeronke's work employs a comparative and interdisciplinary perspective foregrounding an African vantage point that remains largely unknown and underrepresented in the academy. Much of her academic research and writing has used African experiences to illuminate theoretical questions pertinent to a wide range of disciplines including sociology, political science, women studies, religion, history, and literature, all in an effort to broaden scholarly understanding to include non-Western cultures. In all of her work, the hope is ^[5] to provide a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which societies are complex and changing and therefore cannot be understood through reductionist formulations.

In 2010, she received an invitation from the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Kazakhstan to be part of an international group working on a project, Gender, Nation, and Decoloniality in Central Asia. One paragraph of her Gender Epistemology in the Eurasian Borderland (Moscow, 2009, in Russian, later published in English by Palgrave) is devoted to her book The Invention of Women .

Books

• Gender Epistemologies in Africa: Gendering Traditions, Spaces, Social Institutions and Identities (edited), Palgrave (2011).
• African Gender Studies Reader (edited), Palgrave: New York (2005).
• African Women and Feminism: Reflecting on the Politics of Sisterhood (edited), Africa World Press, Trenton: New Jersey (2003).
• The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Notes

1. Dodson, Angela P. (December 7, 2010). "Author Spotlight: Oyeronke Oyewumi". Diverse: Issues In Higher Education.
2. "Oyeronke Oyewumi". Stony Brook University. Retrieved 13 May 2013.
3. Hallen, Barry (2002). A Short History of African Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 95. ISBN 978-0-253-21531-4.
4. Bakare-Yusuf, Bibi. "'Yoruba's Don't Do Gender': A Critical Review of Oyeronke Oyewumi's The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses" (PDF). Retrieved 13 May 2013.
5. Oyeronke Oyewumi, "Journey Through Academe Background for the Journey: Pathways to a New Definition of Gender", Academia.