African Feminist Girlhood Studies and Development

This project draws on African feminisms to propose major questions about the agency of girls. The central research questions of the book are: what is the history of girlhood on the ground in various regions of Africa? In African contexts, how are humanistic approaches helping social scientists and development practitioners to unravel some of the seemingly intractable challenges? In what ways might development projects defined and shaped by adolescent African girls enhance our understanding of their aspirations as they face obdurate, thorny obstacles? And, finally, how might their insights on radical care approaches, despite their marginalization, lead readers to think in new ways about critically beneficial and realistic interventions to poverty, oppression, and inequality for those constructed as the most vulnerable? The authors expand the existing conversation by drawing upon epistemological foundations emerging from groundbreaking work in the history of gender in Africa. The data and analyses presented in this work contribute original cases and insights to the fields of African politics, girlhood studies, African feminisms, African histories, and development studies.
Catherine Cymone Fourshey is Professor of History and International Relations and Director of The Griot Institute at Bucknell University, USA.

 Marla L. Jaksch is the Barbara Meyers Pelson '59 Endowed Chair in Faculty-Student Engagement and Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The College of New Jersey, USA.   Relebohile Moletsane is Professor and the JL Dube Chair in Rural Education in the School of Education at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and South African Research Chair (SARChI) in Gender-based Violence and Femicide at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.