Introduction: Rethinking Time and Gender in African History

Abstract

This special issue seeks to problematize the way that time and gender – and their relationship to each other – is conceptualized in prevailing historical narratives about African pasts. Often we take these notions for granted in our practices of research and writing. Even today, histories about gender in Africa often continue to be framed by Eurocentric teleological narratives of modernity. In this special issue – that brings together scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds, focusing on different time periods, and using different methodological approaches – we ask what would happen if we brought the notions of time and gender into a more critical focus. How would this reshape the gendered histories we write?

Keywords

• gender
• African history
• time and temporality
• interdisciplinary
• queer African studies