This webinar is held in conjunction with the African Studies Association 2020 remote annual meeting, hosted by the UNC African Studies Center. It will be convened by Dr. Emily Burrill (Director of UNC ASC) and Dr. Benjamin Lawrance, University of Arizona (Editor-in-Chief of ASR).

In scholarly surveys on widows and widowhood in Africa a range of case studies have demonstrated the widespread collapse in communal, family, and social support for bereaved women. A sudden and new autonomy, independence, and self-reliance, however, is often an opportunity, unleashing a complex set of survival strategies, resistance, and resilience. Most African societies, national laws, and constitutions today continue to discriminate against women with respect to family, inheritance, land ownership, credit, education, health and other social and political dimensions. But as the colonial origins of many of these norms are increasingly recognized and exposed, feminist activists and domestic and international human rights groups, successfully challenge received wisdoms. While news media and humanitarian organizations may decry the “plight” of millions of African widows, exoticizing allegations of witchcraft for example, data from across the continent reveal that widows have and engage various options, sometimes remaining in a late husband’s community, and other times striking out on their own.

The organizers of this workshop seek scholars advancing new theoretical and empirical research on widowhood practices in Africa, past and present, as we revisit, rethink, and reconceptualize the experience of widowhood in African contexts.

UNC-CH ASC academic partners, particularly graduate students and faculty and our affiliated MSI and community college colleagues with interests in research on widowhood in African contexts are welcome to join the discussions on the day of the conference. Registration required. Please email Emily Burrill, eburrill@email.unc.edu, for more information.

What About Widows? Law, Custom, and Resilience in African Widowhood, Past and Present

Friday, November 13, 2020

8:50 AM EST: Welcome, guidelines, brief orientation to the day

9-9:50 AM EST
PANEL ONE: THE RESILIENCE OF WIDOWS
DISCUSSANT: Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué, U. Wisconsin-Madison

• “The Children’s Fight: The Centrality of Motherhood to Widowhood in Rural Sierra Leone”
Catherine E. Bolten, University of Notre Dame

• “Widows, Sex, & Death”
Joanna Davidson, Boston University

• “Willful Quiescence, Powerless Resistance, or Ambiguous Militarization: Exploring the Socio-Political Belonging of Nigerian Army Widows of The Boko Haram Insurgency”
Fisayo Ajala, Stellenbosch University

• Benjamin N. Lawrance, University of Arizona
“Fleeing Levirate, Sororate, and Witch Camps: African Widow Self-Reliance and Western Asylum Claiming”

10-10:50 AM EST
PANEL TWO: WIDOWHOOD, LAW & CUSTOM
DISCUSSANT: Catherine Bolten, U. of Notre Dame

• “Marriage, Widowhood, and Law in Angola, 1850-1880”
Mariana P. Candido, Emory University

• “Of Guns and Widows: The Gender of Inheritance and Accumulation in Late Colonial French Soudan (colonial Mali)”
Emily Burrill, UNC-Chapel Hill, Departments of History and Women’s and Gender Studies

• “Refusing ‘Native Law’: Widows and the Remaking of Custom in Colonial Natal, 1875-1905”
Elizabeth Thornberry, Johns Hopkins University

11-11:50 AM EST
PANEL THREE: SLAVERY, INHERITANCE & SLAVE-TRADING WIDOWS
DISCUSSANT: Benjamin N. Lawrance, U. of Arizona

• “Demonization of Wealthy African Women in 17th-century Upper Guinea”
Vanicléia Silva Santos, University of Pennsylvania

• “The Signares of Senegal: marriage, widowhood, heritage and autonomy in the 18th and 19th centuries”
Juliana Barreto Farias, UNILAB – Universidade da Integração Internacional da Lusofonia Afro-brasileira – Bahia-Brasil

• “Slave Owning Widows from Portuguese Mozambique during the Late Nineteenth Century”
Daniel B. Domingues da Silva, Rice University

• “Widows, ‘Ordinary’ Men, and the Politics of Marriage in the Early Colonial French Soudan”
Wallace Teska and Richard Roberts, Stanford University

12-1 PM: BREAK

1-1:50 PM EST
PANEL FOUR: INHERITANCE RIGHTS AND WRONGS
Discussant: Richard Roberts, Stanford U.

• “Challenges, Coping Strategies and Consequences of Bereavement for Middle-Aged Widows and Widowers in Effutu Municipality, Central Region, Ghana”
Pearl Hammond, University of Cape Coast

• “Upstanding Veuves: Redefining Women’s Public Status in Post-Emancipation Gorée”
Sarah J. Zimmerman, Western Washington University. Sarah.Zimmerman@wwu.edu

• “Resisting and Owning: Widowhood fatwas in 19th and early 20th Century Mauritania”
Abbass Braham, University of Arizona

• “The social context of widowhood rites and women’s human rights in Cameroon”
Mathias Fubah Alubafi, HSRC, Pretoria

2-2:50 PM EST
PANEL FIVE: WIDOW RIGHTS AND WIDOWHOOD RITES
DISCUSSANT: Casey Golomski, U. of New Hampshire

• “Four Months, Ten Days and Beyond: Widowhood Rites in a Muslim Sudanese Village”
Rogaia Mustafa Abusharaf, SFSQ-Georgetown University

• “Widows and their worth: the gendered politics of intestate succession in postcolonial Ghana”
Kate Skinner, University of Birmingham

3-4:30 PM EST: Rapporteur notes and closing discussion, lead by Emily Burrill, U. North Carolina at Chapel Hill