Over recent decades, African feminisms have emerged as a profoundly unsettled and contested field of political, philosophical, and aesthetic inquiry. In the face of colonial legacies, global inequality, and transnational migrations, African feminist thinkers and writers have challenged Western paradigms of gender and insisted on frameworks rooted in indigenous knowledges, lived experiences, and complex cultural traditions. These frameworks are not only grounded in the specificities of African societies but also resonate across diasporic and global contexts. 

In a world increasingly defined by fragmentation and multiplicity, literary representations of African feminisms demand attention to how feminist subjectivities navigate competing social, cultural, and political frameworks. Drawing on the insights of scholars such as Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, who critiques Western gender constructs through Yoruba epistemologies; Minna Salami-Agunloye, who emphasizes the affective and embodied dimensions of African feminist thought; and contemporary voices such as Sylvia Tamale in her text Decolonization and Afro-Feminism, Awino Okech in Gender, Protests and Political Change in Africa, and Zethu Matebeni in Reclaiming Afrikan: Queer Perspectives on Sexual and Gender Identities, who foreground queer, trans, and intersectional perspectives, this seminar explores how African feminisms are theorized, imagined, and enacted through literature.

We are interested in papers that investigate how African feminisms are represented, theorized, or enacted in literary texts across genres, geographies, and languages. How do writers craft feminist imaginaries rooted in local and global politics? What does feminist praxis look like when mediated through form, narrative, and performance? How do African feminisms engage questions of embodiment, sexuality, labor, ecology, spirituality, and resistance in literary forms? How do they respond to, contest, or transform debates around gender and sexuality in African and diasporic contexts? 

We also welcome contributions that examine African feminisms articulated in African languages, as well as works in translation. By foregrounding African feminisms as a capacious and evolving field, this seminar aims to foster dialogue among scholars working at the intersection of literature, theory, and gender justice.