Afro-Nordic Feminisms Working Group goes to University of Iceland

Several members of the Afro-Nordic Feminisms working group presented their research at the "Pedagogies of Reckoning" seminar at the University of Iceland. Oda-Kange Diallo and Elizabeth Lowe Hunter discussed "Pedagogies of Togetherness: Black Study and Diasporic Consciousness in the Nordic Region." Benjamin Mier-Cruz presented "Diffracting the Colonial Lens: Teaching Nordic Cinema in the United States." Ellen Nyman shared her work on "Adopting Acting Techniques," and Faith Adiele spoke on "Arrival of the Afro-Vikings: The Challenge of Decolonizing Travel Writing." The three-day seminar focused on pedagogy and colonialism in the Nordic region.

Members of the Afro-Nordic Feminisms WG Participate in Panel at the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies Conference in Seattle (May 9-12, 2024)

Members of the Afro-Nordic Feminisms Working group participated in a panel at the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies Conference in Seattle, held this year May 9-12, 2024.

The Working Group’s primary goal was to bring attention to issues often overlooked in these spaces. This year's SASS coincided with the National Nordic Museum's exhibition "Nordic Utopia? African American Artists in the 20th Century." Our panel followed a discussion on the exhibition, sparking a meaningful conversation about the history and contemporary cultures of Blackness in the Nordics.

Additionally, we had productive dialogues with indigenous scholars focusing on race and racialization in Greenland and Sápmi. These exchanges were invaluable in broadening the scope of our discussions.

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Nana Osei-Kofi's New Book: AfroSwedish Places in Belonging (Northwestern University Press 2024) is Expected in June

Nana Osei-Kofi’s new book  AfroSwedish Places of Belonging, Northwestern University Press will be published in June 2024.

Afro-Nordic Feminisms WG Members Jasmine Kelekay, Lena Sawyer, and Nana Osei-Kofi Authored Chapters in the Newly Published Anthology Antirasismer och Antirasister

Jasmine Kelekay, Lena Sawyer, and Nana Osei-Kofi, authored chapters in the newly published anthology Antirasismer och Antirasister: Realistiska utopier, spänningar och vardagserfarenheter (Anti-Racisms and Anti-Racists. Realistic utopias, tensions and everyday experiences). 

Read the press release in English, along with a short description here.

Lena Sawyer and Nana Osei-Kofi’s chapter is called Antirasistisk pedagogik: Motarkivering som social omsorg and Jasmine Kelekay’s is called Afrosvensk aktivism i kölvattnet av Black Lives Matter.

Afro-Nordic Feminisms Co-Directors Monica L. Miller and Nana Osei-Kofi co-authored the introduction to I Talk about It All the Time by Camara Lundestad Joof

Afro-Nordic Feminisms Co-Directors Monica L. Miller and Nana Osei-Kofi co-authored the introduction to I Talk about It All the Time by Camara Lundestad Joof, translated by Olivia Gunn, newly published by the University of Wisconsin Press. 

Nana Osei-Kofi & Lena Sawyer co-authored, “Counter Archiving as a Decolonial Pedagogy of Collective Care,” published in Decolonising Social Work in Finland: Racialisation and Practices of Care

Nana Osei-Kofi and Lena Sawyer co-authored, along with Kris Clarke, “Counter Archiving as a Decolonial Pedagogy of Collective Care,” published in Decolonising Social Work in Finland: Racialisation and Practices of Care in March 2024.

Tess Skadegård Thorsen from Afro-Nordic Feminisms WG Co-Authored a Chapter in the New Book: (Farve)blinde vinkler – om racialisering, ulighed og andetgørelse i pædagogisk praksis

Tess Skadegård Thorsen also co-authored a chapter in Danish with Mira C. Skadegård in the new book (Farve)blinde vinkler – om racialisering, ulighed og andetgørelse i pædagogisk praksis. (Colour)Blind angles - on racialization, inequity, and othering in pedagogical practices. Their chapter is called Velmenende og almendannende – Diskrimination, racisme og den gode intention i gymnasieundervisning. (Well-meaning and educational - Discrimination, racism, and good intentions in high-school education.)

Afro-Nordic Feminisms WG Member Tess Skadegård Thorsen Joins Danish Delegation to Brussels in April

Tess Skadegård Thorsen joined a Danish delegation to Brussels in April 2024, where she met with policy-makers and legislators for discussions on gender, racism, and AI regulation.  On 16 April, she also gave a guest lecture at Copenhagen University on the Acts, (arti)Facts, and Politics of Representation in Danish Film.

An Update on the Wonderful Work of Faith Adiele from the Afro-Nordic Feminisms WG

Afro-Nordic Feminisms Working Group member Faith Adiele’s experimental essay on her parents' courtship will appear in a special issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review: African Writing: A Partial Cartography of Provocations, edited by Chris Abani.

In November, she presented on decolonial travel at the British Virgin Island Literary Fest with members of the Virgin Islands Studies Collective (Road Town, BVI). In early December, she hosted the 2nd Annual African Literary Award at the Museum of the African Diaspora (San Francisco, USA); she also received a San Francisco Press Club Award for her entertainment review “A Light in the Window of the World: Protest Art and Black Liberation” in Smithsonian Folklife. Read more about the award here.

In addition, two writing projects launched in December: Life in the Temporary, a bilingual Arabic-English anthology published by the Olive Writers Association based in Casablanca, Morocco that she co-edited; and, the latest issue of Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature (London, UK) where she edits the Decolonising Travel section and also has an essay included about getting braids in Morocco and Nigeria.

Congratulations to Recent PhD Graduates Elizabeth Löwe Hunter & Oda-Kange Midtvåge-Diallo

CSSD is thrilled to announce that Afro-Nordic Feminisms Working Group members Elizabeth Löwe Hunter and Oda-Kange Midtvåge-Diallo recently completed their PhDs at the University of California, Berkeley, Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies, and the Norwegian Technical University, Department of Comparative Cultural Studies, respectively. 

Midtvåge-Diallo’s dissertation, “Joining in Black Study: Knowledge Creation and Black Feminist Critique Alongside African Norwegian Youth” is now publicly available. 

Afro-Nordic Feminisms WG Member Jasmine Kelekay to Join Howard University's Department of Sociology and Criminology in Fall 2024

CSSD wishes to congratulate Afro-Nordic Feminisms Working Group member Jasmine Kelekay, who will be joining Howard University’s Department of Sociology and Criminology as an Assistant Professor in the fall of 2024. 

Afro-Nordic Feminisms WG Members to be in Conversation at UC Berkeley's Nordic Center

On December 6, two members of the Afro-Nordic Feminisms Working Group, Elizabeth Löwe Hunter and Jasmine Kelekay, will be in conversation at the Nordic Center at UC Berkeley. Part of the Nordic Talks podcast, the conversation will be available after the event: The Myth of the Nordic Utopia - Social Democracy Through Afro-Nordic Perspectives.

Afro-Nordic Feminisms WG Member Temi Odumuso Participated in Weekend of Archival Happenings at SouthNord Artfest

In late November, Afro-Nordic Feminisms Working Group member Temi Odumuso participated in a weekend of archival happenings at the SouthNord Artfest at Kulturhuset in Stockholm, Sweden.  She was part of a mini-seminar in collaboration with the Ethnographic Museum on the history of black people in the Nordics.

Afro-Nordic Feminisms WG Members Delivery Keynote at Copenhagen Conference

Afro-Nordic Feminisms Working Group members Oda-Kange Midtvåge Diallo, Lena Sawyer, and Jasmine Kelekay gave a collective keynote at a conference on "Engaging with diversity work as atmospheric work" in Copenhagen on November 28th. They presented the talk as members of Kollektiv Omsorg, based on their recent article "Writing Letters as Counter-Archiving: An Afro-Nordic Feminist Care Practice" which was published in the Meridians special issue on BIPOC Europe, which was co-edited by AfroNordic Feminisms group member Nana Osei-Kofi and Shirley Tate. 

Recap: Afro-Nordic Feminisms Working Group Meeting from Nov. 9-12

The Afro-Nordic Feminisms Working Group met in New York from 9-12 November.

Our conversations ranged around the terms that animate our group: "Afro," "Nordic" and "Feminism"; in addition, we shared our work with each other in order to plan a concrete project or set of interventions that our group will engage in during spring of 2024 and the future. We are exploring the following possibilities: 1) a panel at the Scandinavian Studies Association in Seattle in May in conversation with the Nordic Utopias exhibition at the National Nordic Museum; 2) a possible project mapping the genealogy of AfroNordic Feminist scholars and their work 3) staging a series of conversations amongst ourselves in either podcast or textual form about the challenges of doing this work in the US/Nordics, scholarly positionality, language justice in the field, among other topics.

Afro-Nordic Feminisms WG Members Contribute to Special Issue of Kvinder, Køn og Forskning

Two members of the Afro-Nordic Feminisms Working Group, Elizabeth Löwe Hunter and Oda-Kange Midtvåge Diallo, contributed to a special issue of the academic journal Kvinder, Køn og Forskning on Racialization and Racism in Denmark, which was recently published. It includes articles in English as well as Danish and a panel discussion on research and education in which Löwe Hunter and Midtvåge Diallo participated.