Stepping Forward
Black Women in Africa and the Americas
(Ohio University Press, 2002)
ARTS 281
A unique and important study, Stepping Forward examines the experiences of nineteenth- and twentieth-century black women in Africa and African diaspora communities from a variety of perspectives in a number of different settings.
This wide-ranging collection designed for classroom use explores the broad themes that have shaped black women’s goals, options, and responses: religion, education, political activism, migration, and cultural transformation. Essays by leading scholars in the field examine the lives of black women in the United States and the Caribbean Basin; in the white settler societies of Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa; and in the black settler societies of Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Among the contributors to this volume are historians, political scientists, and scholars of literature, music, and law. What emerges from their work is an image of black women’s agency, self-reliance, and resiliency. Despite cultural differences and geographical variations, black women have provided foundations on which black communities have not only survived, but also thrived. Stepping Forward is a valuable addition to our understanding of women’s roles in these diverse communities.
(Description Source: Ohio University Press)
Authors
Catherine Higgs is a professor of History in the Department of History and Sociology at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus. She earned her PhD in modern African history at Yale University. Her scholarship has focused on the intersections of religion, politics, labour, and activism; her approach is interdisciplinary and transnational. She is the author of The Ghost of Equality: The Public Lives of D. D. T. Jabavu of South Africa, 1885-1959 (Ohio University Press, 1997), and Chocolate Islands: Cocoa, Slavery and Colonial Africa (Ohio University Press, 2012). She is co-editor of Stepping Forward: Black Women in Africa and the Americas (Ohio University Press, 2002), and In India and East Africa/E-Indiya Nase East Africa: A Travelogue in IsiXhosa and English (University of the Witwatersrand Press, 2020). She is completing a book about the anti-apartheid activism of Catholic sisters in South Africa, which considers whether and how small actions can shift national policy.
Her research has been funded by the National Humanities Center, the American Philosophical Society, the Luso-American Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Before joining the University of British Columbia, she taught at the University of Tennessee, the University of Nebraska at Kearney, and at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. She teaches about Africa, Southern Africa, and the Atlantic World; newer courses focus on commodities, markets, labour and public policy, including China’s investment in Africa.
Barbara A. Moss is an assistant professor of history at Clark Atlanta University in Georgia.
Earline Rae Ferguson is an assistant professor of history at the University of Rhode Island.
UBC Library Holdings
How to Purchase this Book
From the Publisher – Ohio University Press
From Used-book Sellers – ABE, Amazon, Antiqbook, Biblio, Vialibri
Paper ISBN: 9780821414569
Hardcover ISBN: 9780821414552
Electronic ISBN: 9780821440995
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