Professor Marc Epprecht
New African Queer Historical Studies
Thursday, October 17, 2019
4:00 p.m.
CMU 120
University of Washington
Scholarship on sexual orientation and gender identity/expression (SOGIE) in Africa south of the Sahara has exploded in the past decade. In the past two years, Professor Marc Epprecht has been involved in the launch of seven impressive volumes in different capacities, from examiner (pass!), peer reviewer (publish!), to editor to co-author. In this presentation, he will reflect critically on these and several other new contributions to the field. They are monographs, edited collections, and one encyclopedia whose 78 entries on the region amount to the word equivalent of probably the largest monograph ever produced on SOGIE issues in Africa (132,000). Notwithstanding their remarkable range topically, geographically, and methodologically, several common themes emerge. How to understand and combat the harmful effects of homophobia, transphobia and biphobia is perhaps the strongest commonality, as is a desire to “Africanize” queer African historical studies to take better account of the specificities and nuances of African experience than Western queer theory has allowed.