Retirement Date: 12-31-2021
Education
D.Phil., St. Anthony's College, Oxford
MA, St. Anne's College, Oxford
BA, St. Anne's College, Oxford
Research Interests
African American and African Diaspora Literature, Post-colonial Studies, Black Feminisms and Cultural Studies.
Biographical Notes
Professor Abena Busia, Professor in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies, is co-director and co-editor of the groundbreaking Women Writing Africa Project, a multi-volume anthology published by the Feminist Press at CUNY. As Professor Busia points out, "history is located in multiple places." This collection is designed to recognize the cultural legacy in that assortment of voices by gathering together the original "cultural production" of African women. She is also associate editor of two of the volumes Women Writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel (2005) and Women Writing Africa: Northern Africa (2009).
In addition to the Women Writing Africa Project, Professor Busia is also the co-editor of Theorizing Black Feminisms (1993) as well as many articles and book chapters on topics including black women's writing, black feminist criticism, and African literature. Her scholarship keeps her actively connected to her native Ghana, where a Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad Grant enabled Professor Busia and two Rutgers historians to lead an interdisciplinary program on "Teaching the History of the Slave Trade Routes of Ghana and Benin." She has directed a summer internship taking undergraduates to work with Women's Rights organizations in Ghana for the past seven years.
Professor Busia is also the author of two poetry collections, Testimonies of Exile (1990) and Traces of a Life (2008). She serves on a number of advisory boards and is the current board Chair of the AWDF - USA, a sister organization to the African Women's Development Fund which is the first and only pan-African funding source for women-centered programs and organizations. She teaches courses in African American and African diaspora literature, colonial discourse, and black feminism.
Selected Publications
Books:
Selected Publications:
- "Towards a Different Kind of Freedom: Notes on Historicizing Globalization and Women in Africa". Frontiers of Globalization: Kinship and Family Structures in Africa. Ed. Gonzalez, Oloo, and DeRose, Africa World Press: Trenton NJ, 2010.
- "What Is Africa to Me? Knowledge Possession, Knowledge Production, and the Health of Our Bodies Politic in Africa and the Africa Diaspora". African Studies Review 49.1, April 2006
- "Fashioning a Self in the Contemporary World: Notes Toward a Personal Meditation on Memory, History, and the Aesthetics of Origin". African Arts 37.1, Spring 2004
- "On Cultures of Communication: Reflections from Beijing". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 22.1, Autumn 1996
- "Thinking about ‘culture’: some programme pointers". Gender & Development. 3.1, February 1995
Courses Offered
- Black Autobiography
- Harlem Renaissance
- Black Women Writers
- Comparative Feminisms
- Black Music and Poetry
- African Feminism