Global South Gender and Sexuality Studies Collective Series

As a part of the Global South Gender and Sexuality Studies Collective Series, Professor Raevin Jimenez (UMich Department of History) will be giving a talk.

Title: Gendered Mutualism in Southeast Africa: Personhood and Society in Deep-time Historical Perspective

Abstract: This talk tells the story of the earliest Nguni-speakers - ancestors of Zulu and Xhosa speech communities - as they made their way out of the South African Highveld in the ninth century and across southeasternmost Africa over the next millennium. As they moved, they responded to a crisis in environment and society that left them disconnected from their ancestors and former neighbors, seeking new identities and relationships among Khoisan foragers. In a new multicultural space, increasingly diverse Nguni-speaking communities used rites of passage, gendered institutions, identities, and relationships to forge concepts and practices of morality. Gendered morality established ties between dispersed populations and among people without shared ancestry that in turn shaped ideas about power and belonging. In response to this history, I present the framework of gendered mutualism, in which gender emerged through unique speech patterns and social bonds neither universally available nor fully embodied.