African Women and their Networks of Support: Intervening Connections is an interdisciplinary analysis of how African women, in their different cultural, social, and political spaces, find innovative strategies to address the challenge they face and voice their often-underrepresented perspectives. These actions are often molded in either formal or informal networks of support that provide women with the necessary peer-based foundation to deal with gender discrimination, violence, and subjugation. On other occasions, women’s strategies toward change are driven by specific individuals who set the transformative agenda and trajectory toward social change. Contributors label these efforts as intervening connections, representing women's intentional actions to circumvent, disrupt, question, and ultimately rearrange structures of gender discrimination. Respective chapters capture networks that are historic and current; real, virtual, and imagined; local and transnational, and managed by women on the continent as well as in the diaspora. Considering these diverse spaces in which networking happens, contributors underscore not only how African women aim at deconstructing current systemic gender inequalities, but also how they are developing futures of gender equity and equality.

Featuring contributions from some of the most accomplished scholars on the topic, Holding the World Together explores the rich and varied ways in which women have wielded power across the African continent, from the precolonial period to the present. Suitable for classroom use, this comprehensive volume considers such topics as the representation of African women, their role in national liberation movements, their experiences of religious fundamentalism (both Christian and Muslim), their incorporation into the world economy, changing family and marriage systems, impacts of the world economy on their lives and livelihoods, and the unique challenges they face in the areas of health and disease. Contributors: Nwando Achebe, Ousseina Alidou, Signe Arnfred, Andrea L. Arrington-Sirois, Henryatta Ballah, Teresa Barnes, Josephine Beoku-Betts, Emily Burril, Abena P. A. Busia, Gracia Clark, Alicia Decker, Karen Flint, December Green, Cajetan Iheka, Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Elizabeth M. Perego, Claire Robertson, Kathleen Sheldon, Aili Mari Tripp, Cassandra Veney

The report proposes the development of innovative public policies based on the reinforcement of the social capital of women and policy approaches that promote better integration of the initiatives undertaken by governments, international and non-governmental organisations to empower women and strengthen their resilience.

The New African Diaspora in Vancouver documents the experiences of immigrants from countries in sub-Saharan Africa on Canada's west coast. Despite their individual national origins, many adopt new identities as ‘African’ and are actively engaged in creating a new, place-based ‘African community.’ In this study, Gillian Creese analyzes interviews with sixty-one women and men from twenty-one African countries to document the gendered and racialized processes of community-building that occur in the contexts of marginalization and exclusion as they exist in Vancouver. Creese reveals that the routine discounting of previous education by potential employers, the demeaning of African accents and bodies by society at large, cultural pressures to reshape gender relations and parenting practices, and the absence of extended families often contribute to downward mobility for immigrants. The New African Diaspora in Vancouver maps out how African immigrants negotiate these multiple dimensions of local exclusion while at the same time creating new spaces of belonging and emerging collective identity.

Provides a timely portrait of young Black Christians and how digital technology is transforming the Black Church They stand at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement, push the boundaries of the Black Church through online expression of Christian hip hop, and redefine what it means to be young, Black, and Christian in America. Young Black adults represent the future of African American religiosity, yet little is known regarding their religious lives beyond the Black Church. Networking the Black Church explores how deeply embedded digital technology is in the lives of young Black Christians, offering a first-of-its-kind digital-hip hop ethnography. Erika D. Gault argues that a new religious ethos has emerged among young adult Blacks in America. To understand Black Christianity today it is not enough to look at the traditional Black Church. The Black Church is itself being changed by what she calls digital Black Christians. The volume examines the ways in which Christian hip hop artists who have adopted Black-preaching-inspired spoken word performances create alternate kinds of Christian communities both inside and outside the walls of traditional Black churches. Framed around interviews with prominent Black Christian hip hop artists, it explores the multiple ways that digital Black Christians construct religious identity and meaning through video-sharing and social media. In the process, these digital Black Christians are changing Black churches as institutions, transforming modes of religious activism, inventing new communication practices around evangelism and Christian identity, and streamlining the accessibility of Black Church cultural practices in popular culture. Erika D. Gault provides a fascinating portrait of young Black faith, illuminating how the relationship between religion and digital media is changing the lived experiences of a new generation of Black Christians.

"The Radical Imagination of Black Women: Ambition, Politics and Power explores how elite Black women decide to seek political office. Despite their marginalized existence Black women engage in a robust political participation that includes seeking elected office. Utilizing interviews of Black women who currently or have served in office and focus group data of Black women, the manuscript bridges the literatures of ambition theory and marginalization through a theory I refer to a "ambition on the margins". Black women's resistance to marginalization informs us about the conditions that shape Black women and their political socialization, while ambition theory helps us understand what they do in response to marginalization. The socialization process fosters the decision-making process of Black women. This framework moves the extant literature beyond the premise that the political ambition of Black women is less than White women or men. Political science's approach to ambition negates and disregards mechanisms beyond voting that Black women often engage in such as doing political work through community and civic organizations. That data provided from interviews reveal the complex dynamics that contribute to the nuanced process that Black women emerge as candidates and engage as politicians"--

This new book in the Diverse Faculty in the Academy series pulls back the curtain on what Black women have done to mentor each other in higher education, provides advice for navigating unwelcoming campus environments, and explores avenues for institutions to support and foster minoritized women’s success in the academy. Chapter authors present critical approaches to advance equity and to achieve trust and transparency in the academy. Drawing on examples of mentoring between Black women students, faculty, and administrators in and outside of the academy from diverse institutional contexts, exploring the use of digital technologies, and framed by theoretical concepts from a range of disciplines, this important volume provides insights on mentoring that can be employed across all of higher education to support the success of Black women faculty. Full of actionable steps that institutional leaders can take to support the network of mentors it takes to be successful in the academy, this book is a must read for department and university leaders, faculty, and graduate students in Higher Education interested in supporting and fostering mentoring for those most vulnerable in the academic pathway for success.