Keynote Address

Olscamp 101 B

Obioma Nnaemeka is Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of French, Women’s/Gender Studies and African/African Diaspora Studies and Director of the Women’s Studies Program at Indiana University, Indianapolis. She is President of the Association of African Women Scholars and President/CEO of the Jessie Obidiegwu Education Fund. She was a Rockefeller Humanist-in-Residence (University of Minnesota) and has held several distinguished visiting professorships, including The Edith Kreeger-Wolf Distinguished Visiting Professor (Northwestern University, Evanston), and Verne Wagner Distinguished Visiting Professor (University of Kansas, Lawrence. Dr Nnaemeka has received numerous national and international awards as well as grants and fellowships from several foundations and agencies, including Rockefeller, MacArthur, Carnegie, ECOWAS, SIDA and SAREC (Sweden), and IRDC (Canada). She is a member of the Board of Directors of numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs). As an expert on development, literary studies, African/African Diaspora studies, women's/gender studies, human rights, peace and conflict resolution, She combines research and consultancy for the United Nations, the World Bank, UNESCO, and other agencies. She has delivered more than one hundred keynote addresses, lectures, and papers in over sixty countries on five continents. She is author of over sixty scholarly articles and book chapters, editor of the ten-volume Women in Africa and the African Diaspora; and author/editor of thirteen books, including Engendering Human Rights: Cultural and Socio-economic Realities in Africa and the African Diaspora; The Politics of (M)Othering: Womanhood, Identity, and Resistance in African Literature; Female Circumcision and the Politics of Knowledge: African Women in Imperialist Discourses; Sisterhood, Feminisms, and Power: From Africa to the Diaspora; and Women, Creativity and Dissidence.