Revisioning African Girlhoods:
Humanizing the Girl & Girling Humanity
Summer Institute
June 19-June 30, 2023
Virtual Workshop
Bucknell Humanities Center
Commitment Deadline from Participants: May 1, 2023
To confirm participation, please upload materials at:
Participant Confirmation
For your records, formal Letters of Invite will be sent to participants May 15, 2023
Stipend will be distributed in June, 2023

Revisioning African Girlhoods Summer Institute will be held virtually June 19-30, 2023. This two-week summer institute highlights interdisciplinary approaches to African Girlhoods by inviting intellectuals (academics, artists, publicly engaged) to discuss readings and workshop writing and works in progress. This seminar-style institute explores the centrality of African Girls in the world and encourages humanities based scholarship and intellectual production to humanize girls in Africa Thinking about cross-disciplinary engagement with social science and scientific research on girls in Africa, we invite participants to think deeply about girls’ voices, agency, ideas, and input – an ethical and methodological approach often overlooked in work relating to girls.
 
The institute is both focused on the humanities and yet inclusive of all disciplines. One aim is for participants to have time and support to imagine the directions of this emerging field. Participants will take time to dream up the possibilities for future research on girls’ lives that is at once inclusive of the frivolous along side the essential while being mindful of the dire and existential realities. Participants are encouraged to explore not only the wide range of diverse historical, narrative, artistic, philosophical, and cinematic presentations of girls in Africa but also African girls representations of themselves.
 
Over six days–Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for two weeks–participants will engage with plenary speakers: Aria S. Halliday (University of Kentucky), Esther Ohito (Rutgers University), and Lisa Wiebesiek (University of KwaZulu-Natal). In addition, participants will be placed in small, interdisciplinary groups to workshop artistic pieces, articles, essays, conference talks, or book proposals in progress. The institute will close with a reflection on pedagogy.
 
To foster an intimate atmosphere that includes rigorous and constructive feedback, participation is limited to 20 individuals. Our participants include ladder faculty, adjuncts, independent scholars, graduate students and a small number of undergraduate researchers. We are mindful of the care, work, focus, and additional time away from family and other professional commitments the Summer Institute will require; thus we offer each participant a $250 stipend upon completion of the institute. 

The Humanities Council at Bucknell University is pleased to announce Bucknell Humanities Center Summer Institute (BHCSI) to take place for 5 days in June 2023. The BSI highlights an emerging area of academic inquiry and convenes an international team of scholars to collaborate over their ongoing work related to that area. We are convening an online, works-in-progress writing and revisioning workshop series. This involves 5 days of workshop collaboration about Girlhoods in Africa. You expressed interest in participating in the workshop. As we finalize our cohort, please submit the GOOGLE for by May 1, 2023. Please do not feel the piece must be fully polished or of a particular length. Although more developed pieces will likely go through less revision, we welcome work in all stages for this workshop.

For questions or comments please contact Prof. C. Cymone Fourshey
(ccf014@bucknell.edu).