Includes bibliographical references and index.

Visualizing the body : western theories and African subjects / Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí -- Spirituality, gender, and power in Asante history / Emmanuel Akyeampong and Pashington Obeng -- Bringing African women into the classsroom : rethinking pedagogy and epistemology / Obioma Nnaemeka -- Decolonizing feminism / Marnia Lazreg -- Theorizing matriarchy in Africa : kinship ideologies and systems in Africa and Europe / Ifi Amadiume -- (Re)constituting the cosmology and sociocultural institutions of Òyó-Yorùbá / Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí -- Kò Sóhun ti Mbe tí o nítàn (Nothing is that lacks a [hi]story) : on Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí's The invention of women / Adélélkè Adéèkó -- Women's roles and existential identities / Igor Kopytoff -- Revisiting "woman-woman marriage" : notes on Gikuyu women / Wairimu Ngaruiya Njambi and William E. O'Brien -- Making history, creating gender : some methodological and interpretive questions in the writing of Oyo oral traditions / Oyèrónké Oyěwùmí -- Gender biases in African historiography / Paul Tiyambe Zeleza -- Senegalese women in politics : a portrait of two female leaders, Arame Diène and Thioumbé Samb, 1945-1996 / Babacar Fall -- Miscegenation as metonymy : sexuality and power in the colonial novel / Abena P.A. Busia -- Gender, feminist theory, and post-colonial (women's) writing / Juliana Makuchi Nfah-Abbenyi -- The hidden history of women in Ghanian print culture / Audrey Gadzekpo -- Definitions of women and development : an African perspective / Achola O. Pala -- An investigative framework for gender research in Africa in the new millennium / Filomina Chioma Steady -- The Yum : an indigenous model for sustainable development / Bertrade B. Ngo-Ngijol Banoum -- In my father's house : epilogue / Kwame Anthony Appiah -- Questions of identity and inheritance : a critical review of Kwame Anthony Appiah's In my father's house / Nkiru Nzegwu -- African gender research and postcoloniality : legacies and challenges / Desiree Lewis -- African women in the academy and beyond : review essay / Godwin Rapando Murunga.

Expressing the African experience in relation to the ongoing global discourse on women, gender and society, this collection of essays collects together in one volume the most significant writing on the topic from the last 25 years.