Please join us Wednesday, September 24th for Professor Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoué’s lecture titled “Esther Dreams: African Women’s Lives Across Borders.” This exciting talk is part of our Center for Research on Gender and Women’s 2025-26 Colloquium Series.
Place: This lecture will be hybrid— in person (3401 Sterling Hall) or Zoom (ID: 918 3654 6732; Passcode: 761288).
Time: 1:30pm CST
This research talk highlights one chapter of a book project that tells the story of African-born women who traversed West Africa from the 1950s to the 1970s. Women like Cameroonian Esther Tanyi accumulated a unique form of social, political, religious, and intellectual power as they navigated mid-20th-century West Africa on behalf of Baha’ism—a religion founded in 19th-century Iran that emphasizes racial, cultural, and gender equity. These women exemplified feminist action through maternal power (a form of “public motherhood”), nurturing their communities and demonstrating cultural influence and mobility. Many traveled as Baha’i “pioneers”—volunteers who relocated to teach the Baha’i faith and help establish communities.
I focus on the theme of dreams to examine their aspirations for social mobility and racial and cultural unity, both figuratively and literally. Using four of Esther Tanyi’s recalled nighttime dreams, I explore how their lives offer a historical perspective on how African women pursued gender equity, racial harmony, and international peace—goals that transcended their religious views and crossed both real and imagined cultural boundaries. These dreams inspired them to propose alternative messages for a more equitable world, reflecting the power of hope and aspiration in the face of adversity.
Dr. Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoué is a historian who specializes in women’s and gender history in mid-20th century West Africa. Her book, Gender, Separatist Politics and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon, received the 2020 Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize, the 2021 Aidoo-Snyder Prize, and the 2023 Honorable Mention (1st runner-up) of the Pius Adesanmi Memorial Award for Excellence in African Writing. Mougoué was selected as one of 15 African women historians shaping understandings of Africa’s historical past by AMAKA magazine in 2022. Mougoué co-edits a book series on women and gender in Africa for the University of Wisconsin Press.