Fatema Mernissi Postdoctoral Fellow traces intellectual history of Women in Ethiopian Student Movement through print culture

Professor Netsanet Gebremichael, Fatema Mernissi Postdoctoral Fellow, in Visual Culture, Performance Studies and Critical Humanities, delivered a lecture titled, “ቅብብሎሽ as Relay: Women in Ethiopian Student Movement 1950-1978” on Tuesday, June 28, 2022, at the Khalid School Auditorium.

The session was moderated by Francoise Verges, Professor of Cultural and Post-Colonial Studies at The Africa Institute. 

Through these lectures, The Africa Institute reaffirms its mission as a center for the study and research of Africa and its diaspora and its commitment to the training of a new generation of critical thinkers in African and African Diaspora studies.

This lecture shared a three-year research journey that traces Women in the Ethiopian Student Movement from 1950-1978, working through a print culture of the Ethiopian Student Movement publications, Oral History interviews of women who took part in the Ethiopian student Movement that was conducted from 2019-2021, and multimedia exhibition materials entitled Kibibilosh that was shown at the Modern Art Museum, Gebre Kristos Desta Center in Addis Ababa (7 May – 28 July 2021).

Using these materials, the lecture highlighted how to work through a blind spot of a movement and its history through a practice of relay – ቅብብሎሽ as a method of mapping local-global and intergenerational linkages on emergence, development, and substantive transformations of “the women’s questions” and the lives of women in the Ethiopian Student Movement.

“In this lecture, I expose how ቅብብሎሽ -Relay provides an essential metaphor for deep understanding of intellectual history of the Ethiopian Student movement in the formulation of “women’s questions” through tracing its transformation in the print culture of the Ethiopian Student Movement, it also re-inscribed women in Ethiopian Student Movement within the genealogy of histories leftist local-global struggles by highlighting their written engagements, life history interviews, accounts of imprisonment, and loss of their lives for the emergence and development of social questions.” said Netsanet Gebremichael, Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Social Studies from Makerere Institute of Social Research, Makerere University Uganda and is an assistant professor and researcher at the Addis Ababa University, Institute of Ethiopian Studies.

The lecture showcased a method of making multidirectional intervention through existing historiographical lacunas by crafting a playful synergy of ቅብብሎሽ -relay between research, documentation, and education in the form of curatorial-practices.

Netsanet also appreciated the support of The Africa Institute and generous funding by Global Research Network on Parliaments and People project powered by SOAS University during the course of her three year journey of research, documentation, and exhibition which will now be focused into a manuscript.