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On Wednesday, May 3, 2023, The Africa Institute hosted a Faculty Seminar Series entitled “An Intimate History of the African Revolution: Kwame Nkrumah and the Women in Question,” presented by Jean Allman, Professor of History at The Africa Institute.
During the seminar, Professor Allman discussed the role of a small group of expatriate women in the life of Kwame Nkrumah, the leader of Ghana’s independence struggle and its first Prime Minister and President. Nkrumah was a major theorist of Pan-Africanism and neocolonialism and is considered one of the most important leaders of the “African Revolution” of the 1960s.
Kwame Nkrumah sought to establish a strong, socialist-oriented government in Ghana and was an important voice in the broader struggle against neocolonialism in Africa and beyond.
“My work aims to center affective communities and the politics of the intimate in a history of African Revolution. I also aim to demonstrate how the affective, including the secret and the private, can provide new insight into the African Revolutions and the intimate bonds and global networks that sustained it, and new perspectives on how and by whom the history of that Revolution has been preserved, curated, and narrated,” said Professor Allman, whose research engages twentieth-century African history, with a geographic focus on Ghana, and thematic interests in gender, colonialism, decolonization, and the racial politics of knowledge production,” said Professor Allman.
As a preliminary attempt to bring love into our understanding of the African revolution of the 1960s, Professor Allman further questions, “what it would mean to take up Nkrumah’s ideas and explore how love and revolution constitute each other, to understand politics as a form of love and explore love as a powerfully constitutive force in imagining the nurturing essence of revolutionary politics.”
The women surrounding Nkrumah served in various official capacities but also became his intimate confidantes, a role that continued even after his rule ended with a military coup in 1966. Allman’s research, based on private papers and correspondence (some only recently accessible), newspapers, and government documents, revealed how this trusted cohort ultimately shaped not only how Nkrumah is remembered today, but also the very evidence historians have at hand for reconstructing Ghana’s first Republic (1960-1966) and the ill-fated African Revolution.
The seminar was moderated by Professor Naminata Diabate, the Ali A. Mazrui Senior Fellow in Global African Studies at The Africa Institute, who invited thought-provoking questions about the impact of the expatriate women on Nkrumah’s political and personal life, and the broader implications of this research for our understanding of Ghana’s first Republic and the African Revolution.
Through events like this, The Africa Institute continues to fulfill its mission as a center for the study and research of Africa and its diaspora, and its commitment to training a new generation of critical thinkers in African and African Diaspora studies.
On Wednesday, May 3, 2023, The Africa Institute hosted a Faculty Seminar Series entitled “An Intimate History of the African Revolution: Kwame Nkrumah and the Women in Question,” presented by Jean Allman, Professor of History at The Africa Institute.
On Wednesday, May 3, 2023, The Africa Institute hosted a Faculty Seminar Series entitled “An Intimate History of the African Revolution: Kwame Nkrumah and the Women in Question,” presented by Jean Allman, Professor of History at The Africa Institute.
During the seminar, Professor Allman discussed the role of a small group of expatriate women in the life of Kwame Nkrumah, the leader of Ghana’s independence struggle and its first Prime Minister and President. Nkrumah was a major theorist of Pan-Africanism and neocolonialism and is considered one of the most important leaders of the “African Revolution” of the 1960s.
Kwame Nkrumah sought to establish a strong, socialist-oriented government in Ghana and was an important voice in the broader struggle against neocolonialism in Africa and beyond.
“My work aims to center affective communities and the politics of the intimate in a history of African Revolution. I also aim to demonstrate how the affective, including the secret and the private, can provide new insight into the African Revolutions and the intimate bonds and global networks that sustained it, and new perspectives on how and by whom the history of that Revolution has been preserved, curated, and narrated,” said Professor Allman, whose research engages twentieth-century African history, with a geographic focus on Ghana, and thematic interests in gender, colonialism, decolonization, and the racial politics of knowledge production,” said Professor Allman.
As a preliminary attempt to bring love into our understanding of the African revolution of the 1960s, Professor Allman further questions, “what it would mean to take up Nkrumah’s ideas and explore how love and revolution constitute each other, to understand politics as a form of love and explore love as a powerfully constitutive force in imagining the nurturing essence of revolutionary politics.”
The women surrounding Nkrumah served in various official capacities but also became his intimate confidantes, a role that continued even after his rule ended with a military coup in 1966. Allman’s research, based on private papers and correspondence (some only recently accessible), newspapers, and government documents, revealed how this trusted cohort ultimately shaped not only how Nkrumah is remembered today, but also the very evidence historians have at hand for reconstructing Ghana’s first Republic (1960-1966) and the ill-fated African Revolution.
The seminar was moderated by Professor Naminata Diabate, the Ali A. Mazrui Senior Fellow in Global African Studies at The Africa Institute, who invited thought-provoking questions about the impact of the expatriate women on Nkrumah’s political and personal life, and the broader implications of this research for our understanding of Ghana’s first Republic and the African Revolution.
Through events like this, The Africa Institute continues to fulfill its mission as a center for the study and research of Africa and its diaspora, and its commitment to training a new generation of critical thinkers in African and African Diaspora studies.
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