Abena Busia

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Lecturer

Dr. Abena Busia

Lecturer
Iceland

Short Bio

Dr. Abena Busia is a professor in the Department of Women's and Gender Studies at Rutger’s University. She is co-director and co-editor of the groundbreaking Women Writing Africa Project, a multi-volume anthology published by the Feminist Press at CUNY. As Professor Busia points out, "history is located in multiple places." This collection is designed to recognize the cultural legacy in that assortment of voices by gathering together the original "cultural production" of African women. She is also associate editor of two of the volumes Women Writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel (2005) and Women Writing Africa: Northern Africa (2009). In addition, Professor Busia is also the co-editor of Theorizing Black Feminisms (1993) as well as many articles and book chapters on topics including black women's writing, black feminist criticism, and African literature. Her scholarship keeps her actively connected to her native Ghana, where a Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad Grant enabled Professor Busia and two Rutgers historians to lead an interdisciplinary program on "Teaching the History of the Slave Trade Routes of Ghana and Benin." She has directed a summer internship taking undergraduates to work with Women's Rights organizations in Ghana for the past seven years. She is also the author of two poetry collections, Testimonies of Exile (1990) and Traces of a Life (2008). She serves on a number of advisory boards and is the current board Chair of the AWDF - USA, a sister organization to the African Women's Development Fund which is the first and only pan-African funding source for women-centered programs and organizations. She teaches courses in African American and African diaspora literature, colonial discourse, and black feminism.