As an assistant professor of Modern African history at Baylor University, Jacqueline-Bethel Tchouta Mougoué teaches Modern African History, Women and Gender in Modern Africa and World History Since 1500. Mougoué is Co-Convenor, with Josephine Dawuni, of African Studies Association (ASA) Women’s Caucus.
An interdisciplinary feminist scholar, Mougoué is particularly interested in the gendering of identities in modern Africa. Her research interests focus on the gendering of identities in state politics, body politics, and religious politics in Cameroon. Her first book, Gender, Separatist Politics and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon (University of Michigan Press, 2018) examines the gendering of political identity, nationalism, and separatist/secession movements in twentieth-century Cameroon. Most recently, she has an article in Gender & History (2017) that underlines Anglophone Cameroonian housewives and recalcitrant behavior and an article in the Journal of West African History (2017) that examines the political activities of Anglophone Cameroonian female journalists who penned women’s advice columns under pseudonyms during the 1960s. In addition, she has an article in Feminist Africa (2016) that focuses on beauty rituals and cultural identity in post-independent Anglophone Cameroon. Mougoué has a forthcoming article in Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism (Fall 2018) titled “Gender and (Militarized) Secessionist Movements in Africa: An African Feminist’s Reflections”. The article uses case studies from Anglophone Cameroon, Western Sahara, Cabinda Province (Angola), and Biafra (Nigeria), to historicize and outline a new analytical framework that explores women’s multifaceted participation in secessionist movements in modern-day Africa. She currently has other articles under review, one being on the lexicon of self-esteem and “natural” beauty in 1960s metropolitan Cameroon.
Mougoué has been invited to share her research at various academic institutions including Yale University (United States), University of Notre Dame (United States), Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University (Fez, Morocco), University of Leuven (Belgium), McMaster University (Canada), and Paris Diderot University (France). See the abbreviated curriculum vitae for a more complete list of talks.
Please email for a list of complete upcoming talks in Spring and Summer 2018.
Upcoming plenary/keynote talk: “Writing from the Margins: Political Masculinities and Separatist (Auto) biographies in Cameroon.” (“Ecrire des Marges: les Masculinités Politiques et les (Auto) biographies Séparatistes au Cameroun”). Paris Diderot University, Paris, France.
Most recent presentation: “Cameroon’s Catholic Women’s Association: Gender, Political Power, and Transnational Feminism in 20thCentury West Africa.” Workshop on Transnational Feminism, L.R. Wilson Institute for Canadian History, McMaster University, Ontario, Canada, May 11, 2018.
Main website image: Women in the British Southern Cameroons wearing the Kamerun National Congress (KNC) cloth, 1950s. Image courtesy of The National Archives (TNA) in the United Kingdom.
