| Locating Neocolonialism, ‘Tradition’ and Human Rights in Uganda’s ‘Gay Death Penalty’ |  Printable version
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Date: Thursday 9 June 2011
Time: 15.30-17.00
Place: Room 3A06, Pieter de la Court building, Wassenaarseweg 52,
Leiden.
Speaker: Dr Kristen Cheney, Senior Lecturer in Child and Youth
Studies, Institute of Social Studies
Discussant:
Gert
Hekma, University of Amsterdam, Department of Sociology and
Anthropology
You are kindly requested to register for this seminar.
The Anti-Homosexuality Bill introduced in Uganda’s Parliament in
2009 sparked a moral panic of violent homophobia across Africa. Despite
a well-documented history of sexual diversity, claims that homosexuality
is ‘un-African’ are being used to justify such violence and exclusion.
This seminar will delve into various cultural logics that reveal the
tensions and contradictions in Ugandans’ widespread opposition to
homosexuality. I argue that US evangelical influences, postcolonial
amnesia of ‘tradition’, fertility concerns and human rights
exceptionalism are driving this moral panic and must be answered by
confronting neocolonial religious influence and cultivating renewed
respect for human rights and Africa’s history of sexual diversity.
Kristen Cheney has been doing fieldwork in Uganda since 1993. In 2004,
she won the ASA Graduate Student Paper Prize. She is
co-convener/advisory board chair for the Anthropology of Children and
Childhood Interest Group of the American Anthropological Association.
Her research focuses on children’s survival strategies amidst difficult
circumstances in Eastern and Southern Africa. As a 2008-9 Fulbright
Africa Regional Research Scholar, she conducted ethnographic research
with orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) in Uganda. She is the author
of Pillars of the Nation: Child Citizens and Ugandan National
Development (2007, University of Chicago Press).
Paper:
Locating Neocolonialism, ‘Tradition’, and Human Rights in Uganda’s ‘Gay
Death Penalty’ by Dr. Kristen Cheney (.docx)
(This paper is still in review and should not be cited or quoted without
permission.)
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Dr Kristen Cheney |
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