Dr. Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué

Short Bio

Mougoué has a B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in history and specializes in women’s and gender history in mid-20th century West Africa. Her book, Gender, Separatist Politics and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon, received the 2020 Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize, the 2021 Aidoo-Snyder Prize, and the 2023 Honorable Mention (1st runner-up) of the Pius Adesanmi Memorial Award for Excellence in African Writing. Mougoué was selected as one of 15 African women historians shaping understandings of Africa’s historical past by AMAKA magazine in 2022. Mougoué co-edits a book series on women and gender in Africa for the University of Wisconsin Press.

Selected Publications

• Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué. Gender, Separatist Politics and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019.

Project Description

I am thrilled to be a Bayreuth Academy Fellow where I will be completing three chapters and the conclusion of my second book project, Pan-African Lives, Racial Politics, and Belonging in Africa. Issues of gender plays a crucial role in the challenges facing global unity today. Further, racism, a prevalent issue, perpetuates inequality and infringes on basic human rights worldwide. Scholars and activists are looking to history for solutions, particularly focusing on racial harmony, gender equity and global unity. My second book project examines the historical efforts of African, Black American, Iranian, and Indian believers in spreading the Baha’i faith in West Africa from the 1950s to the 1970s. I explore how these individuals promoted the religion’s key doctrines of racial tranquility and global unity during decolonization and the civil rights movement, with a focus on the intersection of race, gender, and politics.

For example, through an intersectional lens, I will analyze the intersection of race, gender, and politics in the lives of African-born and Black American Baha’i women from the 1950s to the 1970s in two chapters of the book that I will write as a fellow. African-born and Black American women played key roles in nurturing their Baha’i communities and empowering themselves through maternal power (a “public motherhood”), showcasing their cultural influence and mobility in West Africa. I argue that these women demonstrate feminist actions through maternal power, showcasing their influence in various communities across western Africa in the mid-twentieth century.