Afro-Nordic Feminisms

Project Co-Directors: Monica L. Miller and Nana Osei-Kofi

Graduate Coordinator: Ayesha Verma

This working group is a Black feminist research and pedagogical project that centers Afro-Nordic identity, culture, social movements, and social justice organizing. We are calling this initiative Afro/Nordic/Feminisms, as we are interested in the areas of inquiry and methodologies named by the interplay between the three terms.

Afro-Nordic Studies is, at best, a nascent field and largely unsupported by Nordic universities and academic institutions. “Race” as a category of identity is contested in the region; governments do not collect statistics on racial identity and do not recognize “race” as a category from which to make legal claims for equity and against discrimination. “Ethnicity” often stands in for race and racial difference is cathected to immigration; this results in the impossibility of Afro-Nordic identity. Vocabularies for talking about race and racialization have had to be borrowed from other languages and geographies and Nordic-specific terms are only just now emerging. This structural context has the effect of invisibilizing Afro-Nordic people, who are hypervisible minorities due to the overwhelming homogeny and whiteness of the Nordics. Their very presence questions national identity, reveals repressed colonial histories and eugenicist projects, and more contemporary global realities of migration and war. And yet, people of African descent in the Nordics, both native born and immigrants, are living Black lives that are deeply emplaced in Nordic geographies and histories, as well as connected to other Black communities in Europe, Africa, the Americas, and around the world. Afro-Nordic people and communities are actively creating and assembling archives of their presence and possibility as Nordic citizens and Black people in the diaspora.

Members of the group work on scholarship from across the Nordic countries, are of different generations, have worked inside and outside of the academy, and have different disciplinary orientations to the work. As mentioned above, the lack of recognition of race and insufficient vocabulary to talk about race has meant that many of our Nordic colleagues working in this area have faced difficulties securing material and intellectual support and mentoring. Many live, study, and work in the US. One aim of this group is to create a community of practice and a set of resources for each other and the next generation interested in Afro/Nordic/Feminist studies.