African Cultural Studies
Researching and teaching the languages and expressive cultures of Africa and Africans around the world since 1964

Jacqueline-Bethel Mougoué

Position title: Associate Professor

Email: jmougoue@wisc.edu

Address:
1402 Van Hise Hall

Education

  • PhD Purdue University

Bio

As a trained historian, Mougoué is particularly interested in how constructions of gender inform performances of the body, religious beliefs, and political ideas in mid-20th century West Africa. She is the author of Gender, Separatist Politics and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon (University of Michigan Press, 2019). Mougoué has been invited to give plenary talks on her research at various international institutions, including Paris Diderot University (France), the University of Leuven (Belgium), the National University of Ireland Galway (Republic of Ireland), Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Italy), and the University of Buea (Cameroon).

Personal Site

Research

Mougoué is particularly interested in the gendering of identities in twentieth-century Africa. The dominant themes that connect her research interests and publications include how the constructions of gender inform the comportment and performances of the body, religious beliefs, and political ideologies.

Awards and Honors

Selected as one of 15 African women historians shaping understandings of Africa’s historical past by AMAKA magazine in 2022.

Winner of the 2021 ASA Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize, awarded annually by the Women’s Caucus of the African Studies Association of the US for an outstanding book that prioritizes African women’s experiences.

Winner of the 2020 Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize, awarded annually by the Western Association of Women Historians to recognize the best monograph in the field of history.

The Washington Post selected Gender, Separatist Politics and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon for its 2020 summer reading list.

Selected Publications

  • “Souvenons-Nous Des Femmes! Elles Ont Joue Un Role Décisif Dans L’Histoire [Remember Women! They Have Played a Decisive Role in History]. In Résistance: Trois Générations de Lutte Anticoloniale au Cameroun [Resistance: Three Generations of Anti-Colonial Struggle in Cameroon], edited by Initiative Perspektivwechsel, 117-119. Berlin, Germany, 2021.
  • Gender, Separatist Politics and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019.
  • “Over-Making Nyanga: Mastering ‘Natural’ Beauty and Disciplining Excessive Bodily Practices in Metropolitan Cameroon.” African Studies Review 62, issue 2 (June 2019): 175-198.
  • “Gender and (Militarized) Secessionist Movements in Africa: An African Feminist’s Reflections.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 17, no. 2 (Fall 2018): 338-358.
  • “Intellectual Housewives, Journalism, and Anglophone Nationalism in Cameroon, 1961-72.” Journal of West African History 3, issue 2 (October 2017): 67-92.

Courses