Ousseina D. Alidou is Professor in the Department of African, Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Literatures and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. She directed the Center for African Studies at Rutgers University (2009-Spring2015). Professor Alidou is a theoretical linguist whose research focuses on women’s agency in African Muslim societies; gendered discourses of citizenship and rights; gender, education, politics and leadership. She is the author of Muslim Women in Postcolonial Kenya: Leadership, Representation, Political and Social Change (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013); Engaging Modernity: Muslim Women and the Politics of Agency in Postcolonial Niger (UWP, 2005, a runner-up Aidoo-Schneider Book Prize of Women’s Caucus of the Association of African Studies); Co-edited Writing through the Visual and Virtual in Francophone Africa and the Caribbean with Renee Larrier (Lexington Books, 2015); co-edited Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Africa with Ahmed Sikainga (AWP, 2006) and A Thousand Flowers: Social Struggles Against Structural Adjustment in African Universities, Co-edited with Silvia Federici and George Caffentzis (AWP, 2000);. In addition, she has published over 50 book chapters and articles which appear in Research in African Literatures, Sprache und Geschichte in Afrika (SUGIA); Comparative Literature; and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East; and Africa Today. Her forthcoming (2019) book is Gender, Islam, Popular Culture and Social Change in the Sahel.
Professor Alidou is the recipient of several national and international scholarly and service awards including: Obafemi Awolowo Center for Gender and Social Policy Studies Distinguished Visiting Scholar Service Award (2015); Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Award (2015); Newark Women-in-the Media Distinguished Community Service Award (2015); Rutgers University 2011 Warren I. Susman Award for Excellence in Teaching; Africa America Institute’s Distinguished Alumni Award (2010); Ford Foundation Human Rights and Social Justice Grant Award (2005); Rutgers University Board of Trustee’s Scholarly Excellence Award (2005)
