ABSTRACT
Inspired by Maria Lugones and Elizabeth Spelman’s seminal essay “Have We Got a Theory for You!,” this chapter is a dialogue between mentor Rachel Afi Quinn and mentee Maurine Ogbaa. Together, Quinn and Ogbaa interrogate their positionalities as diasporic African women and African feminist scholars in the US academy. In doing so, they name the challenges of attempting to center African feminist thought in their respective work in gender studies and literature and the challenge of contending with unique forms of isolation and institutionalized misogynoir, as they carve out spaces for their research in and beyond the academy. Throughout, Quinn and Ogbaa situate their mentorship relationship as an invaluable resource and feminist practice that is invaluable to underrepresented graduate students. Additionally, they name the ways that African, African diasporic, African American, and transnational feminist thought are central to the theoretical frameworks they deploy in their scholarship. Ultimately, mentor and mentee demonstrate how collaborative work across disciplines—and in public scholarship in particular—allows them to reimagine an alternative future for themselves as intellectual laborers in fields invested in Anglo-American authority.
