Events

Selina Makana will present her new book Beyond the Battlefield: Women and the Nation in Twentieth-Century Angola, which examines how Angolan women experienced war, militarism, and nationalist politics. The talk challenges heroic masculinist narratives of nation-building by foregrounding women’s social reproductive labor, political agency, and strategies of contestation.

Hosted by the Institute of African Studies (IAS), the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS), and the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender (ISSG) at Columbia University.

Bio: Selina Makana is Assistant Professor of African History at the University of Memphis and a former postdoctoral research scholar at Columbia University. She is the author of Beyond the Battlefield: Women and the Nation in Twentieth-Century Angola (Ohio University Press, 2026) and a 2025–2026 Scholar-in-Residence at the Schomburg Center.