{"id":21895,"date":"2014-04-24T00:56:06","date_gmt":"2014-04-24T07:56:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csws.uoregon.edu\/?p=21895"},"modified":"2021-01-13T09:45:08","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T17:45:08","slug":"wendy-belcher-same-sex-intimacies-in-an-early-modern-african-text-about-an-ethiopian-female-saint-gadla-walatta-p%cc%a3e%e1%b9%adros-1672","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csws-archive.uoregon.edu\/wendy-belcher-same-sex-intimacies-in-an-early-modern-african-text-about-an-ethiopian-female-saint-gadla-walatta-p%cc%a3e%e1%b9%adros-1672\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cSame-Sex Intimacies in an Early Modern African Text about an Ethiopian Female Saint, \u2018G\u00e4dl\u00e4 W\u00e4l\u00e4tt\u00e4 P\u0323e\u1e6dros\u2019 (1672)\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"150424_Belcher_poster_WEB\"<\/a>Knight Library
\nBrowsing Room
\n1501 Kincaid St.<\/p>\n

A Lecture by Professor Wendy Laura Belcher, Princeton University
\n<\/strong><\/em>The 17th-century Ethiopian book The Life and Struggles of Our Mother W\u00e4l\u00e4tt\u00e4 P\u0323e\u1e6dros<\/em> features a life-long partnership between two women and the depiction of same-sex sexuality among nuns. The earliest known book-length biography about the life of an African woman, written in\u00a01672 in the G\u0259\u02c1\u0259z language, it is an extraordinary account of early modern African women\u2019s lives\u2014full of vivid dialogue, heartbreak, and triumph. It features revered Ethiopian religious leader W\u00e4l\u00e4tt\u00e4 P\u0323e\u1e6dros (1592-1642), who led a nonviolent movement against European proto-colonialism in Ethiopia in a successful fight to retain African Christian beliefs, for which she was elevated to sainthood in the Ethiopian Orthodox T\u00e4wa\u1e25\u0259do Church.<\/p>\n

An important part of the text is her friendship with another nun, \u018e\u1e2b\u0259t\u00e4 Kr\u0259stos, as they \u201clived together in mutual love, like soul and body\u201d until death. Interpreting the women\u2019s relationships in this Ethiopian text requires care, but queer theory provides useful warnings, framing, and interpretive tools. The talk emerges out of Prof. Belcher\u2019s work with Michael Kleiner to translate the text, which will be published in 2015 by Princeton University Press as The Life and Struggles of Our Mother Walatta Petros: A Translation of a Seventeenth-Century African Biography of an African Woman<\/em>. For a story about Prof. Belcher\u2019s work on this text, go to http:\/\/discovery.princeton.edu\/2012\/12\/02\/the-life-of-an-ethiopian-saint\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Wendy Laura Belcher is associate professor of African literature in Princeton University\u2019s Department of Comparative Literature and Center for African American Studies. She has been studying African literature for over two decades and is now working to bring attention to early African literature through her research and translation. She also studies how African thought has informed a global traffic of invention, recently publishing Abyssinia\u2019s Samuel <\/em>Johnson: Ethiopian Thought in the Making of an English Author<\/em> (Oxford, 2012).<\/p>\n

Sponsors: UO Center for the Study of Women in Society\u2019s Gender in Africa and the African Diaspora, Department of Comparative Literature, and the African Studies Program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Knight Library Browsing Room 1501 Kincaid St. A Lecture by Professor Wendy Laura Belcher, Princeton University The 17th-century Ethiopian book The Life and Struggles of Our Mother W\u00e4l\u00e4tt\u00e4 P\u0323e\u1e6dros features a life-long partnership between two women and the depiction of…<\/p>\n

Read more →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,320,5],"tags":[56,158,364,363],"class_list":["post-21895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-gender-in-africa","category-research","tag-csws","tag-uo","tag-walatta-petros","tag-wendy-belcher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csws-archive.uoregon.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csws-archive.uoregon.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csws-archive.uoregon.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csws-archive.uoregon.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csws-archive.uoregon.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21895"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/csws-archive.uoregon.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33146,"href":"https:\/\/csws-archive.uoregon.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21895\/revisions\/33146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csws-archive.uoregon.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csws-archive.uoregon.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csws-archive.uoregon.edu\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}