The Expansion of Higher Education for Kenyans, With Special Emphasis on Women, From 1959--1969
Williams-Black, Joy
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/84698
Description
Title
The Expansion of Higher Education for Kenyans, With Special Emphasis on Women, From 1959--1969
Author(s)
Williams-Black, Joy
Issue Date
2008
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Donald Crummey
Department of Study
History
Discipline
History
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Women's Studies
Language
eng
Abstract
"In 1959, Thomas Mboya, a union activist and Kenyan politician, garnered 81 scholarships for Africans to attend over 40 colleges and universities in the U.S. (the largest to ever study at one time). In 1960, he received over 320 more to an additional 60 higher U.S. educational institutions. The 1959 and 1960 Airlifts, as they are called, included large numbers of women. This study explores Kenya's early nation-building period and argues that the Airlifts served as the catalyst in an explosion for Kenyans to study abroad, culminating in thousands of additional scholarships to study on four continents. This project examines strategies used by individuals, organizations and governments in the provision of overseas education. It utilizes the categories of regionality, ethnicity, and gender to better understand access and equity. Early historical studies tended to silence and disempower African women because of a focus on what others did for them instead of how women, themselves impacted their societies. Nowhere has this been truer than in gender scholarship from westerners who researched African women. African and other women of color have out rightly rejected this ""western gaze."" Even so, scholars struggle to place women within the larger narrative of the history of African nationalism. Previous studies relied on colonial archives and many have used these archives uncritically. Although this research project includes colonial archives, it does so in a manner that recovers African participation in Kenya's decolonization and uses case studies to recover the voices of women who have become lost in imperial histories on Africa that tend to exclude, ignore, or marginalize them. In attempting to give voice to African women, this research project theorizes the debate regarding African women and gender and highlights the role of women in overseas educational attainment. It provides a renewed understanding, examination, and explanation of the role of higher education abroad during the period of decolonization that swept the continent in the 1960s and the goal to Africanize former European-ruled governments. It is within this context that this study seeks to add to the body of scholarship on African history, African women's social history, and higher education in Kenya."
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