Presented By: Donia Human Rights Center
Donia Human Rights Center Panel | Human Rights and LGBTQ Love: Art and Fiction as Resistance
Speaker and Panelists: Hala Al-Karib, Raoul Wallenberg Human Rights Fellow, Regional Director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA); Dr. Frieda Ekotto, University of Michigan Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, Comparative Literature; Caroline Caroline Kouassiaman Initiative Sankofa d’Afrique de l’Ouest (ISDAO); Jude Dibia, Nigerian Novelist.
This interdisciplinary panel will discuss ongoing efforts around the continent of Africa to defend and advocate for LGBTQ+ people and their rights. Speakers will address the role of art and fiction as a tool to celebrate love and resist harmful attitudes and actions towards LGBTQ+ communities. This diverse panel will include speakers from Sudan, Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, and Cameroon. This event is free and open to the public and is in-person only.
Co-sponsored by: the U-M Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS), the Spectrum Center, and the Women's and Gender Studies Department.
Chair:
Hala Al-Karib, Raoul Wallenberg Human Rights Fellow, Regional Director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA)
Al-Karib has dedicated her life to the cause of human rights in Africa. Her work is focused on women's rights, social justice, and equal citizenship in the Horn of Africa and Eastern Africa (particularly Sudan and South Sudan). Her expertise spans advocacy, conflict resolution, research, capacity building, policy engagement, and feminist organizing, making her a leading voice in fighting for legal reforms and amplifying women’s voices in revolutions and post-war transitions.
Panelists:
B. Caroline Kouassiaman, Executive Director, Initiative Sankofa d’Afrique de l’Ouest
Caroline (pronouns: she/her) is the Executive Director of Initiative Sankofa d’Afrique de l’Ouest (ISDAO), an activist-led fund dedicated to strengthening and supporting a West African movement for gender diversity and sexual rights. She joined ISDAO in February 2019. She is a queer, bilingual (English/French) African feminist of Ivorian and African-American heritage, and currently calls Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana home(s).
Caroline has 23+ years of diverse professional experiences in philanthropy, human rights activism, social justice and education, and has been in the field of feminist and human rights centered-philanthropy since 2011, both as a staff member in leading philanthropic organizations, and as a strategic advisor in other innovative grantmaking initiatives, including VOICE program, the ACTIF Fund, and the Numun Fund. She holds a B.A. in Economics and Diplomacy & World Affairs from Occidental College (USA), a Master of Public Administration degree and a master’s in international relations from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University (USA).
Caroline sees herself as a builder, a connector and a perpetual question-asker.
Frieda Ekotto, Lorna Goodison Collegiate Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, Comparative Literature, and Francophone Studies
As an intellectual historian and philosopher with areas of expertise in 20th and 21st-century Anglophone and Francophone literature and in the cinema of West Africa and its diaspora, Dr. Frieda Ekotto concentrates on contemporary issues of law, race and LGBTQIA2S+ issues. Her primary research to date has focused on how law serves to repress and mask the pain of disenfranchised subjects; her intention in this work is to trace what cannot be said in order to address and expose suffering from a variety of angles and cultural intersections and reassess the position and agency of the dispossessed.
Dr. Ekotto is the author of multiple books, and numerous book chapters as well as many articles in prestigious literary journals. She is currently working on LGBTQIA2S+ issues, with an emphasis on Sub-Sahara African cultures within Africa as well as in Europe and the Americas. In addition to her academic work, she is also a creative writer.
Dr. Ekotto received the Nicolàs Guillèn Prize for Philosophical Literature in 2014 and in 2015 she was awarded the Benezet Award for excellence in her field. In 2016, she was awarded the John H. D’Arms Faculty for Distinguished Graduate Mentoring in the Humanities at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 2018, she was awarded an Honorary Degree at Colorado College. She has produced two documentaries, Vibrancy of Silence: A Discussion with My Sisters (2017) and Zurura Zurura: A Smile Blooms (2021) as part of the ongoing research on Vibrancy of Silence: Images and Cultural Production of Sub-Saharan African Women. She is the president of the Modern Languages Association (2023-2024) and served as chair of the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies from 2014-2018, among other leadership roles.
Jude Dibia, Nigerian Novelist
Jude Dibia is a Nigerian novelist, short story writer, and editor whose work is known for its fearless engagement with sexuality, identity, class, and power in contemporary African society. He is the author of Walking with Shadows, Unbridled, and Blackbird, and the co-editor of Love Offers No Safety: Nigeria’s Queer Men Speak. His writing has been widely recognised for opening space for marginalised voices within African literature.
A recipient of the Ken Saro-Wiwa Prize for Prose, Sweden's Natur och Kultur Priz and a finalist for the Nigeria Prize for Literature, Dibia has also contributed fiction and essays to numerous international anthologies. Now based in Sweden, he works across writing, editing, and cultural advocacy, bridging African and global literary conversations while mentoring emerging writers and supporting freedom-of-expression initiatives.
If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at umichhumanrights@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
This interdisciplinary panel will discuss ongoing efforts around the continent of Africa to defend and advocate for LGBTQ+ people and their rights. Speakers will address the role of art and fiction as a tool to celebrate love and resist harmful attitudes and actions towards LGBTQ+ communities. This diverse panel will include speakers from Sudan, Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, and Cameroon. This event is free and open to the public and is in-person only.
Co-sponsored by: the U-M Department of Afroamerican and African Studies (DAAS), the Spectrum Center, and the Women's and Gender Studies Department.
Chair:
Hala Al-Karib, Raoul Wallenberg Human Rights Fellow, Regional Director of the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA)
Al-Karib has dedicated her life to the cause of human rights in Africa. Her work is focused on women's rights, social justice, and equal citizenship in the Horn of Africa and Eastern Africa (particularly Sudan and South Sudan). Her expertise spans advocacy, conflict resolution, research, capacity building, policy engagement, and feminist organizing, making her a leading voice in fighting for legal reforms and amplifying women’s voices in revolutions and post-war transitions.
Panelists:
B. Caroline Kouassiaman, Executive Director, Initiative Sankofa d’Afrique de l’Ouest
Caroline (pronouns: she/her) is the Executive Director of Initiative Sankofa d’Afrique de l’Ouest (ISDAO), an activist-led fund dedicated to strengthening and supporting a West African movement for gender diversity and sexual rights. She joined ISDAO in February 2019. She is a queer, bilingual (English/French) African feminist of Ivorian and African-American heritage, and currently calls Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana home(s).
Caroline has 23+ years of diverse professional experiences in philanthropy, human rights activism, social justice and education, and has been in the field of feminist and human rights centered-philanthropy since 2011, both as a staff member in leading philanthropic organizations, and as a strategic advisor in other innovative grantmaking initiatives, including VOICE program, the ACTIF Fund, and the Numun Fund. She holds a B.A. in Economics and Diplomacy & World Affairs from Occidental College (USA), a Master of Public Administration degree and a master’s in international relations from the Maxwell School of Syracuse University (USA).
Caroline sees herself as a builder, a connector and a perpetual question-asker.
Frieda Ekotto, Lorna Goodison Collegiate Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, Comparative Literature, and Francophone Studies
As an intellectual historian and philosopher with areas of expertise in 20th and 21st-century Anglophone and Francophone literature and in the cinema of West Africa and its diaspora, Dr. Frieda Ekotto concentrates on contemporary issues of law, race and LGBTQIA2S+ issues. Her primary research to date has focused on how law serves to repress and mask the pain of disenfranchised subjects; her intention in this work is to trace what cannot be said in order to address and expose suffering from a variety of angles and cultural intersections and reassess the position and agency of the dispossessed.
Dr. Ekotto is the author of multiple books, and numerous book chapters as well as many articles in prestigious literary journals. She is currently working on LGBTQIA2S+ issues, with an emphasis on Sub-Sahara African cultures within Africa as well as in Europe and the Americas. In addition to her academic work, she is also a creative writer.
Dr. Ekotto received the Nicolàs Guillèn Prize for Philosophical Literature in 2014 and in 2015 she was awarded the Benezet Award for excellence in her field. In 2016, she was awarded the John H. D’Arms Faculty for Distinguished Graduate Mentoring in the Humanities at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 2018, she was awarded an Honorary Degree at Colorado College. She has produced two documentaries, Vibrancy of Silence: A Discussion with My Sisters (2017) and Zurura Zurura: A Smile Blooms (2021) as part of the ongoing research on Vibrancy of Silence: Images and Cultural Production of Sub-Saharan African Women. She is the president of the Modern Languages Association (2023-2024) and served as chair of the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies from 2014-2018, among other leadership roles.
Jude Dibia, Nigerian Novelist
Jude Dibia is a Nigerian novelist, short story writer, and editor whose work is known for its fearless engagement with sexuality, identity, class, and power in contemporary African society. He is the author of Walking with Shadows, Unbridled, and Blackbird, and the co-editor of Love Offers No Safety: Nigeria’s Queer Men Speak. His writing has been widely recognised for opening space for marginalised voices within African literature.
A recipient of the Ken Saro-Wiwa Prize for Prose, Sweden's Natur och Kultur Priz and a finalist for the Nigeria Prize for Literature, Dibia has also contributed fiction and essays to numerous international anthologies. Now based in Sweden, he works across writing, editing, and cultural advocacy, bridging African and global literary conversations while mentoring emerging writers and supporting freedom-of-expression initiatives.
If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us at umichhumanrights@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
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