Dr Imaobong Umoren

This course is available on the MA in Asian and International History (LSE and NUS), MA in Modern History, MSc in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation, MSc in History of International Relations, MSc in International Affairs (LSE and Peking University), MSc in International and Asian History, MSc in International and World History (LSE & Columbia) and MSc in Theory and History of International Relations. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

How to apply: Students should write a short statement supporting their application to take a course. The Teacher Responsible will assign places on the course and their decision is final. Places will be assigned by midday on the Monday of week 1.

For queries contact: The teacher responsible for the course, as indicated on the course guide. Staff e-mail addresses are listed at https://www.lse.ac.uk/International-History/People.

This course seeks to explore the relationship between transnational feminisms in the long twentieth century and the varied processes of decolonisation taking place throughout the global south. Transnational feminist movements grew rapidly during the long twentieth century as feminists across the global south, specifically from Asia, Africa and the Caribbean gathered together in conferences, joined organisations, led petitions, stood for political office, established political parties, staged direct protests as well as wrote letters, articles, songs, and poetry, through which they articulated an array of feminist demands that pivoted around anti-colonialism and decolonisation. Rather than seeing the rise of transnational feminism as something separate or adjacent to struggles to end British and French colonialism, this course seeks to explore the entangled ways in which decolonisation can be understood to have galvanised different expressions of feminisms across the global south that interacted with the global north and culminated in new ideas about both feminism and decolonisation.

Taking a comparative and connected historical approach, students will explore the ways in which decolonisation was a feminist process in the Caribbean, Africa, and South Asia and how movements in these locations influenced movements and activists in Europe and the US and how they changed over the course of the twentieth century. Students will also understand the similarities and differences between varied locations in the global south to understand in more ways the nuanced nature of transnational feminism and decolonisation. Themes discussed during this course include suffrage, religion, sexuality, violence, pacifism, development, modernisation, internationalism, nationalism, reproduction, authoritarianism, and the environment. Students will have the chance to explore a variety of primary sources translated into English including speeches, newspaper articles, songs, poems, letters, autobiography, and petitions to name a few.

20 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.
20 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

One 2500-word essay 

• Alexander, M Jacqui and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Feminist genealogies, colonial legacies, democratic futures (New York, 1997);
• Callaci, Emily, Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, A Promise (London, 2025)
• Delap, Lucy, Feminisms: A Global History (London, 2020),
• Meyerowitz, Joanne, A War on Global Poverty: The Lost Promise of Redistribution and the Rise of Microcredit (Princeton, 2021)
• Mitra, Durba, The Future that Was: A History of Third World Feminism Against Authoritarianism (Princeton, 2026).
• Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, Ann Russo and Lourdes Torres (eds), Third World Women and the politics of feminism (Bloomington, 1991);
• Mohanty, Chandra Talpade, Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity (Durham, 2003);
• Mohanty, Chandra Talpade & Dana Olwan (Editors). Transnational Solidarities and Feminist Futures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press (forthcoming, 2025).
• Mukherjee, Sumita, “The All-Asian Women’s Conference 1931: Indian Women and Their Leadership of a Pan-Asian Feminist Organization.” Women’s History Review 26(3) (2016) 363–81.
• Mukherjee, Sumita, Indian Suffragettes: Female Identities and Transnational Networks (Oxford, 2018)
• Olcott, Jocelyn International Women’s Year: The Greatest Consciousness Raising Event in History. (Oxford, 2017)
• Sandell, Marie, The Rise of Women’s Transnational Activism: Identity and Sisterhood between the World Wars (London, 2015).
• Siegel, Mona, Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women’s Rights after the First World War (New York, 2020)
• Sinha, Mrinalini. Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006) 
• Smith, Bonnie G. and Nova Robinson, eds. Routledge Global History of Feminism. (London, 2022)
• Tambe, Ashwini and Millie Thayer, (eds). Transnational Feminist Itineraries : Situating Theory and Activist Practice. (Durham, 2021);

Course participation (25%).

Essay (35%, 3000 words).

Essay (40%, 5000 words).