Oluwakemi “Kemi” Balogun, associate professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, has won the 2021 Aidoo-Snyder Prize for best scholarly work from the African Studies Association Women’s Caucus for her first book, Beauty Diplomacy: Embodying an Emerging Nation.
Beauty Diplomacy (Stanford University Press, 2020, 304 pages) is a study of beauty pageants in Nigeria, showing how contestants embody and experience contradictory ideas of gender, class, and citizenship. Through her extensive research, including interviews, participant observation, and archival research, Balogun demonstrates how contestants are expected to be ‘authentically’ African and global, from a particular region of the country and represent all of Nigeria, upwardly mobile but not elitist. Her study of beauty pageants also brings to light the way in which they and the winners of them have been and continue to be used to project Nigeria to the world in a positive light. Balogun pushes us to rethink the gendered dynamics of global politics alongside those of beauty pageants.
The Aidoo-Snyder book prize is awarded by the Women’s Caucus of the African Studies Association for an outstanding book that prioritizes African women’s experiences. Named in honor of Ama Ata Aidoo, the celebrated Ghanaian novelist and short-story writer, and Margaret Snyder the founding Director of UNIFEM, this prize seeks to acknowledge the excellence of contemporary scholarship being produced by women about African women. In alternate years, the prize is awarded for the best scholarly book, or for the best creative work.
