Yvette Abrahams is an organic farmer, activist and feminist scholar in

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

Life

Yvette Abrahams was born in

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...

in the early 1960s, the daughter of Namibian activists

Ottilie Abrahams Ottilie Grete Abrahams (2 September 19372 July 2018) was a Namibian educator, activist, and politician. Personal Abrahams was born on 2 September 1937 in the Old Location township outside of Windhoek. Abrahams was the daughter of Otto Schimmi ...

and

Kenneth Abrahams Kenneth Godfrey Abrahams (1936–2017) was a Namibian activist and physician. He was born in Cape Town and studied at the University of Cape Town. Abrahams later earned his MD in Stockholm. He became active in SWAPO politics in 1960 along with h ...

. She grew up in exile in Zambia, England and Sweden. Returning to study at the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

, she dropped out of university for some time to be an anti-apartheid activist. Abrahams gained her MA in history from

Queen's University at Kingston Queen's University at Kingston, commonly known as Queen's University or simply Queen's, is a public research university in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Queen's holds more than of land throughout Ontario and owns Herstmonceux Castle in East Suss ...

, writing her dissertation on

Khoisan Khoisan , or (), according to the contemporary Khoekhoegowab orthography, is a catch-all term for those indigenous peoples of Southern Africa who do not speak one of the Bantu languages, combining the (formerly "Khoikhoi") and the or ( in t ...

resistance. In 2002 she gained a Ph.D. in

economic history Economic history is the academic learning of economies or economic events of the past. Research is conducted using a combination of historical methods, statistical methods and the application of economic theory to historical situations and ins ...

from the

, with a 2000 dissertation on

Sarah Baartman Sarah Baartman (; 1789– 29 December 1815), also spelt Sara, sometimes in the diminutive form Saartje (), or Saartjie, and Bartman, Bartmann, was a Khoikhoi woman who was exhibited as a freak show attraction in 19th-century Europe under the n ...

Works

* ''Was Eva raped? An exercise in speculative History'', ''Kronos'', No. 23 (November 1996), pp. 3–21. * ''The Great Long National Insult: 'Science', Sexuality and the Khoisan in the 18th And Early 19th Century'', ''Agenda'' 13: 32 (1997) * 'Images of Sarah Bartman: Sexuality, Race, and Gender in Early-Nineteenth-Century Britain', in Ruth Roach Pierson, Nupur Chaudhuri and Beth McAuley (eds.) ''Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race'', Indiana University Press, 1998, pp. 220– * 'Ambiguity is my middle name: A research diary', in Nomboniso Gasa (ed.) ''Women in South African History: They Remove Boulders and Cross Rivers'', HSRC Press, 2007, pp. 421– * (with Sharlene Khan, Pumla Dineo Gqola, Neelika Jayawardane and Betty Govinden) '“Thinking Through, Talking Back: Creative Theorisation as Sites of Praxis-Theory” – A creative dialogue between Sharlene Khan, Pumla Dineo Gqola, Yvette Abrahams, Neelika Jayawardane and Betty Govinden', ''Agenda'' 32:3 (2018), pp. 109–118.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Abrahams, Yvette 1960s births Living people South African feminists Writers from Cape Town South African women activists Anti-apartheid activists University of Cape Town alumni