Aoua Kéita, Yugoslav Women, and Global Socialist Feminisms

This talk examines the transnational political friendships forged between Malian activist Aoua Kéita and Yugoslav socialist women, particularly members of the Conference for Women’s Social Activity (KDAŽ).  Drawing on correspondence, reports, and interviews, it shows how these transnational ties linked anti-colonial and socialist feminist projects. For Kéita, women’s emancipation was inseparable from African liberation and socialist development, while Yugoslav activists such as Vida Tomšič emphasized women’s issues as central to transforming society through self-management. Despite differing local contexts and ideological emphases, these exchanges produced mutual learning and material cooperation, from aid shipments to shared strategies for reproductive justice, education, and agrarian reform. Their collaborations—ranging from aid exchanges to political debates—demonstrate how personal bonds became crucial instruments for imagining and enacting global emancipatory politics.   

 

Bio

Alexandra Perišić teaches at the Faculty of Media and Communications in Belgrade, Serbia, where she also serves as vice dean for Academic Affairs. Her work examines how literature enables us to perceive overlooked movements of people and ideas across regions such as the Balkans, the Caribbean, Africa, and Latin America. She focuses on South-South connections, such as friendships, collaborations, and shared struggles, which rarely appear in standard accounts. She explores how writers imagine belonging and solidarity across languages and regions, and how literary forms carry those ideas. Perišić also writes about teaching and the university, arguing for practices that value time, care, and collective responsibility over narrow market metrics. She is the author of Precarious Crossings: Immigration, Neoliberalism and the Atlantic (Ohio State University Press, 2019) and Forgotten Friendships: Yugoslavia and the Anticolonial Francophone World (Amherst College Press, 2025).