Professor
College of Letters & Science | Department of History
I am an historian of modern Africa, global feminism and decolonization. My first book, Street Archives and City Life: Popular Intellectuals in Postcolonial Tanzania, explores the creative lives of urban migrant youth to the city of Dar es Salaam during Tanzania’s socialist era, from 1967 through 1985.
My second book Wages for Housework: The Story of a Movement, an Idea, a Promise is an intellectual and social history of the global Wages for Housework movement from the 1970s.
I am currently working on a third book, provisionally called Planning the African Family, which explores the intersection of decolonization and search for health and reproductive justice in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1960s-1980s.
Talks:
Wages for Housework: a feminist history
What would women do with their lives if they had more time? The riveting, untold story of a revolutionary campaign to change the way work is valued.
‘The women of the world are serving notice. We want wages for every dirty toilet, every indecent assault, every painful childbirth, every cup of coffee and every smile. And if we don’t get what we want, we will simply refuse to work any longer!’
Across the globe in the 1970s, a network of feminists distilled their struggles into a single demand: Wages for Housework! Today, it remains a provocative idea, and an unfulfilled promise.
Here historian Emily Callaci tells the story of this campaign by exploring the lives and ideas of its key creators, tracing their wildly creative political vision over the past five decades.