Gloria Wekker

Gloria Daisy Wekker (born June 13, 1950) is an Afro-Surinamese Dutch emeritus professor (Utrecht University) and writer who has focused on gender studies and sexuality in the Afro-Caribbean region and diaspora. She was the winner of the Ruth Benedict Prize from the American Anthropological Association in 2007.

Biography Gloria Wekker was born in 1950 in Paramaribo, Suriname. Her family migrated to the Netherlands when she was a one year old infant and lived in a neighborhood in Amsterdam that had formerly been predominantly Jewish prior to WWI. She returned to Amsterdam in the 1970s and became active in the Afro-European Women's Movement. Wekker earned a master's degree in cultural anthropology Her work focuses on the intersections of colonialism, racism, white privilege, feminist theory, lesbian theory and women in the Caribbean. as she has forced the Dutch to examine their alleged ingrained stereotypes and attitudes towards racism and patriarchy. She has led debate which questioned the racist nature of such iconic images in Dutch tradition as Sinterklaas (Santa Claus)'s helpers as blackface golliwogs known as Zwarte Piet (Black Pete), as well as the imagery of what constitutes beauty.

Wekker was nominated in 2004 for the Dutch Scientific Research Council's "Triomfprijs" (Triumph prize). and was awarded with the 2007 Ruth Benedict Prize from the American Anthropological Association. Wekker gave the 2009 Mosse Lecture, titled Van Homo Nostalgie en betere tijden. Multiculturaliteit en postkolonialiteit (On Gay Nostalgia and better times. Multiculturalism and postcolonialism). In 2011, she began a sabbatical to work at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies on a research project, The committee published their findings in the report Let's do diversity in 2016.

Selected works