Breaking Down Patriarchy

Amy is joined by Dr. Christena Cleveland to discuss her book God is a Black Woman and unpack our assumptions about divinity, gender, and race.

Christena Cleveland Ph.D. is a social psychologist, public theologian, author, and activist. She is the founder and director of the Center for Justice + Renewal as well as its sister organization, Sacred Folk, which creates resources to stimulate people’s spiritual imaginations and support their journeys toward liberation.

A weaver of Black liberation and the sacred feminine, Dr. Cleveland integrates psychology, theology, storytelling, and art to stimulate our spiritual imaginations. She recently completed her third full-length book, God is a Black Woman (HarperOne), which details her 400-mile walking pilgrimage across central France in search of ancient Black Madonna statues, and examines the relationship among race, gender, and cultural perceptions of the Divine.

Dr. Cleveland holds a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California Santa Barbara as well as an honorary doctorate from the Virginia Theological Seminary. An award-winning researcher and author, Christena is a Ford Foundation Fellow who has held faculty positions at several institutions of higher education — most recently at Duke University’s Divinity School, where she led a research team investigating self-compassion as a buffer to racial stress. Though Dr. Cleveland loves scholarly inquiry, she is also a student of embodied wisdom. She recently completed the Art & So

Amy is joined by Kylee Shepherd to discuss We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi as well as Womanism and Feminism on the African continent.

Kylee Shepherd is a bi-racial student from Bakersfield, California. She is currently a psychology major at Brigham Young University and plans to be an elementary school teacher. She is a founding member of The Black Menaces, an activist group interviewing students and faculty on college campuses with questions that start conversations about racial issues, biases, stereotypes, and more. In her spare time, Kylee likes to the movies, play with her dog, and take naps.

Amy is joined by Channel Achenbach to discuss Daughters of Anowa by Mercy Amba Oduyoye and explore history and gender relations in Ghana.

Channel Achenbach hales from San Antonio, TX and is an advocate for "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." She is a seeker of freedom, justice, accountability, love, compassion, mercy, diversity and awareness. She pursues opportunities to discuss racial disparities and the achievable resolutions for unity, diversity and solidarity within the membership in and out of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Channel has been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints for more than 30 years, leaving following her mission. Channel is married with seven kids and one grandson.

Amy is joined by writer and intellectual OluTimehin Kukoyi to discuss The Invention of Women by Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí and explore the concept of gender in Nigeria.

OluTimehin Kukoyi (née Adegbeye) is an award-winning writer, speaker and public intellectual whose work focuses on love and freedom. She is known for her insightful analyses of issues relating to feminism, gender, sexualities and pro-poor urbanisation.

Her TED talk on urban inclusion “Who Belongs in a City?“, delivered at TEDGlobal 2017, was acclaimed as one of the most notable talks of 2017. OluTimehin has addressed audiences on four continents, and has worked with a wide variety of corporate and civil society organisations in her home country of Nigeria and internationally.

Ms Kukoyi was awarded the third Gerald Kraak Prize for her essay, ‘Mothers and Men‘, which is now available in print in the Jacana Media anthology, ‘The Heart of the Matter‘. She has been published online by a range of journalistic, development and cultural platforms, and until its closure was a staff writer at The Correspondent. Her work has been translated into 26 languages, with selected publications incorporated into academic curricula in various countries.

OluTimehin is an alumna of the inaugural Writing for Social Justice workshop organised by AWDF in collaboration with FEMRITE (Uganda, 2014), the Farafina Trust Creative Writing workshop (Nigeria, 2015), and the BRITDOC Queer Impact Producers Lab (USA, 2017), among other fellowships. She lives in Lagos with her family.

Amy explores the history of Liberia and Women's Mass Action for Peace through the written words of one of her heroes, Leymah Gbowee. 

Amy explores the history of Liberia and Women's Mass Action for Peace through the written words of one of her heroes, Leymah Gbowee. 

Amy is joined by academic and advocate Dr. Veronica Fynn Bruey to discuss her book, Patriarchy and Gender in Africa, and discuss the impacts of patriarchy on the African continent.

Dr. Veronica Fynn Bruey is a multi-award winner and a passionate academic and advocate. Holding six academic degrees from four continents, she has researched, taught, consulted, and presented at conferences in over thirty countries. She's authored five books, several book chapters, and journal articles. She's the founder and editor in chief of the Journal of Internal Displacement, the co-lead of Law & Society's collaborative research network, she is the lead of Law & Society Association's international research collaborative, Disrupting Patriarchy and Masculinity in Africa, the founder of The Voice of West African Refugees in Ghana at the Buduburam refugee settlement in Ghana. She is also the Australian National University International Alumna of the Year in 2021, and the president of the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration, and a co-chair of Africa Interest Group American Society Of International Law. Currently she is an Action Canada Fellow, from 2022 to 2023, and the director of The Flower School of Global Health Sciences and an assistant professor of legal studies at Athabasca University. Veronica is a born and bred indigenous Liberian War survivor.

Amy is joined by author, educator, and activist Anne Firth Murray to discuss her book, From Outrage to Courage, and start exploring patriarchy on a global scale.

Amy is joined by Dina Asna and Saghi Saghazadeh to discuss the ongoing revolution in Iran.

Welcome to Season Three of Breaking Down Patriarchy!

Each week in Season 3 Amy will read a book on a different topic in global gender studies, and will discuss it with a guest who has also read - or, in many cases written - the book being discussed. We will start with the African continent, touching down in several different countries to discuss essential topics in the history of patriarchy and gender studies. The following month, in honor of Black History Month, we will focus on essential texts by Black authors. Next, we will move north to the Middle East, then onward to Asia, around to the Pacific Islands, on to the Americas, and finally, we’ll finish out the year with a handful of European countries.

Each guest this year will have ancestry from the country they discuss in their episode, and in many cases they will be longtime residents of that country, which means they will bring firsthand local experience to the discussion.