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WiSe 24/25: Gendering American History

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“a changed changer / i continue to continue / where i have been / most of my lives is / where i’m going” – Lucille Clifton, “i am not done yet” (1974) In their Black feminist and Womanist theorization, Loretta J. Ross and Alexis Pauline Gumbs emphasize the how of conjuring realities beyond racial capitalism—the system that binds together blackness and reproduction. For Loretta Ross, co-creator of the theory of reproductive justice, “Our mere existence is a subversive act”; Alexis Pauline Gumbs establishes “a Black queer feminist genealogy for radical mothering” and the imperative to “m/other ourselves” (Gumbs et. al. 2016, pp. xviii, 22). These theories and practices are the heritage of Hortense Spillers, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, bell hooks, and many other prominent theorists who have analyzed gender from the perspective of spiritual communion. How should a history of gender, Black feminist and Womanist theory be read in Germany? Where does the work of May Ayim in Farbe bekennen: Afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte intersect with the “Combahee River Collective Statement,” and where does it depart? How does Jafari S. Allen’s There’s a disco ball between us: a theory of black gay life elucidate “pastness” as “a position” (Allen 2022, p. 1)? In this seminar, we will analyze moments in the past fifty years of gender history with an emphasis on intellectual and spiritual exchange between Black feminist theorists in North America and in Germany. close