Katharina Gerund
FAU Erlangen-Nuernberg, American Studies, Faculty Member
Chapter uses research paradigms from mobility studies, black diaspora studies, and transnational American studies, in order to create a nuanced picture of the many facets of Josephine Baker’s career as an artist and activist. It discusses... more
Chapter uses research paradigms from mobility studies, black diaspora studies, and transnational American studies, in order to create a nuanced picture of the many facets of Josephine Baker’s career as an artist and activist. It discusses Baker’s often neglected role as an activist for the French Resistance and in the US Civil Rights Movement, as well as her self-fashioning as a mother, head of state, and humanitarian at Les Milandes: a 15th century château where Baker established her Rainbow Tribe. The chapter considers how Baker’s changing positionalities, mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in different social contexts, and experiences of displacement and exile, partially determined her political work and how she was simultaneously constructed by these discourses. Baker is cast as a “revolutionary diva” who does not simply belong on the margins of current debates around transnational affiliations and cosmopolitanisms, cultural mobilities and immobilities, and political activism...
Research Interests:
This review essay offers a consideration of affect and aesthetics in transnational feminism writing. We first discuss the general marginalization of aesthetics in selected canonical texts of transnational feminist theory, seen mostly as... more
This review essay offers a consideration of affect and aesthetics in transnational feminism writing. We first discuss the general marginalization of aesthetics in selected canonical texts of transnational feminist theory, seen mostly as the exclusion of texts that do not adhere to the established tenets of academic writing, as well as the lack of interest in the closer examination of the features of transnational feminist aesthetic and its political dimensions. In proposing a more comprehensive alternative, we draw on the current “re-turn towards aesthetics” and especially on Rita Felski’s work in this context. This approach works against a “hermeneutics of suspicion” in literary analyses and re-directs scholarly attention from the hidden messages and political contexts of a literary work to its aesthetic qualities and distinctly literary properties. While proponents of these movements are not necessarily interested in the political potential of their theories, scholars in transnati...
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This essay examines Tajuana Butler’s Sorority Sisters (1998) regarding its portrayal of friendship, sisterhood, and sorority culture. The novel conceptualizes ‘sisterhood’ as a fictive kinship structure and emphasizes the empowering... more
This essay examines Tajuana Butler’s Sorority Sisters (1998) regarding its portrayal of friendship, sisterhood, and sorority culture. The novel conceptualizes ‘sisterhood’ as a fictive kinship structure and emphasizes the empowering potential of friendship among women. It fully embraces sorority culture and presents pledging as a ‘social drama’ in all its facets. Overall, Sorority Sisters provides an intervention into dominant representations of sorority life and black femininity. Yet, this intervention hinges on a discursive system of control shaped by conventional femininity and an uncritical affirmation of the ideology, practices, and significance of sororities.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This review essay offers a consideration of affect and aesthetics in transnational feminism writing. We first discuss the general marginalization of aesthetics in selected canonical texts of transnational feminist theory, seen mostly as... more
This review essay offers a consideration of affect and aesthetics in transnational feminism writing. We first discuss the general marginalization of aesthetics in selected canonical texts of transnational feminist theory, seen mostly as the exclusion of texts that do not adhere to the established tenets of academic writing, as well as the lack of interest in the closer examination of the features of transnational feminist aesthetic and its political dimensions. In proposing a more comprehensive alternative, we draw on the current " return towards aesthetics " and especially on Rita Felski's work in this context. This approach works against a " hermeneutics of suspicion " in literary analyses and redirects scholarly attention from the hidden messages and political contexts of a literary work to its aesthetic qualities and distinctly literary properties. While proponents of these movements are not necessarily interested in the political potential of their theories, scholars in transnational feminism like Samantha Pinto have shown the congruency of aesthetic and political interests in the study of literary texts. Extending Felski's and Pinto's respective projects into an approach to literary aesthetics more oriented toward transnational feminism on the one hand and less exclusively interested in formalist experimentation on the other, we propose the concept of affective aesthetics. It productively complicates recent theories of literary aesthetics and makes them applicable to a diverse range of texts. We exemplarily consider the affective dimensions of aesthetic strategies in works by Christina Sharpe, Sara Ahmed, bell hooks, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who promote the idea of feminism as an everyday practice through aesthetically rendered texts that foster a personal and intimate link between the writer, text, and the reader. The affective dimensions of transnational feminist writing prove to be an effective political strategy. We indicate how this approach might contribute to a reading of genre-defying non-experimental texts in order to exhaust their full political potential—in form, context, and affective strategy—for a transnational feminist agenda.
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This essay examines Tajuana Butler’s Sorority Sisters (1998) regarding its portrayal of friendship, sisterhood, and sorority culture. The novel conceptualizes ‘sisterhood’ as a fictive kinship structure and emphasizes the empowering... more
This essay examines Tajuana Butler’s Sorority Sisters (1998) regarding its portrayal of friendship, sisterhood, and sorority culture. The novel conceptualizes ‘sisterhood’ as a fictive kinship structure and emphasizes the empowering potential of friendship among women. It fully embraces sorority culture and presents pledging as a ‘social drama’ in all its facets. Overall, Sorority Sisters provides an intervention into dominant representations of sorority life and black femininity. Yet, this intervention hinges on a discursive system of control shaped by conventional femininity and an uncritical affirmation of the ideology, practices, and significance of sororities.
This essay analyzes Julie Dash’s 1997 novel Daughters of the Dust with regard to its portrayal of the Gullah culture, its strategies of familiarizing an outsider readership with a foreign culture, and the way it depicts representations of... more
This essay analyzes Julie Dash’s 1997 novel Daughters of the Dust with regard to its portrayal of the Gullah culture, its strategies of familiarizing an outsider readership with a foreign culture, and the way it depicts representations of culture in anthropology and literature. The analysis works on two levels: it examines how intercultural encounters are portrayed in the novel as well as how the novel itself functions as “entry point” to the Gullah culture. It argues that Dash presents cultures as distinct though not disclosed entities where boundaries can be transgressed though not transcended.
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Audre Lorde and her work as writer-activist have had a strong influence on the development of Afro-German women's communities, especially with regard to fostering solidarity among these women and creating a distinct group identity.... more
Audre Lorde and her work as writer-activist have had a strong influence on the development of Afro-German women's communities, especially with regard to fostering solidarity among these women and creating a distinct group identity. However, the interactions between the "warrior poet" and her "Black German sisters" have not been one-directionally influential. Rather, traces of her connection with and impressions of Germany and Afro-German women can be found in Lorde's work and call for a reading of her writings in this context. The women she connected with personally or via her (literary) work have been transformed or at least affected by their mutual exchange(s) with her. This essay analyzes these transatlantic dialogues and interactions which are primarily based on gender and black solidarity and outlines Lorde's seminal role for Afro-German women as individuals and as an identifiable and visible group in German society. In the first part of this article, I, therefore, put Audre
Lorde's works in the context of her relationship to Germany and particularly Afro-German women. The second part primarily focuses on Lorde's influence on Afro-German women's communities and the final part of this paper works towards an understanding of the overall conditions and consequences of this mutual exchange as well as its meaning within the context of the African Diaspora.
Lorde's works in the context of her relationship to Germany and particularly Afro-German women. The second part primarily focuses on Lorde's influence on Afro-German women's communities and the final part of this paper works towards an understanding of the overall conditions and consequences of this mutual exchange as well as its meaning within the context of the African Diaspora.
Research Interests:
This bilingual volume (English/German) gives insight into the experiences of the Black Diaspora in Germany and the connections of the international Black Diaspora with Germany. Topics range from the 18th century to the present and from... more
This bilingual volume (English/German) gives insight into the experiences of the Black Diaspora in Germany and the connections of the international Black Diaspora with Germany. Topics range from the 18th century to the present and from social history to literature, art and popular culture. The book includes chapters on political initiatives, theoretical issues, historical overviews and individual case studies. It offers reflections on the relationships between Black German Studies and Critical Whiteness Studies to hegemonic traditions of knowledge production, between racism and nationhood, and between colonial history and later developments. Further topics include the intersectionality of ‘race’, class and gender; and the position of Black people in cultural production, between commodification, performativity and subversion. Chapters include academic analyses from History and Cultural Studies, as well as contributions by and about activists, artists and historical witnesses, in the form of both essays and interviews.
The Editors:
The research network Black Diaspora and Germany (BDG, founded in 2007) connects Black and white academics from various disciplines with Black political and cultural activists and the Black Community. A special concern is the combination of academic perspectives with wider socio-political discourses and initiatives.
The Editors:
The research network Black Diaspora and Germany (BDG, founded in 2007) connects Black and white academics from various disciplines with Black political and cultural activists and the Black Community. A special concern is the combination of academic perspectives with wider socio-political discourses and initiatives.
Research Interests:
From Josephine Baker's performances in the 1920s to the 1970s solidarity campaigns for Angela Davis, from Audre Lorde as »mother« of the Afro-German movement in the 1980s to the literary stardom of 1993 Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison,... more
From Josephine Baker's performances in the 1920s to the 1970s solidarity campaigns for Angela Davis, from Audre Lorde as »mother« of the Afro-German movement in the 1980s to the literary stardom of 1993 Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, Germans have actively engaged with African American women's art and activism throughout the 20th century. The discursive strategies that have shaped the (West) German reactions to African American women's social activism and cultural work are examined in this study, which proposes not only a nuanced understanding of »African Americanizations« as a form of cultural exchange but also sheds new light on the role of African American culture for (West) German society, culture, and national identity.