Thursday, 05 June 2025
Time: 10:00 - 11:30 Uhr
Location: 103/EG/0.213 (103 Seminarraum S82 (43 Sitzpl.))
Format: Seminar, english

Registration required - per mail to: vwurth1@uni-koeln.de

In this Proseminar, we will investigate in what way race shapes women’s experiences by studying texts by African-American Women from the 19th to the 21st century. We will discuss Black womanhood in works by Sojourner Truth, Angelina Grimké, Toni Morrison, or Alice Walker, who have all contributed to both the Black liberation movement and feminist discourse. With a broad apprehension of ‘Text’, we will cover a variety of literary genres and media, ranging from speeches, drama, and poetry to prose, and film. The primary works will be read alongside non-fictional texts, for example by Angela Davis and Kimberlé Crenshaw, in order to gain insight into how these artists, scholars, and activists have shaped feminisms and continue to shape feminist inquiry. Thematically, we will deal with the history of slavery and racist violence, the political life of domesticity, motherhood, sexual orientation, corporeality, and strategies of empowerment, and address the critical concepts of identity politics and intersectionality. The content of the session on 4 June will be the short story by Alice Walker, ‘Everyday Use’ (1973).