Between Racism and Resistance: Afro-German Literature and Film
OLLI at San Francisco State University, 835 Market Street, 6th Floor
Wednesdays at 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM •  October 16 - November 20, 2019 (6 Meeting Days)

Dr. Gerlind is teaching a new course!

This course will familiarize students with a minority population in Germany whose representation has undergone myriad transformations. Media coverage of this group has evolved from racist, indeed colonialist stereotypes, to an aesthetic tolerance of blackness in the service of a pseudo-progressive discourse of difference. Since the 1970s, many Afro-Germans have experienced a growing political awareness of their marginalized status within German society. With regard to contemporary discourses on the Afro-German experience, we will assess personal narratives that document efforts by this population to gain visibility by forming an empowering social and historical identity around the self-label “Afro-German”. We will study historical, scholarly, and autobiographical essays from the groundbreaking book Showing Our Colors, among others, as well as films, poetry, and excerpts from Ika Hügel-Marshall’s memoir Invisible Woman: Growing Up Black in Germany.

Course objectives cultivate an awareness of the historical specificities of the German cultural context. This course promotes critical analysis by decoding racist stereotypes and retracing their construction to underlying insecurities about the parameters of German social and national identity. In the process, the distinction will become increasingly evident between—on the one hand—media (mis)representation and objectification of Afro-German identities, and—on the other hand—the political implications of self-representation.

A Course Reader will be available for purchase.

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Audre Lorde’s Berlin
NYTimes •  July 21, 2019 •  By Charly Wilder

Following in the footsteps of the self-described “black feminist lesbian poet,” whose ideas caught fire in a city she cherished and criticized.

“I come here to read my poetry tonight as a black feminist lesbian poet,” said Audre Lorde, standing onstage in a dashiki and head wrap, to a mesmerized West Berlin audience at the Amerika Haus in June 1984.

At the time, the Wall was still standing, and the western part of the divided city was a hotbed of radical politics, Cold War angst and scrappy, state-subsidized bohemia. But it had never seen anything quite like Lorde, the poet, essayist and activist born in New York City’s Harlem to Caribbean parents in 1934, whose ideas about female rage, intersectional feminism and the political dimensions of self-care have perhaps never been as relevant or embraced as they are today. During Pride month in June, Lorde and her politics were frequently invoked, from acknowledgements at the Stonewall Inn rally in New York City to the official landmarking of her Staten Island home.

The 1984 trip was the first of many extended visits Lorde would make to Berlin, a city she depicted in poetry and prose, where she played a pivotal role in the birth of the Afro-German identity movement in the years before she succumbed to liver cancer in 1992 at age 58. Since her death, Lorde’s momentous influence on the American left has become clear. But she also lives on in today’s Berlin, now a truly international city grappling with what it means to be pluralistic and humane.

Read the rest of the article on our Articles page

Germany Study Tour

A member of our 2017 study tour, Carol Picciotto, put together a video montage of our trip! Thanks Carol! For information about our study tours, go to our study tours page here. (photo : 2019 tour participants ©  JB)