Black diaspora feminism(s): Audre Lorde and the emergence of black feminism in Germany

Dr. Dagmar Schultz and Dr. Marion Kraft

Screening of Audre Lorde: The Berlin Years followed by a panel discussion with filmmaker Dr. Dagmar Schultz, Dr. Marion Kraft, who is featured in the film, and Ella Achola, Black Students’ Officer and Founding member of Ain’t I a Woman Collective.

About the Speakers

Ella Achola is a final year student at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She recently published an article on growing up black and German on Media Diversified. She has spoken about black feminism and her Afro-German heritage at panels organised by the SOAS Feminist Society, Media Diversified, Oxford University and London StudentFems, and co-authored a chapter for an upcoming anthology in memory of Afro-German poet, academic and activist May Ayim. Ella is also the founder and editor of the Ain’t I A Woman Collective, a black feminist organisation that launched in March and aims to centre the voices of women with African ancestry, and has given a platform to many voices through events and an online blog.

Dr. Marion Kraft is a Black scholar and author, born in Germany in 1946. She studied German, English and Philosophy at the universities of Cologne, Columbus, Ohio and Frankfurt/M, graduated in 1976 and received her teacher’s degree in secondary education in 1978 and her doctorate from the University of Osnabrueck in 1994. Her dissertation The African Continuum and African-American Women Writers was published by Peter Lang in 1995. She taught English, Literature and Women’s Studies at the Oberstufenkolleg at the University of Bielefeld and at the University of Osnabrueck.  A translator of poems by Audre Lorde and co-editor of an anthology on Black women’s culture and politics, she has also published several essays in German and English on racism, sexism, Afro-German women and on African-American Women’s literature.

Dr. Dagmar Schultz was born in Berlin. She first studied at the Free University of Berlin and then studied and worked in the United States and in Puerto Rico from 1963 – 1972. She taught at Rust College in Mississippi and at Columbia College in Chicago and was active in the civil rights and the women’s movements. Schultz received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison with a dissertation on workers‘education. From 1974 to 1986 she taught Women’s Studies and cultural and immigration issues at the John F. Kennedy Institute of North American Studies at the Free University of Berlin. From 1991 to 2004, she was a professor of Social Work at the Alice-Salomon University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. Her teaching and research have focused on feminist studies and women’s movements, on anti-racist social work, on women’s health care and on cultural competence in the psychiatric care of migrants and minorities.
Schultz first met Audre Lorde at the Women’s World Conference in Copenhagen in 1980. She arranged for Lorde to be invited as a Guest Professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute of North American Studies at the Free University of Berlin in 1984. As director of publishing house Orlanda Frauenverlag Schultz edited Macht und Sinnlichkeit Selected texts by Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich, and introduced these authors to German readers. Orlanda published further works by Audre Lorde including a bilingual edition of 42 poems Lorde selected during her last summer in Berlin (Die Quelle unserer Macht). Recently she was awarded the Margherita-von-Brentano-Price 2011 for work which furthers the equal rights of women in academia. The funds of the award contribute to the production of the film Audre Lorde –The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992 and to the establishment of an Audre Lorde Archive at the Free University of Berlin.
In 2007 she was the co-producer of the film “Hope in My Heart – The May Ayim Story”. In 2012 her documentary “Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992” had its world premier at the Berlinale.

Organiser: Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies

Contact email: cb92@soas.ac.uk