WiG Webinar, 2018: Teaching and Working for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in our Classrooms and at our Institutions.

Monday, November 26, 8pm-10pm EST  (Note Date Change!) 

Presenters: Nicole Coleman, Lisabeth Hock, Amy Young

Women in German members know from our work as scholars, teachers, providers of countless hours of service work, and activists, that forms of structural inequality disadvantage target groups while granting advantages and privileges to members of non-target groups. These forms of inequality include, but are not limited to: ableism, ageism, colorism, the elitism of the tenure system, heterosexism, racism, and sexism. They support often-invisible systems of power, privilege, and oppression that work at personal, interpersonal, institutional, and cultural levels to limit diversity, equity and inclusion in our classrooms and at our institutions. 

Through our research and through curricular changes, WiG members have worked to make once invisible power systems visible, especially within the contexts of German culture and our colleges and universities. This WiG Webinar will focus on broader concepts and strategies related both to destabilizing the foundations of personal, interpersonal and institutional oppression and to supporting equity and inclusion for our students and colleagues. The Webinar will have two parts. Our theoretical section will address privilege and unconscious bias, allyship and its discontents, stereotype threat, inclusive classrooms, and diversifying faculty with intentionality. Our praxis section will address strategies for creating an inclusive classroom.

Participation limited to 100. Please Register at: https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_zRjpKqaTSp-dpS6t6tPSRQ

Related materials available in: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZQI0pwLumJ6Z_SZ_rjkTGatVZ4MkGHGK

 Questions to:

Women in German Statement on Antisemitic, Racist, and Transphobic Language and Violence

  • In recognition of the intertwined histories and present manifestations of antisemitism, anti-Black racism, xenophobia, heteropatriarchy and white supremacy –
  • And as feminist scholars within German studies committed to intersectional understandings of social justice –

We condemn the violence that has again come to a head in the last week. We are sorrowed by the murders of 11 people at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, and the murders of two African Americans in a Kentucky grocery store, all at the hands of white supremacists. We denounce the symbolic violence that has taken place through the circulation of misinformation about trans people and transphobic language, through antisemitic and racist speech posted in social media and in the physical public, and the ongoing rhetorical attacks targeting immigrants and refugees.

As feminists, it is important to speak out in moments of oppression. We know that this violence is not new, but the convergence of these violences over the last week makes painfully visible the ways in which white supremacy and heteropatriarchy continue to wield power in our society. We have marched and protested, and we will continue to march and protest and speak out. We recognize that silence becomes complicity.

As a feminist organization, we are committed to scholarship that challenges interlocking systems of oppression and power. We recognize that feminist goals must include the end of racism and white supremacy. We recognize that systems that promote and rely on racism; sexism; homophobia; transphobia; ableism; colonialism; and other forms of exploitation, hatred and exclusion are interlinked, and often support one another. We express our solidarity with all groups who stand against these systems of oppression.

This continues to be a painful time for our members, students, and colleagues who are targeted directly, often daily, by racist, antisemitic, xenophobic and transphobic violence – whether as physical threat or verbal aggression. We stand with all of you.

Individual acts respond to a social context, one in which hate speech enables and promotes violent actions. We call on our members, as teachers, scholars, and leaders, to name and challenge white supremacy and heteropatriarchy wherever it is manifest, whether in everyday speech, social media, political discourse, or elsewhere. We cannot allow violent speech to seem “normal.” We cannot allow an atmosphere that enables such horrific violence to continue.

– Women in German (WiG) Steering Committee

This year’s WiG guest in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung

Reyhan Sahin on antisemitism in German rap:

Im Deutschrap wurden antisemitische Inhalte erst mit dem Aufstieg von Rappern wie Bushido und Haftbefehl, also seit etwa zehn Jahren, sichtbar. Kool Savaş, seit den 1990ern Pionier des Battle-Rap in Deutschland, rappt zwar trans-, homo- und frauenfeindlich, aber nicht antisemitisch. Man könnte fragen, warum sich darüber – außer Alice Schwarzer – so wenige aufgeregt haben. Fest steht aber: Die Behauptung, dass Antisemitismus eben Bestandteil des Rap sei, stimmt einfach nicht. Dieser Trend ist relativ neu.

Christa Wolf: A Companion

The volume Christa Wolf: A Companion, edited by Sonja Klocke and Jennifer Hosek, includes work by a number of WiGgies!

Interest in Christa Wolf continues to grow. Her classics are being reprinted and new titles are appearing posthumously, becoming bestsellers, and being translated. Energetic scholarly debates engage well-known aesthetic and political issues that the public intellectual herself fore-fronted. This broad-ranging introduction to the author, her work and times builds upon and moves beyond such foundational interpretative frameworks by articulating the global relevance of Wolf’s oeuvre today, also for non-German readers. Thus, it brings East German culture alive to students, teachers, scholars and the general public by connecting the socialist German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the lived experiences of its citizens to nations and cultures around the world. The collection focuses on topical matters including the search for authenticity, agency, race, cosmopolitanism, gender, environmentalism, geopolitics, war, and memory debates, as well as movie adaptations and Wolf’s film work with DEFA, marketing, and international reception. Our contributions – by senior and emerging scholars from across the globe – emphasize Wolf’s position as an author of world literature and an important critical voice in the 21st century.

Contents

Introduction: Reading Christa Wolf in the Twenty-First Century
Klocke, Sonja E. / Hosek, Jennifer R.

Modernity and the City in Christa Wolf’s Oeuvre of the 1960s
Swope, Curtis

Narrative Topographies in Christa Wolf’s Oeuvre
Criser, Regine

The Gendered Reception of Christa Wolf
Kuhn, Anna K.

Unearthing a Post-Humanist Ecological Socialism in Christa Wolf’s ‘Selbstversuch’, Kassandra and Störfall
Janson, Deborah

Nature, Power and Literature: Rereading Christa Wolf’s Störfall. Nachrichten eines Tages as ‘Ecological Force’ in Times of Climate Crisis
Mering, Sabine von

Literature and Visual Art in Christa Wolf’s Sommerstück (1989) and Was bleibt (1990)
Skare, Roswitha

Learning from the Underground: Christa Wolf and the Fourth Generation of GDR Writers
Horakova, Anna

From Pan-German Cosmopolitanism to Nostalgic National Insularity: A Comparative Study of Christa Wolf’s Kassandra and Medea
Pizer, John

Christa Wolf’s Trouble with Race
Weber, Beverly M.

Towards a Late Style? Christa Wolf on Old Age, Death and Creativity in Stadt der Engel oder The Overcoat of Dr. Freud
Smale, Catherine

The Protocol of Barriers to Thinking? Wolf’s Moskauer Tagebücher. Wer wir sind und wer wir waren (2014)
Dahlke, Birgit

Translating Subjective Authenticity from Christa T. to Stadt der Engel and August: Re-presenting Christa Wolf’s Subaltern Voice
Summers, Caroline

From Political-Realistic Reading to Multiperspectival Understanding: The Reception of Christa Wolf’s Der geteilte Himmel in China
Chen, Yutian / Zhang, Fan

Reading Christa Wolf in Socialist Vietnam
Trinh, Huynh Mai

Christa Wolf: A Select Bibliography
Klocke, Sonja E.