TFW’s Heidi R. Lewis & Aishah Shahidah Simmons to Visit Berlin

Heidi R. Lewis

For the second consecutive year, Heidi R. Lewis (TFW Associate Editor and Assistant Professor of Feminist & Gender Studies at Colorado College) will teach Hidden Spaces, Hidden Narratives: Intersectionality Studies in Berlin in Germany from May 31-June 21 this summer. This time, she will be joined by Course Associate Aishah Shahidah Simmons (TFW Associate Editor, Sterling Brown Visiting Professor of Africana Studies at Williams College for Spring 2016, and previous Adjunct Professor of Women’s Studies and LGBT Studies at Temple University).

Aishah Shahidah Simmons

The course will provide 13 undergraduate students from Colorado College, known affectionately as the FemGeniuses in Berlin, with the opportunity to examine how the identities of Black Germans, Jewish Germans, Turkish Germans, migrants, refugees, victims of Neo-Nazi terrorism and police brutality, and LGBTQI communities, among other marginalized communities are constructed, particularly how these constructions are predicated on racism, heterosexism, colonialism, imperialism, and other forms of oppression. Additionally, students will examine how these communities resist, reject, revise, and reproduce these narratives as they construct their own subjectivities.

Heidi & the 2014 FemGeniuses in Berlin (Kaimara Herron-July, Blaise Yafcak, Melissa L. Barnes, Stefani Messick, Heidi, Beril Mese, Kadesha Caradine, Ximena Buller Machado, Casey Schuller, and Nicole Tan) with Cassandra Ellerbe-Dück at the Clara-Zetkin Museum in Birkenwerder (Germany)

More specifically, the FemGeniuses will participate in the following tours: A Woman’s Perspective Tour w/ Pen Hassmann, a Jewish Quarter/Holocaust History Tour w/ Carolyn Gammon, the Queer Berlin Walking Tour, The Spirit of 1968: The Students’ Movement and Its Heritage Tour, a tour of Turkish Berlin in Neukölln tour and visit to the Türkischer Markt, a Sinti/Romany History Tour, the Africa in Wedding Tour w/ Josephine Apraku, and a farewell Express Cruise. They will also visit the following sites and museums: a welcome dinner at the Deutscher Bundestag, the Egyptian and Papyrus Collection at the Neues Museum, the German Resistance Memorial, the “Forced into Exile” Workshop at the Jewish Museum, the Kenako Africa Festival, the Anti-Kriegs Museum, a Graffiti Workshop on the Berlin Wall with the Berlin Massive, the Lesbian & Gay City Festival, and a farewell dinner at the Berliner Fernsehturm (TV Tower). Finally, they will also attend sessions conducted by Stefanie-Lahya Aukongo (author of Kalungas Child), Dr. Maisha Eggers from the Center for Transdisciplinary Gender Studies at Humboldt University, Sandrine Micossé-Aikins, Nadine Saeed of the Initiative in Memory of Oury Jalloh, Sharon Dodua Otoo (author of the things i am thinking while smiling politely), Ford Kelly of LesMigraS, Jasmin Eding of Adefra, Asoka Esuruoso and Philipp Koepsell (co-editors of Arriving in the Future), Joshua “Kwesi” Aikins of Berlin Postkolonial, Mutlu Ergün-Hamaz aka Sesperado Lyrical Guerilla of Phoenix, and Noah Sow. During the course, Heidi, Aishah, and the FemGeniuses will regularly post transmedia blogs to the FemGeniuses website! You are also welcome to follow the FemGeniuses on social media using the #FemGeniusesInBerlin hashtag for Facebook and Twitter!

Heidi and Aishah at the 2014 National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference in San Juan, PR 

Heidi and Aishah also invite you to engage their previous collaborations, which include TFW‘s global forum in honor of “Audre Lorde’s 80th Birthday Anniversary Year,” curated by Aishah and featuring many Berlin comrades, such as Ika Hügel-Marshall, Ria Cheatom, Dagmar Schultz, Marion Kraft, and Cassandra Ellerbe-Dück, as well as Elizabeth Lorde-Rollins, Gloria I. Joseph, M. Jacqui Alexander, Jewelle Gomez, Cheryl Clarke, Robert Reid-Pharr, Jennifer Abod, Johnnetta Betsch Cole, and Beverly Guy-Sheftall, among many others. Aishah and Heidi also co-curated TFW‘s forum in honor of “Toni Cade Bambara‘s 75th Birthday Anniversary Year,” featuring Linda Janet Holmes, Sarah C. Poindexter, Louis Massiah, Nikky Finney, Cara Page, Kalamu ya Salaam, Kamili and Tom Feelings, Pearl Cleage, Clyde Taylor, Nikki Harmon, Eleanor Traylor, Malaika Adero, Haki Madhubuti, Sonia Sanchez, and many others.