Guest lecture as part of the lecture series “Diversity in Canadian Literature and Culture” by Prof. Dr. Jutta Ernst

Prof. Dr. Astrid Fellner is a Professor of North American Literary and Cultural Studies at the American Studies department of the Saarland University (Universität des Saarlandes). She specialises North American Literature and Culture – e.g. Latinx Literature and Canadian Literature – as well as Body Studies, American Pop Culture, Gender Studies and Border Studies. Among her numerous publications are the book Narratives of Border Crossings: Literary Approaches and Negotiations (2021) which she edited, as well as the article “‘To Live in the Borderlands Means…’: The Transcultural Poetics of Lee Maracle” (2019), published in Le Canada: une culture de métissage/Transcultural Canada.

You can download the poster for the event here.

Magazines as bodies – human bodies. Alive. Breathing, moving. Preaching. In this lecture, we will look at Black independent magazines as spiritual bodies. In fact, magazines like CRWN, Womanly, and HANNAH become spiritual leaders whose teachings are ubiquitous in their pages, though not necessarily obvious.
In their missions to represent authentic Black women, these magazines depict as well as build a Black female community. This focus on strengthening the larger Black community sets the indies apart from mainstream publications, which tend to focus on individuals’ achievements and exceptionalism.
Based on Christian and African-based spiritualities, African Americans have forged a unique spirituality in which knowledge of the interwovenness of all things and beings, dead or alive, is crucial. Thus, we will see how selected Black independent magazines spiritually guide the Black individual into community, inspired by the belief that the self is most authentic, free and self-actualized when in relation.

You can download the poster for the event here.

This lecture offers insight into the U.S. occupation of Haiti (1915-1934) and the complex ways in which African American women engaged with Haitian history during the occupation. It explores how Anna Julia Cooper’s and Harriet Gibbs Marshall’s historical writing challenged the dominant discourse about Haiti, which undergirded the occupation. Reading their work in the context of U.S. imperialism abroad and racial segregation and violence at home, it examines how Cooper and Marshall negotiated their own ideas about and relationships to empire, racial uplift, and diasporic solidarity.