At this year’s Women in German (WiG) Conference, held at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Prof. Horakova took part in a roundtable moderated by guest speaker, Katharina Warda, a sociologist, filmmaker, writer, and literary scholar. Warda’s work explores race, class, and memory in postwar and post-reunification Germany. The roundtable featured lively exchanges on decolonial and intersectional approaches to East German cultural history. At the conference, Katharina Warda also presented on her ongoing film projects.

WiG is a forum for all people interested in feminist approaches to German literature and culture, and in the intersection of gender with other categories of analysis such as sexuality, class, race, and ethnicity. Prof. Horakova’s contribution focused on the work of East German poet and artist Raja Lubinetzki (b. 1962), shedding light on the vital yet often overlooked contributions of female artists of color to the 1980s East Berlin underground scene. Her talk demonstrated how Lubinetzki’s poetry and visual art expand and enrich our understanding of the East German counterculture, revealing it as a space of creative resistance that was more diverse and complex than previously acknowledged.

The presentation will form the basis for a chapter in the forthcoming volume Minoritized Voices: Decolonizing the East German Experience (edited by Katharina Warda and Katrin Bahr) and for Professor Horakova’s ongoing book project.

Written by Prof. Anna Horakova.