Beverly M. Weber

Gender, race, religion, faith? Rethinking intersectionality in German feminisms

Despite the recent wave of scholarship on intersectionality, as well as a surge in feminist scholarship on Islam in German feminist studies, feminist research has yet to adequately engage with the role of religion in intersectionality. In this article the author draws on the work of the Aktionsbündnis muslimischer Frauen in Germany to explore the possibility for incorporating religion and faith into intersectional frameworks, which requires attention to women of color theorizing in German feminisms, recognition of ways in which religions and forms of secularism have been racialized, and recognition of affective attachment to faith.

From sex shacks to mega-brothels: The politics of anti-trafficking and the 2006 soccer World Cup

This article examines the discourses of forced prostitution that circulated in the US and European media and government publications in the context of the soccer World Cup in 2006. This analysis of the public discourse around prostitution reveals two themes: concerns about immigration and border security, and representations of gender binaries that serve to relegate migrant women to the status of victim. The fears of increased sex trafficking and the condemnation of so-called ‘sex shacks’ and ‘mega-brothels’ for the World Cup 2006 served as foils for other perceived crises produced by globalisation. The debates struggle with a marked ‘other’ that reveals new forms of racialised ‘othering’: dangerously white, understood as both of Europe and a threat to it. The 2006 World Cup historical moment has implications for how international sports, consumer culture and feminist activism inform and conceal human agency.

Hijab Martyrdom, Headscarf Debates: Rethinking Violence, Secularism, and Islam in Germany

Fereshta Ludin’s struggle to be appointed as a public school teacher while wearing a hijab received massive media attention in Germany, while the xenophobically motivated murder of Marwa el-Sherbini, who was eventually dubbed the “ hijab martyr” internationally, elicited muted response. Yet interpreting the reactions to these two cases together reveals much about the existence of racism and Islamophobia in contemporary Germany. In this article I juxtapose the public discussions of these two cases to consider the potential for a critique of headscarf discourse. I suggest that interrogation of headscarf discourse is only possible by turning the very notion of critique against itself in order to interrogate the conditions of secularism.

Kübra Gümüşay, Muslim digital feminism and the politics of visuality in Germany

abstract Muslim women’s digital activism exists in complexly racialized visual contexts. This is exemplified in the journalism and activism of Kübra Gümüşay, who first gained public attention as the purportedly first “hijabi columnist” in Germany. This essay draws on her series “50 Thoughts” as an entry point into her digital activism. I suggest that Gümüşay uses this series to reveal the larger visual dilemmas with which she engages. Her digital activism functions by taking the risk to both expose and reconfigure the very conditions under which she is visible and comprehensible to her publics. In particular, I consider her activism as using digital spaces for self-poiesis (an imaginative remaking of self) as well as teleopoiesis (an imaginative reaching out to the other). This latter move functions both to gesture to an anti-racist community as well as to alliances among multiple feminisms.

In Permanent Crisis: Ethnicity in Contemporary European Media and Cinema

lescent in an environment that he could only begin to make sense of rather than fully comprehend. More importantly, perhaps, his account provides an account that highlights the realities of being young, male and black in a community that was seemingly always under pressure and unsettled. Much of the narrative in The Beautiful Struggle is not necessarily driven by Coates himself. We hear a lot in the book of the experiences of his father and other members of his family and friendship network. His father is a forceful presence throughout the book and provides Coates with many of the snippets of information, wisdom and anger that frame much of the narrative of the book as a whole. There is a particularly insightful account in Chapter three of his father’s role in the Black Panther movement in the 1970s. In addition, however, Coates is able to provide a narrative that takes us through his adolescent years and his experiences of sport, friendship, music and school in the ever changing environment of Baltimore. Writing at a time long before the mobilisations that have been brought together under the umbrella of #Black Lives Matter his account suggests that the everyday violence and disrespect that has led to the present have a longer and more complex historical presence. The recent hype around Coates has led to inevitable comparisons with the work of James Baldwin among others. But this is perhaps the wrong point of reference, since much of the power of Coates narrative style owes much to the sense of anger and hopelessness about race in America that underpin musical expressions such as hip hop. He is at his best when he is telling stories that are framed around calls for reflection and action and is less strong when he is exploring what can be done to transform the current dilemmas around race in American society and beyond.