Queer, Working-Class and Kurdish Experiences. Narrative Interventions in Contemporary German Literature

Date: 8 March 2023, 5.00-6.30 p.m. (GMT)

A hybrid event: In person (Cynthia Beerbower Room, Newnham College) & online

Please register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/queer-working-class-and-kurdish-experiences-in-german-literature-tickets-539730216607

On International Womxn’s Day, writers Fatma Aydemir and Karosh Taha will join Dr Maha El Hissy, Miriam Schwarz and Dr Tara Talwar Windsor to talk about representations of Queer, working-class and postmigrant, especially Kurdish, experiences in German literature.

This panel will offer a space to think critically about the kind of marginalised voices and stories that can be told in the contemporary German literary scene. As considerations of queerness and gender currently tend to be left out of discussions around racist realities in Germany, this panel aims to foreground intersectional perspectives on postmigrant experiences. At the centre of the discussion will be Aydemir’s Dschinns (Hanser, 2022) [Djinns] and Taha’s Im Bauch der Königin (DuMont, 2020) [In the Belly of the Queen, V&Q Books, 2023, trans. by Grashina Gabelmann]. With innovative aesthetics and narrative structures, Aydemir’s and Taha’s writing intervenes in traditional forms of storytelling and opens new pathways of thinking and analysis. 

The event will be in English. Drinks reception after the event. 

With generous support from the Cambridge DAAD Research Hub, the Association of German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland, Women in German Studies, the Schroeder fund, the Tiarks fund, the Cambridge Q+ Network and Newnham College.