Teaching Audre Lorde’s ‘Notes on a Trip to Russia': Roundtable Discussion

This roundtable will explore Audre Lorde’s essay from Sister Outsider, focusing on its relevance to Black-Indigenous Eurasian solidarities and the insights it offers for today’s classrooms. In 1976, the renowned Black feminist writer and activist Audre Lorde traveled to Soviet Eurasia, yet her essay on this journey has received surprisingly little attention. Why has this essay been largely overlooked, and what value does it hold for the contemporary moment? Should we teach this essay, and if so, how? Join us as we delve into these questions and consider the significance of Lorde’s reflections for fostering dialogue and understanding in our interconnected world.

Panelists include:

+Azhar Dyussekenova (PhD Сandidate, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, the University of Michigan) specializes in 20th- and 21st-century Russophone literature, with particular attention to postcolonial ecocriticism and queer-feminist writing in non-Russian contexts.
+Alexa Kurmanov (Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley), whose dissertation examines LGBT and feminist activism in (post)socialist Kyrgyzstan.
+Mae A. Miller-Likhethe (PhD, Assistant Professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara) engages in her work transnational social movements, cultural histories of infrastructure and empire, Black feminist thought and activism, and oceanic humanities.
+Saltanat Shoshanova (doctoral researcher, the University of Regensburg) focuses on queer feminist art, decoloniality, and memory production in Central Asia.
+Jamele Watkins (PhD, Assistant Professor, German Studies, University of Minnesota), whose research includes Black performance, race, and gender in Germany.

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