This collaborative digital project began as a series of interventions created by by participants of the seminar “Feminist Scholar Activism and the Politics of Affect” at the German Studies Association in Atlanta, 2017. We are a group of interdisciplinary feminist scholars with wide-ranging interests that include environmental studies, critical race studies, Black European studies, and more.

We conceptualize this series as a way to investigate the interplay among feminist theory, academic labor, and affect as activist work. In particular, we interrogate the functioning of affect in feminist scholar-activist practices, while insisting that feminist work is intersectional work, and that gender justice cannot be separated from other fights for social justice. Scholars of color and queer scholars participating in work against racism, homophobia, and other forms of exclusion have been foundational to the work of affect studies. We consider, for example, Sara Ahmed’s work on how feminism relies on the loneliness of being a killjoy, of challenging sites of happiness, while survival as feminist resides in the precarious moments of recognition and connection between similar killjoy activists. Jasbir Puar argues for an interrogation of debility that recognizes affect in the body as site of creative resistance, but also increasing surveillance and regulation. In our work, we emphasize feminist scholar-activism as intersectional practice, highlight the diversity of feminist practice, and consider how homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, racism, antisemitism, and other forms of exclusionary violence inform feminist scholar-activism and the politics of affect.

The publications on this website follow three genres: Feminist Practices, Collaborative Research Keywords, and Thematic Disruptions. Our publications undergo editorial review by the seminar organizers with input from members of the seminar. We invite you to join our collaborations and conversations! Please comment here, on Twitter, or on the Women in German Facebook page.