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Philosophische FakultätEnglisches Seminar I

Dr. habil. Johanna Pitetti-Heil

Senior Lecturer (Akademische Rätin) in Gender and Diversity Studies

American Studies

 

General Co-Editor of gender forum

SLSAeu Board Member, representing feminist science studies

Former EAAS Women's Network Steering Committee Member, Former Co-Editor of WiN

 

Office Hours

Please book a slot via the U Cologne scheduler (zoom appointments): https://scheduler.uni-koeln.de/

If you prefer an appointment on campus, please contact me before you book a slot. If you need more time than 20 minutes (esp. for discussing BA or MA theses), please book two slots.

Film Screening & Panel Discussion

Panel Discussion with

Dagmar Schultz

Abenaa Adomako

Glenda Obermuller

 

When and Where:

16 Jan., 2025, 6:30 p.m.

Filmforum NRW, Museum Ludwig

Bischofsgartenstraße 1, 50667 Köln

 

Registration necessary: https://audrelordescreening.eventbrite.de

FREE ADMISSION

 

 

About the Panelists:

Dagmar Schultz was born in Berlin and studied at the Free University, as well as in the United States of America and Puerto Rico. She taught “Women’s studies and cultural and immigration issues” at the John F. Kennedy Institute of North American Studies at the Free University of Berlin and from 1991 to 2004, she was a professor of Social Work at the Alice-Salomon University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. Her teaching and research have focused on feminist studies and women’s movements, anti-racist social work, women’s health care, and cultural competence in the psychiatric care of migrants and minorities.  In 1974 she co-founded Orlanda Women’s Press and was its (co-) publisher until 2001. As director at Orlanda she edited and published several works about or by Audre Lorde including Macht und Sinnlichkeit: Selected texts by Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich and Die Quelle unserer Macht and introduced her works to German readers. In 1980 Dagmar Schultz met Audre Lorde at the Women’s World Conference in Copenhagen and invited her to Berlin to teach as Guest Professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute of North American Studies. She documented their entire time together and directed and produced the the film Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984 to 1992. She is also co-producer of the film Hope in My Heart. The May Ayim Story by Maria Binder (1997). 

 

Abenaa Aqyeiwaa Adomako is 62 years old and from Berlin Schöneberg. She is a networker, activist, and project assistant at an NGO. Moreover, she is co-founder of ISD Germany (the “Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland”) and of “BeeeG/black elders empowerment education Germany.” In 2023, she co-curated the exhibition “In the footsteps of the Diek family” at Schöneberg Museum. She is co-author of various afro-diasporic publications including Farbe bekennen  - Afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte (Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1986), Sisters and Souls  - Inspirationen von May Ayim (Orlanda Verlag 2015) and Spiegelblicke  - Perspektiven Schwarzer Bewegung in Deutschland (Orlanda Verlag 2016). In addition to her role as a protagonist in „Audre Lorde – The Berlin Years 1984-1992,” she appears in several other Afro-diasporic documentaries like the 2023 DW Documentary “Black and German.”

 

Glenda Obermuller born and raised in Guyana, moved to Germany at the age of 24. As a single Black-Indigenous migrant mother, she is familiar with numerous intersectionalities through her lived experience, education, and networks. She is co-founder of the Afro-diasporic self-organization „Sonnenblumen Community Development Group e.V.“ Moreover, she is part of  various other networks and decolonial projects and iniatives like "N-Wort Stoppen", PROUD Black-Owned Pop-Up Market and Event, Black Sisterhood NRW and other task forces which were founded after the Black Lives Matter protests. As a book lover she is co-founder of the Theodor Wonja Michael Bibliothek, the first Black library in Cologne which is dedicated to educate, empower, and overcome the stigma of „the single story.“  “Literature is a tool to deconstruct racism, because literature can bridge the gap that divides us an initiate the necessary change of perspective.” Glenda identifies as a community organizer, activist, and people connector.

 

 

 

 

Call for Papers / Conference Announcement


Critical Health: Feminist Perspectives on Health and Well-Being in the Nineteenth-Century United States

Paris, France, October 17-18, 2025

Deadline: 10 Feb. 2025

Contact: criticalhealthconferenceSpamProtectiongmail.com


Further information will be available at: www.criticalhealthconference.wordpress.com

Conference Organizers: Dr. Alice de Galzain (Sorbonne Université) and Dr. habil. Johanna Pitetti-Heil (Universität zu Köln)

Research Interests

  • literary studies and cultural history: 19th - 21st century (U.S. American literature)
  • literary and cultural theory, esp. queer-feminist theory, (feminist) new materialism, posthumanism, critique and post-critique
  • critical dance studies, dance philosophy, dance history

  • body studies and skin studies

     

Current Book Projects

1. Becoming-Body: Practices of Freedom and Technologies of the Self in American Modern Dance

Book project based on Habilitation manuscript.

Becoming-Body: Practices of Freedom and Technologies of the Self in American Modern Dance considers American modern dance as a cultural practice in the context of the larger American history of ideas. Exploring links between modern dance technique and American philosophical discourses including transcendentalism, pragmatism, and new materialist philosophy, the project contributes to the cultural history of American dance, offers an expanded account of the relationship of physical culture to philosophical discourses in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and outlines a new materialist theory of subject formation grounded in an analysis of the identity-shaping potential of physical experiences and their discursive negotiation.

 

2. Materialist Transcendentalism

New book project. 

Forthcoming publication (Feb. 2025): “From Animal Magnetism to Materialist Transcendentalism: Margaret Fuller on Fanny Elssler.” The Articulate Body: Dance and Science in the Long Nineteenth Century. Ed. Lynn Matluck Brooks, Sariel Golomb, and Garth Grimball. Gainesville: UP of Florida

Research and CV

Teaching Portfolio and Projects

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