Family Feminism and Feminist Futures are both collaborations between the University of Rostock and the American University of Iraq, Sulaimani. In the summer of 2020, we asked students to write a paragraph about a role model, someone they know and admire, and a short piece of speculative fiction, a scene in a world in which feminist goals have been achieved. While we were also teaching feminist theories, we were particularly interested in gender models and concepts the students are familiar with and the futures they are able to envision. Our imagination is only able to reason with the present (and the past) and often reveals more about the lives we have than the ones we could have. All voices are important to us and we decided to do only very little editing to preserve the variety of language, positions, and experiences which are all equally relevant to begin a conversation about gender roles. By bringing together voices from two different cultural contexts, we were hopefully able to highlight specific aspects for each of these contexts that otherwise would have remained hidden.
We would like to thank both universities and the Center for Gender and Development Studies who made this exchange possible, Lynn Rose, who brought us together, and all the students who shared with us. (Rawan Barzan and Andrea Zittlau).
Click here for Family Feminism.
Click here for Feminist Futures.