with Michaela Dudley & Channing Joseph
Acclaimed author, journalist, and cabaret artist Michaela Dudley reads from her new book,Race Relations, a book of essays about racism. After the reading, Michaela and Professor Channing Joseph of Princeton University will hold a transnational dialogue on what it means to survive and find spaces of safety, joy, and creativity in a world that seeks to destroy Black queer and trans lives. The event will be held in German and English.
For: BIPOC und Allies
When: Wednesday, July 5th, 2023 – 19 to 22 Uhr
Language: English and Whisper Translation
Where: BIWOC* Rising
Please register here.
About our panelists:
Michaela Dudley (she/her) (b. 1961), a Berlin-based queer feminist with Afro-American roots, is a publicist, cabaret artist, diversity consultant and trained lawyer (Juris Dr, U.S.). Intersectional approaches are her specialty, as she sees diversity first hand embodied. As a „colorful number among the dark figures“, as she describes herself, stands out for its feuilletonistic finesse and multi-faceted professional competencies. Storytelling is Michaela Dudley’s signature technique, and she has a lot to tell.
During her childhood in the USA she experienced the “Jim Crow segregation” She is an author of the German-language book Race Relations: Essays on Racism, published in 2022. Her guiding principle from the book is: „Dehumanization begins with the word, but so does emancipation.“
Michaela Dudley is also known to many as an eloquent social critic thanks to her multi-year taz column “Women without a menstrual background”. She also writes regularly for the Tagesspiegel and the LGBTQ magazine Siegessäule as well as for Missy, Rosa Mag and Die Zeit. The blacktivist and queer feminist is a multifaceted advocate for the appreciation of diversity. Successful as a “Diva in Diversity”, she lectures and leads workshops with intersectional approaches against discrimination. She works with Deutsche Bahn, Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk, the management academy of the Federal Employment Agency and the Goethe Institute. In 2021 she was a talk guest on the James Murua Podcast on Black and African Literature, a project of the Federal Foreign Office and the Frankfurt Book Fair.
She comments on red-hot topics on television programs such as Kulturzeit (3Sat/ZDF) and Brisant (ARD) and on radio, including Deutschlandfunkkultur and WDR. Her satirical cabaret program, accompanied by her own compositions, is called „An inveterate vegan Domina pulls from the leather“. In 2021 she appeared as a fashion model in the Pride campaign by GAP and Zalando, her photo shoot was complemented by her appearance as a historical narrator in a documentary video. At the Berlin premiere of the fact-based courtroom drama Just Mercy (USA: directed by Destin Daniel Cretton; with Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx), Dudley sat on the panel of experts on the subject of „judicial murder and blackness“. She also translates officially on behalf of the Berlin International Film Festival (Press and Generation section). In 2022 she shot the feature film Kampf (D: Sobo Swobodnik; with Margarita Breitkreiz) at the Berlin Volksbühne and played herself in it.
She also serves as a jury member for talent promotion on behalf of the Federal Competence Center for Cultural and Creative Industries. On November 1, 2022, she opened the intercultural festival Cross-Kultur as a keynote speaker in the historic Willy-Brandt-Saal of the Schöneberg Town Hall in Berlin where John F. Kennedy famously spoke in 1963
Channing Joseph (he/him/she/her) is Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton University. A TED speaker and leading scholar of Black LGBTQ+ history, Joseph’s innovative research has been recognized by the U.S. National Archives and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture. In 2022, TED honored him as one of 20 global “visionaries” whose work is sparking “future-shaping change around the world.”
