Forum Transregionale Studien | Veranstaltungen

Imagining Feminist Futures Across the Global South: Comics in Protest Cultures

Mon, 21 Sep 2026 13:36:00 +0200

How do comics imagine feminist futures in times of political upheaval, war, authoritarianism, ecological crisis, and democratic uncertainty? What kinds of alternative worlds emerge when visual storytelling is grounded in experiences of protest, collective struggle, migration, care, and everyday resistance?

This international workshop brings together comics artists, scholars, and activists from Latin America and the Arab Mediterranean, as well as their diasporas, to explore the political and imaginative potential of graphic storytelling across the Global South. Moving beyond national and regional frameworks, the event creates a space for dialogue between communities that share intertwined histories of colonialism, dictatorship, displacement, revolution, and ongoing struggles for social justice.

Programme

Poster

European Rule of Law Talks 2026

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 16:23:00 +0200

Europe is living through a moment of profound disruption from within and from the outside, which has transformed the rule of law from a foundational principle into an active battleground. Growing security pressures are driving unprecedented investment in defense, while technology is increasingly being weaponised against democratic institutions. At the same time, the enlargement process is testing the credibility and consistency of the EU's own standards, while negotiations over the next EU budget grow increasingly tense due to conflicting national priorities. Amid competing pressures and interests, the rule of law risks becoming a bargaining chip, sacrificed for political convenience rather than upheld as a shared commitment. How the EU and its Member States respond, not only rhetorically but through concrete political and institutional choices, will shape the future of the continent for decades to come, with consequences far beyond Europe itself.

Feminist Comics in Arab and Latin American Protest Cultures

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 17:00:00 +0200

In many Global South countries, women* have increasingly embraced the ‘comics turn’, making use of this popular sequential medium to invest and invent spaces, both physically and metaphorically. Our ongoing project maps intersectional feminist comics from the Arab Mediterranean and Latin America and examine the transnational networks through which they are produced, circulated, and read. Particular attention is paid to the diverse thematic concerns that animate these works, including body image and desire, protest and political resistance, grief and memory, migration and displacement, domestic and care work, state violence, coming-of-age experiences, and changing family constellations. At the same time, these comics foreground alternative feminist genealogies through the creation of new “sheroes” and collective imaginaries that challenge patriarchal, colonial, and heteronormative narratives.

By focusing analytically and comparatively on feminist comics production in these two experimental sites – regions connected by long histories of exchange, comparable socio-political tensions, and parallel engagements with feminist and social movements – we seek to illuminate both shared concerns and situated differences. Ultimately, we sketch a vision of a comics of solidarity: a political and aesthetic practice that mobilises visual storytelling to foster recognition, relationality, and feminist alliances across the Global South.

Rasha Chatta is a Research Fellow based at Freie Universität Berlin. She holds a PhD in comparative literature, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies from SOAS, University of London and her postdoctoral research was supported by EUME, MECAM and the Einstein Foundation. Rasha has published scholarly articles on Arab migrant narratives, war literature, visual archives, and Arab comics, in addition to magazine entries and podcasts on comics. Her book Esquisser la révolte. La bande dessinée à l'heure des féminismes arabes [Sketching Revolt. Arab Feminist Comics] was recently published with Éditions Lorelei. Rasha is also co-editor of the online magazine Untold Mag.

Starting October 2026, Jasmin Wrobel will be a Professor for Latin American Literatures and Cultures at Freie Universität Berlin. She holds a PhD in Latin American Studies from Freie Universität Berlin, was a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Manchester from 2022-2023 and a MECILA fellow in São Paulo in 2025. At present, she is working on a monograph with the title Resisting Lines: Anti-Patriarchal Agencies in Latin American Comics. Jasmin’s research interests include feminist and anti-colonial comic art, Black resistance, (neo-)baroque literature, literary mediations of memory discourses, and concrete and experimental poetry.

Rasha & Jasmin are currently the co-PIs of a Volkswagen-funded comparative project on feminist comics in the Arab Mediterranean and Latin America.

Rim Naguib is a EUME fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien. She received her PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University (2016) and her MA from Sciences Po Aix-en-Provence (2006). Her research interests address three related fields: the colonial roots of policing through deportation; the post-colonial securitisation of Egyptian nationality and the management of foreigners’ residence; and the political and cultural history of Egyptian patriarchal nationalism. She is currently working on her book manuscript, Undesirable Subjects: Deportation in Colonial and Post-colonial Egypt 1914-1970. In parallel, she tries to illustrate the unique lives and trajectories of Egyptian Jewish and 'foreign' Communists.

Please register in advance via eume(at)trafo-berlin.de. Depending on approval by the speaker(s), the Berliner Seminar will be recorded. All audio recordings of the Berliner Seminar are available on SoundCloud.

The Shudder Remains: Voice, Body, and Affect in Contemporary Palestinian Poetry

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 17:00:00 +0200