Journal of Intersectionality

Issue Number

Latest documents

• Critical Artwork, Critical Actions, and the Inclusion of Difference

  Guest editor's introduction to the special issue.

• The Cycle That Brought Me, This Self, and Art Together

  This account details one individual’s struggle with the social construction of womanhood in Kurdish society, those roles that females are taught, misogyny and self-hatred that they see deeply imbedded in Kurdish society. Connecting their artwork to their private self, the authors open the space of their personal struggles with gender identification and being queer.

• The Impact of the Evil Side of the English Language on My Life as an Artist

  Discussing the English language and its difficult imposition into Kurdish life in Iraqi Kurdistan, Baram positions the Kurdish language as the boundary that marks Kurdish cultural space. He places Kurdish speakers in a precarious interrelationship between globalization and its negative effects, the endangered nature of the Kurdish language and its preservation as key to the cultural survival of the Kurds, and the English language as a problematic tool, necessary for interactions with a global community but laden with imperialistic anti-Middle Eastern and anti-Islamic meanings.

• Highlighting the Invisible: An Interview with Avan Sdiq

  Sulaimani-based artist Avan Sdiq talks about her involvement with Nawi Min Nawi Daikama, an activist project working to change the laws regarding the carti nishtinmani Iraqi (Iraqi identification card) for cases of children who are born after rape, abuse, or abandonment. Sdiq discusses what she thinks are the biggest challenges facing the art world in Kurdistan and her view of the role of the artist in Kurdish society.

• Civic Engagement, Public Intellectualism, and Art

  Revisiting a previously unpublished analysis of the Clamor (2016) and Tekist (2017) art shows presented at the Fine Arts Institute and the Museum of Modern Art in Sulaimani, Iraqi Kurdistan, Cockrell-Abdullah considers the spaces in which artists are siting their work so that they may speak to specific public audiences and their social and cultural concerns, and how this work creates sheltered civic space in Kurdish society that allows for open discussion of social problems.

• What if Life Were Black and White: An Interview with Behjat Omer Abdulla

  Artist Behjat Omar Abdulla discusses his most recent projects, What if Life is Black and White and From a Distance. These works focus on reflecting on identity, belonging, migration, and citizenship, along with the founding of Abdulla’s River of Light project.

• Front Matter 6.1

  Contains cover, credits, dedication, and TOC.

• Space in the City’s Memory: An Example of Statues in Sulaymaniyah

  Gardens, parks, and public artworks around the city of Sulaymaniyah are among the city’s most admired features. An important hallmark of these public spaces are the statues of famous historical personalities who are remembered for serving the city, particularly those who were martyred for the sake of the Kurdish nation and were important figures of the Kurdish revolution. Despite their significance to the history of Sulaymaniyah, these statutes and the public spaces in which they exist are being reshaped and removed, at worst destroyed, to make way for new developments in the city.

• Painting Without Paint: Four Sisters, Three Dresses

  Nuveen Barwari uses the multiple layers of the jilli Kurdi (Kurdish dress) as a metaphor for the multiple layers of a Kurdish diasporic identity. Using Édouard Glissant’s concept of opacity, Barwari engages with the jilli Kurdi as artistic inspiration, describing it as private space for an individual, and for a diasporic community as anapparatus that works in opposition to transparency, protecting the unseen, and resisting a colonial gaze.

• In The Wake: Black Girl Lessons on Collective Care

  This article centers Black girl leadership as a survival guide in this unprecedented moment of combating two pandemics, Covid-19 and extrajudicial killings of Black people. I recall lessons learned during my ethnographic research with Black girls in Chicago in which loss and grieving was often and premature. This piece is a response to Christina Sharpe’s “wake work” conceptualization that challenges the collective care Black people specifically must engage both with our living and dead.

Featured documents

• Critical Artwork, Critical Actions, and the Inclusion of Difference

  Guest editor's introduction to the special issue....

• The Black Organic Intellectual Tradition and the Challenges of Educating and Developing Organic Intellectuals in the 21st Century

  By summarizing the legacy of the first and second wave Black working class organic intellectuals in North America in the 20th century, I will use this as a backdrop to discuss my efforts in the first decade of the 21st century to develop a third wave of organic intellectuals in the hip hop...

• Upon the Walls of the UN Camp: Situated Intersectionality, Trajectories of Belonging, and Built Environment Among Syrian Refugees in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq

  Upon the walls of homes in the Arbat ‘camp’ community in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI), the ubiquitous UN logo lays claim to a built environment disrupted by ornamental facades, muralism, and radical iconography. Engaging photographs and qualitative interviews gathered in the Kurdish Region of ...

• Pedagogic Paths to Liberation: Personal Struggles, Institution Building and the Rise of the Walter Rodney School of Groundings Praxis in Atlanta

  Dr. Seneca Vaught interviewed Dr. Jesse Benjamin about his personal pedagogical background and process, its intersections with activism and scholarship, and how this led him to working with the Walter Rodney Foundation and various associated projects in the Atlanta area. The discussion moves from...

• Civic Engagement, Public Intellectualism, and Art

  Revisiting a previously unpublished analysis of the Clamor (2016) and Tekist (2017) art shows presented at the Fine Arts Institute and the Museum of Modern Art in Sulaimani, Iraqi Kurdistan, Cockrell-Abdullah considers the spaces in which artists are siting ...

• Decolonization Is Not a Dinner Party: Claudia Jones, China's Nuclear Weapons, and Anti-Imperialist Solidarity
• There Is No Kurdish Art

  This essay considers the powerful practice of art in Iraqi Kurdistan as it balances practices and nationalities, values and identities to create an aesthetic that is uniquely Kurdish in its expression. This examination of contemporary Kurdish art begins by considering the challenges to writing...

• Claudia Jones, the Longue Durée of McCarthyism, and the Threat of US Fascism
• African People, Education for Liberation & Staying Human: Reflections on Walter Rodney and the Pan-African / Black Liberation Tradition

  On March 25th, 2017, Dr. Joyce E. King delivered this talk as the day two keynote of the 14th Annual Walter Rodney Symposium at the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta, Georgia....

• The Cycle That Brought Me, This Self, and Art Together

  This account details one individual’s struggle with the social construction of womanhood in Kurdish society, those roles that females are taught, misogyny and self-hatred that they see deeply imbedded in Kurdish society. Connecting their artwork to their private self, the authors open the space of...