Audre Lorde Week celebrates writer and activist

Alicia Duplessis Jasmin aduples@tulane.edu
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Lorde

This artwork featuring the image of Audre Lorde was created by Soraya Jean-Louis McElroy and Fabiola Jean-Louis in honor of Audre Lorde Week 2014. (From the Tulane University Office for Gender and Sexual Diversity Facebook page)


Writer, poet and activist Audre Lorde once said of herself, “I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.” Lorde died in 1992, but her words set fire to the ongoing feminist movement that spread beyond mentions of male versus female equality and transcended to talks of race relations and sexuality.

In honor of Lorde's profound impact on bringing an intersectional analysis to these topics, Tulane University is hosting its second annual Audre Lorde Week Monday (Feb. 3) through Friday (Feb. 7). Scheduled events include the showing of two documentaries, a student exhibit, a lecture and a luncheon.

“Audre Lorde Week is unique to Tulane, and was generated by student interest,” says Red Tremmel, director of the office of Gender and Sexual Diversity. “The reason that this week is named for Audre Lorde is that she was an extraordinarily influential thinker who challenged scholars and community organizers to think in more nuanced ways about the intersection of sexuality, race, gender, class and globalization.”

Tremmel says that many aspects of the human experience and social oppression are unintelligible without an intersectional and interdisciplinary analysis.

"A feminist analysis without a racial one is inadequate for understanding the lives of women of color," says Tremmel. "Similarly, a racial analysis without an understanding of sexuality and gender makes the lives of many transgender people unintelligible."

The week's events, which will begin with a viewing of the documentary The Edge of Each Other's Battles: The Vision of Audre Lorde, will highlight the ways in which scholars, artists and community organizers have drawn upon Lorde's insights in their own work.

The full list of events is available here. All events are free and open to the public.