Not So Plain As Black And White

An exploration of the subject of Afro-Germans, which, in recent years has captured the interest of scholars across the humanities for providing insight into contemporary Germany's transformation into a multicultural society.

While German unification promised a new historical beginning, it also stirred discussions about contemporary Germany’s Nazi past and ideas of citizenship and belonging in a changing Europe. Minority Discourses in Germany Since 1990 explores the intersections and divergences between Black German, Turkish German, and German Jewish experiences, with reflections on the evolving academic paradigms with which these are studied. Informed by comparative approaches, the volume investigates social and aesthetic interventions into contemporary German public and political discourse on memory, racism, citizenship, immigration, and history.

In 2001, Freestyle, a survey exhibition curated by Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum in Harlem, introduced both a young generation of artists of African descent and the ambitious yet knowingly opaque term post-black to a pre 9-11 and pre-Obama world. In Taking Stakes in the Unknown, Nana Adusei-Poku contextualizes the term post-black in its socio-historical and cultural context. Whilst exploring its present legacy and past potential, she examines works by artists who were defined as part of the post-black generation: Mark Bradford, Leslie Hewitt, Mickalene Thomas and Hank Willis Thomas - and, by expanding the scope of the definition, the Black German artist Philip Metz.

The biennial Southeast Conference on Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Film (SCFLLF), supported by a generous grant from the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of South Florida and the administrative support of the USF Department of World Languages, convened for the 21st time on February 21-22, 2014. The conference, which has been held in various locations throughout Florida since 1983, featured 60 speakers from the US and abroad who shared their research on various topics related to literature, film, culture, language learning, and linguistics. The conference did not feature a specific theme in order to encourage the sharing of a wide array of topics, interests, investigations, and formats that stimulate productive conversations and discussions among divergent fields, languages, and historical periods, resulting in collaborations and connections that continue beyond the conference meeting. In the spirit of showcasing eclectic scholarship and fostering interdisciplinarity, the 21st SCFLLF featured 20 sessions that focused on cultural and linguistic output in languages as diverse as Arabic, Japanese, Chinese, French, Gaelic, German, Italian, Latin, Russian, and Spanish.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Black German women began to play significant roles in challenging the discrimination in their own nation and abroad. Their grassroots organizing, writings, and political and cultural activities nurtured innovative traditions, ideas, and practices. These strategies facilitated new, often radical bonds between people from disparate backgrounds across the Black Diaspora. Tiffany N. Florvil examines the role of queer and straight women in shaping the contours of the modern Black German movement as part of the Black internationalist opposition to racial and gender oppression. Florvil shows the multifaceted contributions of women to movement making, including Audre Lorde’s role in influencing their activism; the activists who inspired Afro-German women to curate their own identities and histories; and the evolution of the activist groups Initiative of Black Germans and Afro-German Women. These practices and strategies became a rallying point for isolated and marginalized women (and men) and shaped the roots of contemporary Black German activism. Richly researched and multidimensional in scope, Mobilizing Black Germany offers a rare in-depth look at the emergence of the modern Black German movement and Black feminists’ politics, intellectualism, and internationalism.

A new collection of philosophical biographies of key figures in Black Southern American social and political thought Frederick Douglass, Booker Washington and Ida Wells. Thurgood Marshall and Martin King are focused upon, together with Howard Thurman, Richard Wright, Fred Gray and Barbara Jordan. All are important in various ways to the movements this book seeks out. From the perspective of liberation, the two high points in the African-American Odyssey are marked by Emancipation in the nineteenth century and Desegregation in the twentieth. Douglass bestriding the first, King and Marshall the second. The thread of resistance runs through most of these philosophical profiles, and the thread of non-violence, with greater or less force, also runs throughout. This volume assumes a distinction between (a) an earlier period when Afro-America was more cohesive and collectively committed to self-improvement despite the odds, and (b) the contemporary period, beyond desegregation, marked by rates never previously rivaled of suicide, joblessness, imprisonment, despair and alienation, especially among black poor. The life stories and philosophies presented here make fascinating reading. This book is a Special Issue of the leading journal, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

What does disgust have to do with citizenship? How might pain and pleasure, movement, taste, sound and smell be configured as aspects of national belonging? Senses and Citizenships: Embodying Political Life examines the intersections between sensory phenomena and national and supra-national forms of belonging, introducing the new concept of sensory citizenship. Expanding upon contemporary understandings of the rights and duties of citizens, the volume presents anthropological investigations of the sensory aspects of participation in collectivities such as face-to-face communities, ethnic groups, nations and transnational entities. Rethinking relationships between ideology, aesthetics, affect and bodily experience, the authors reveal the multiple political effects of the senses. The book demonstrates how various elements of political life, including some of the most fundamental aspects of citizenship, rest not only upon our senses, but on their perceived naturalization. Vivid ethnographic examples of sensory citizenship in Europe, the United States, the Pacific, Asia and the Middle East explore themes such as sight in political constructions; smell and ethnic conflict; pain in the constitution of communities; national soundscapes; taste in national identities; movement, memory and emplacement.

Grete Meisel-Hess (1879-1922), a contemporary of Freud, Schnitzler, and Klimt, was a feminist voice in early-twentieth-century modernist discourse. Born in Prague to Jewish parents and raised in Vienna, she became a literary presence with her 1902 novel Fanny Roth. Influenced by many of her contemporaries, she also criticized their notions of gender and sexuality. Relocating to Berlin, she continued to write fiction and began publishing on sexology and the women's movement. Helga Thorson's book combines a literary-cultural exploration of modernism in Vienna and Berlin with a biography of Meisel-Hess and a critical analysis of her works. Focusing on Meisel-Hess's negotiations of feminism, modernism, and Jewishness, it illustrates the dynamic interplay between gender, sexuality, and race/ethnicity in Austrian and German modernism. Analyzing Meisel-Hess's fiction as well as her sexological studies, Thorson argues that Meisel-Hess posited herself as both a "New Woman" and the writer of the "New Woman." The book draws on extensive archival research that uncovered a large number of new sources, including an unpublished drama and a variety of documents and letters scattered in collections across Europe. Until now there have been only limited secondary sources about Meisel-Hess, most containing errors and omissions regarding her biography. This is the first book on Meisel-Hess in English.