with Priscilla Layne, Ph.D.
Despite the heterogeneous cultures existing within its borders, Germany has long thought of itself as a white, Christian nation. However, Germany has also represented at times a necessary and at other times an attractive destination for people of African descent. Furthermore, Germans’ tendency to imagine themselves as white did not foreclose their acceptance and even celebration of Black culture. From the age of colonialism to the present, Blackness has posed both an allure as well as a danger for Germans, especially those who view Black culture as challenging “old world” traditions. This talk poses the question, how does German appropriation of African American music help explain Germans’ fear and simultaneous love of Blackness? And how has music influenced the construction of Blackness in Germany in different historical moments?
Priscilla Layne, Ph.D., is the author of
White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of Black Popular Culture (University of Michigan Press, 2018), and is currently working on her second book,
Out of this World: Afro-German Afrofuturism, which focuses on Afro-German authors’ use of Afrofuturist concepts in literature and theater. In addition to this project, some of the broader themes she is interested in are German national identity, conceptions of race and self/other in Germany, cross-racial empathy, postcolonialism, and rebellion. A former fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, she also serves as President of the American Association of Teachers of German through 2023.
This program accompanies
Shift: Music, Meaning, Context, an exhibition produced in collaboration between Goethe-Institut Chicago and The Museum of Contemporary Photography.
For more information about Shift events, see here.
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