Blackening Europe

"Ilackening Europe is a superb and richly textured anthology. Its concept--as courageous as it is necessary-- uniquely reconfigures the direction of cultural studies in candid and penetrating critiques of the position and terrain of black cultural studies and the character and condition of Europe. These essays form an insightful lens into the hybrid landscape of what is without question the next generation of culture-work. It is one of the most compelling, thoughtful, and brilliantly executed anthologies I have read." -- Karla FC Holloway, Kenan Professor of English at Duke University and author of Passed On: African American Mourning Stories"This is a timely volume of illuminating essays which contribute substantially to the ongoing discussion about a changed Europe and its relation to the United States from an African Americanist perspective. The presence and recognition of African American cultures and ideas in European countries emerging from these analyses is not only a challenge to the ideology of the continued belief in the primacy of a white European civilization but also a challenge to the conventional concept of the field of American Studies in Europe. The transatlantic comparative approach and the application of African American theories to the understanding of a blackening Europe will energize all future American Studies scholarship beyond the national scope in a globalized world." -- Alfred Hornung, President of the German Association for American Studies and of the Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas"With its emphasis on the African American presnce in Europe, he adds substantially to Paul Gilroy's concept of "the Black Atlantic" in its exploration of the development and hybridization of black cultures in Europe... This volume is a significant and inspiring contribution to new transatlantic American studies." --The Journal of American History

• Paul Gilroy, PrefaceHeike Raphael-Hernandez, Introduction: Primarizing the African American ExperiencePart I: Creating a FoundationJed Rasula, Jazz as Decal for the European Avant-GardeSamir Dayal, Blackness as Symptom: Josephine Baker and European IdentityDorothea Fischer-Hornung, 'Jungle in the Spotlight'? Primitivism and Esteem: Katherine Dunham's 1954 German TourIrina Novikova, Black Music, White Freedom: Times and Spaces of Jazz Countercultures in the USSRPart II: Accompanying Europe into the Twenty-first CenturyJohanna C. Kardux, Monuments of the Black Atlantic: Slavery Memorials in the United States and The NetherlandsP.A. Skantze, Dancing Away Towards Home: An Interview with Bill T. Jones about Dancing in Contemporary EuropeAndré Lepecki, The Melancholic Influence of the Post-colonial Spectral: Vera Mantero Summoning Josephine BakerMaría Frías, Nights of Flamenco and Blues in Spain: From Sorrow Songs to Soleá and Back Felicia McCarren, Monsieur Hip-HopCathy Covell Waegner, Rap, Rebounds, and Rocawear: The 'Darkening' of German Youth CultureÉva Miklódy, A.R.T., Klikk, K.A.O.S. and the Rest: Hungarian Youth RappingCh. Didier Gondola, 'But I Ain't African, I'm American!' Black American Exiles and the Construction of Racial Identities in Twentieth-Century FranceAlan Rice, 'Heroes across the Sea': Black and White British Fascination with African Americans in Contemporary Black British Fiction by Caryl Phillips and Jackie KayPart III: Turning into Theory for EuropeSabine Broeck, Never Shall We Be Slaves - Locke's Treatises, Slavery and Early European ModernityPeter Gardner, Make Capital Out of Their Sympathy: Rhetoric and Reality of U.S. Slavery and Italian Immigrant Prostitution along the Color Line in the Nineteenth and Twenty-first CenturiesMihaela Mudure, Blackening Gypsy Slavery: The Romanian CaseHeike Raphael-Hernandez, 'Niggas' and 'Skins': Nihilism among African American Youth in Low-income Urban Communities and East German Youth in Satellite Cities, Small Towns, and Rural Areas