AMHERST, Mass.—In an effort to recognize a relatively young academic discipline that many in the academy have never heard of before, nearly a hundred students and scholars gathered at Amherst College over the weekend to discuss their research and ideas for how to grow Black German Studies.
This marks the third year that the Black German Heritage & Research Association sponsored the international conference, which highlighted a variety of interdisciplinary topics ranging from Black Germans during the Third Reich to their ongoing presence in German theater.
Like African American, Women and Queer studies, Black German Studies has an admitted social justice focus, says Dr. Sara Lennox, a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an early founder of the Black German Studies movement in the U.S.
“We’ve made the field legitimate. You can now do this work and get tenure,” says Lennox, who was chiefly responsible for jumpstarting the Black German Studies concentration at UMASS Amherst. “It’s kind of a burgeoning field and movement. The other thing that’s really cool is there is a pretty strong connection between activism and scholarship and a really strong connection with the experimental … Black Germans talking about their stories.”
Housed in the German and Scandinavian Department at UMASS, the program has attracted doctoral students like Kevina King and Jemele Watkins who have found a place to pursue their scholarly interests.
King, 27, who was born in Berlin but immigrated to the U.S. in 2002 at the age of 16, received her bachelor’s degree in German and psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas but enrolled at UMASS to pursue her current research on transnational and national constructs of Blacks in German literature.
