Berlin Perspectives: Berlin - The African Experience - Detailseite

The course will introduce international students into the history of Berlin through the lens of its relationship to Africa and Africans. With the focus on Berlin-Africa interactions and encounters, crucial moments of political decision making, individual life stories, vital memorial sites, migration histories, and debates on German and African German identities in colonial and postcolonial perspectives will reflect Berlins social life, history and its role in the region, in Germany and in the world during the last two centuries. Students will get to know Berlin as the centre of Prussia and its colonial adventures, as the capital of the colonial Kaiserreich and the Third Reich, they will also get an introduction into debates in the contemporary multicultural city of Berlin.

Students are expected to participate actively what includes reading, a short presentation of a related subject and essay writing. The course is taught in English, essays can also be written in German. Students from all subjects are welcome, the course is especially convenient for students of History, Literature, Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Studies, European Ethnology, Migration Studies, Social Studies, Political Science, African Studies.

Selected Bibliography:

·         Carol Blackshire-Belay (Hg), The African-German Experience: Critical Essays, Westport 1996.

·         Patricia Mazón & Reinhild Steingröver (Hg.) Not so Plain as Black and White. Afro-German Culture and History 1890-2000, Rochester 2005.

·         Fatima El-Tayeb, Schwarze Deutsche. Der Diskurs um „Rasse“ und nationale Identität 1890-1933, Berlin 2001.

·         Pauline Reed-Anderson, Eine Geschichte von mehr als hundert Jahren. Die Anfänge der afrikanischen Diaspora in Berlin, Berlin 1995.

·         Paulette Reed-Anderson, Rewriting the Footnotes. Berlin and the African Diaspora, Berlin 2000. In German: Pauline Reed-Anderson, Berlin und die afrikanische Diaspora, Berlin 2000.

·         Katharina Oguntoye, May Opitz, Dagmar Schultz (Hg.), Showing our Colors: Afro-German Women speak out. 1991. In German: Farbe bekennen. Afro-deutsche Frauen auf den Spuren ihrer Geschichte, Berlin 1986.

·         Ulrich van der Heyden & Joachim Zeller (Hg.), Kolonialmetropole Berlin. Eine Spurensuche, Berlin 2001.