Book Review: Rethinking Black German Studies: Approaches, Interventions and Histories ed. by Tiffany N. Florvil and Vanessa D. Plumly

Tiffany N. Florvil and Vanessa D. Plumly, eds. Rethinking Black German Studies: Approaches, Interventions and Histories.
Peter Lang, 2018. xii + 330 pp. $87.10 USD (ebook).
ISBN 978-1-78707-852-9.

Rethinking Black German Studies: Approaches, Interventions and Histories, edited by Tiffany N. Florvil and Vanessa D. Plumly, offers a fascinating study of the Black Diaspora in its myriad connections to German-speaking Central Europe from the colonial era to the present. This volume, part of the series “Studies in Modern German and Austrian Literature” from Peter Lang, shows impressive breadth and depth in eight contributions that demonstrate a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives and intersectional analyses of Black identities within and beyond national contexts. In their introduction, Florvil and Plumly situate themselves and the book’s contributors, noting that the volume’s authors include few Black Germans and come largely from North American academic contexts, a nod to Tina Campt’s notion of “diasporic asymmetries” (10) and how they play out in academia. The book nonetheless brings together contributors representing a great diversity of disciplines and approaches including history, German Studies, and rhetoric and communication, with essays on topics such as African American spirituals and race performance, police brutality and racial profiling, racial haunting, and chocolate.