“Blackness and the Civilizing of Interwar Germany.”

In 1925, the first Black American revue, The Chocolate Kiddies, took Germany by surprise. With the sights and sounds of Harlem staged for new audiences, German intellectuals and critics across the political spectrum began to ask a singular question: Is this what it means to be civilized? Although the question may seem like an oddity, the loss of the First World War reframed for many what could be built out of national disaster. The emergent New Negro was at once promising and a nightmare of racial amalgamation. Yet all agreed, American Blackness offered something new that could not be ignored.

Paul J. Edwards is an Assistant Professor of English and Dramatic Literature and a book reviews editor for The Black Scholar. His research and teaching span across the fields of African American studies with a focus on global Afro-modernism and gender and sexuality studies. His current book project, The Black Wave: The New Negro Renaissance in Interwar Germany, reveals the effects of the New Negro/Harlem Renaissance in Germany from 1925 to 1938. His research appears in Modern Drama, German Studies Review, Theatre Survey, TDR/The Drama Review, Modernism/modernity, and The Black Scholar.