Blackening Europe

Traditional Scholars have often looked at African American studies through the lens of European theories, resulting in the secondarization of the African American presence in Europe and its contributions to European culture. Blackening Europe reverses this pattern by using African American culture as the starting point for a discussion of its influences over traditional European structures. Evidence of Europe's blackening abound, form French ministers of Hip-hop and British incarnations of "Shaft" to slavery memorial in the Netherlands and German youth sporting dreadlocks. Collecting essays by scholars from both sides of the Atlantic and fields as diverse as history, literature, politics, social studies, art, film and music, Blackening Europe explores the implications of these cultural hybrids and extends the growing dialogues about Europe's fascination with African America.

"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