Proposal:                      Provost’s General Education Course Development Grant

Principal Investigator: Katharina von Hammerstein, Associate Professor of German, Chair,

6-1532,

Project Title: Germans in Africa, Blacks in Germany: Colonial and Postcolonial Perspectives

Contribution to: General Education Groups IV and I

 

Inspired by the, largely U.S.-originated, postcolonial theory and African and African-American Studies, European scholarship has begun to rediscover the history of Black Europe and its relationship to European colonialism in Africa. However, the focus of Afro-American Studies on the dichotomy of “black” and “white” against the backdrop of slavery and the civil rights movement does not easily apply to Europe. Rather, European presence in Africa and the migration of Africans to Europe need to be examined within the context of each African and European country’s colonial past, history of migration, and economic, political, and social development.

 

My 200-level, English-taught German course will bring to the fore diverse cultural perspectives by and the uneven power relations between Africans and Germans, (a) during German colonial rule 1884-1918 and its aftermath in Togo, Cameroon, Southwest Africa (Namibia), and East Africa (Tanzania), and (b) in German society, past and present. This course is based on my scholarship in this area and will contribute to the General Education offerings in Group IV and I.

 

This innovative course will be interdisciplinary in nature and internationally oriented: it will, for the first time at UConn, integrate subject matter of African Studies, European Studies, and—largely American—postcolonial theory. It’s interdisciplinary design will attract students from History, Political Science, Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, Music, the Arts, German Studies, African Studies, European Studies, and Women’s Studies. Faculty from a variety of disciplines represented in the UConn African Studies program, graduate students from Togo, Cameroon, Namibia, Tanzania, and/or Germany, as well as off-campus experts on Black Germany (e.g., Sara Lennox, UMass, Amherst) will be invited to serve as guest speakers and/or resource contacts. As part of the Linkage Through Language program I direct, an optional (!), separate but closely linked one-hour/one-credit German-language discussion section will be offered to those students who have a background in German and wish to apply their German skills to this subject matter by reading and discussing original German sources (historical and legal documents, newspaper articles, statistics, letters, poetry, etc). Finally, this course may serve as a preparatory course for students intending to take a study abroad field-trip to Namibia during UConn’s May/June summer session (under discussion with Study Abroad). At the U of Windhoek, Namibia, participating students would deepen their understanding of African-German relations through excursions, individual or group projects, meetings with local officials, and lectures by Namibian faculty of various disciplines.

 

Issues of diversity and multiculturalism as well as human rights (Gen Ed, Group IV) play a central role in the thematic course design and methodological approach. Topics will include, e.g.,

C                   the historical constellations and power relations that led to the Ovaherero uprise against the German colonial power in Southwest Africa in 1904, to the subsequent genocide at the hands of the German military forces, and to the diverse perspectives represented in different historical, literary, and film renderings of this event (the 100th anniversary of this near-annihilation of the Herero tribe is commemorated this year at international conferences in Namibia and Germany which marks a new direction in the scholarly interest in both Germany’s and Europe’s colonial past and its relationship to contemporary Black Europe);

C                   the alliance of science and racism in nineteenth-century biology and ethnography;

C                   the difficulties of Growing up Black in Nazi Germany (Massaqui, 1999);

C                   the challenges in establishing an Afro-German and black culture in contemporary Germany as documented in Showing Our Colors: Afro-German Women Speak Out (Oguntoye et al., 1992), lesbian and Afro-German writer May Ayim’s poetry, and in documentaries and movies such as “Hope in the Heart” (1996) and “Otomo” (2001). While the newly united Europe celebrates its multiculturalism and diversity, eighteen million Blacks are rarely perceived as part of this new community but find themselves in the role of a marginalized minority and are over-proportionately often victims of discrimination.

 

Objectives (tightly related to Gen. Education in general and Group IV and I in particular):

C                   (general) Learning about African-German interracial and intercultural relations, past and present, expands students’ knowledge about the world and inspires them to draw comparisons to experiences and developments in their own lives, times, countries, and racial, gender, ethnic, cultural, and religious affiliations; students become aware of their own cultural and historical make-up and conscious of the diversity of human experience.

C                   (IV) Through many examples, students learn to appreciate the perspectives of marginalized minority groups (Afro–Germans and Blacks in Germany) and oppressed majority populations (in Togo, Cameroon, Tanzania, Namibia during the colonial era). Students become aware of issues involving migration, racism, and human rights and acquire an appreciation of how power functions with respect to human rights and human history. Students learn to recognize race, like ethnicity, as a cultural as well as political, scientific, and social construct and critically investigate its historical roots in the political, economic, and cultural context of European colonial expansion. They critically investigate the binaries of colonial discourse: e.g., culture vs. nature, civilization vs. primitivism, mind vs. body, male vs. female, subject vs. object, self vs. other, familiar vs. exotic, European vs. non-European, power vs. powerlessness. While this course focuses on issues of discrimination and human rights violations in African-German relations, students learn to transfer their observations and analyses to analogous historical and contemporary situations of injustice or marginalization (as well as of positive and productive cross-cultural support).

C                   (I) Students are exposed to a variety of human experience, past and present, and learn to critically investigate its transformation into literary, artistic, historical, and journalistic documentation. They acquire the tools for and practice in critically analyzing literary works, non-fictional texts, and visual representations against the backdrop of underlying cultural perspectives and historical (political, economic, social) contexts.

 

Student activities: The course design is interdisciplinary and student-centered. Readings, writing and research assignments will help students prepare for active participation in class discussions as well as WebCT chats. Students are encouraged to select their own research projects, to form and express their own opinions, and to substantiate their arguments. Further activities may include:

C                   clarifying and defining historical and theoretical terms and concepts such as Eurocentrism, primitivism, exoticism, racism, cultural identity, multiculturalism, etc. Using, re-visiting, and redefining these terms throughout the course will provide continuity and challenge students to develop a personal understanding of and stance toward these concepts.

C                   critically investigating overarching questions such as “Does Germanness or a specific African heritage create an ‘imagined community’ (Benedict Andersen)?”, “What impacted the relations between Africans and Germans at different historical junctures?”, “What is the relationship between power and human rights?”, “What is ‘healthy’ crosscultural dialogue?”, “What are successful strategies of acculturation (integration, assimilation, separation, etc.)?”

C                   roleplaying: “talk show” debates about, for example, whether or not Germany owes reparations to the Herero tribe for the 1904 genocide; acting out, for example, responses to racist behavior (a) as the black victim of the discriminatory act, (b) as a white bystander;

C                   collecting up-to-date news on Afro-Germans and Blacks in Germany;

C                   in-depth individual and/or group projects will inspire students to research topics of their own interest and in their major disciplines.

 

Materials: In the absence of a textbook for this innovative ad interdisciplinary course, I will assemble a reader and put relevant material on WebCT. Selected literary readings (e.g. memoirs, poetry, novels), non-fictional texts from a variety of disciplines (e.g., historical and legal documents, statistics, newspaper and scholarly articles), visuals (e.g., photos, paintings, films), and internet information will provide points of departure for class discussions. Material for the optional German discussion section will be selected according to thematic relevance and students’ skills in German.

 

The Role of Technology in this course will be functional and integral, but not predominant: multimedia input (e.g., photos, art, film, music), power point pres. by instructor, students, guest speakers; WebCT for readings, announcements, chats; internet for guided or independent searches.

 

Assessment: I will develop innovative approaches to assessing student learning, e.g., portfolios, independent individual or group projects and presentations, analyses of texts and visuals from a variety of historical, literary, artistic, or journalistic sources. It may speak for successful student learning, if students decided to take a study abroad field-trip to Namibia in the summer session.

 

Potential for expanding this project in the future: Developing a large 100-level course on this topic, an honors section, or a “Part II” to this course as a study abroad field-trip to Namibia.

 

Challenges for the grant period: Identifying and selecting appropriate English-language material in English (or English-translation), matching and manageable German-language material, and multimedia material; developing study guides for student readings, challenging assignments for student group collaborations, power point presentations on selected topics, the technical apparatus on WebCT, and assessment tools.

 

In summary, this interdisciplinary, multilingual, and potentially bi-continental course on topics of diversity and multiculturalism may well serve as an innovative model for other General Education courses. Based on faculty research, it incorporates interdisciplinary perspectives (humanities, social sciences, sciences, fine arts), addresses important social, ethical, economic, political, and cultural issues such as racism, discrimination, cultural identity, intercultural power relations, cross-cultural dialogue; and it promotes historical and critical thinking, life-long learning, and an appreciation for traditions, values, cultural expressions, and perspectives of cultures other than students’ own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vice Provost Fred Maryanski

U-2086

 

April 1, 2004

 

Re: Provost’s General Education Course Development Grants

 

Dear Fred:

 

I am writing to offer my strong  support for the course, “Germans in Africa, Africans in German-Speaking Countries: Colonial and Postcolonial Perspectives,” that my colleague Katharina von Hammerstein is proposing and plans to develop with the help of the Provost’s General Education Course Development Grant. The course is based on Katharina von Hammerstein’s research in this area. We plan to offer this course once a year, for several years. I believe that it will bring to our curriculum a new area of study for students, who will benefit from the links that the course will establish between Africa and German-speaking cultures.

 

Sincerely,

 

 

 

David Herzberger

Head, Modern and Classical Languages