S3E6 Mobilzing Black Germany

Decolonization in Action Podcast

edna bonhomme interviews Tiffany Florvil and they discuss Black-led social movements in Germany, the history of German colonialism, and transforming academic institutions. Bio Tiffany N. Florvil is an Associate Professor of 20th-century European Women’s and Gender History at the University of New Mexico. She specializes in the histories of post-1945 Europe, the African/Black diaspora, social movements, feminism, Black internationalism, gender and sexuality, and emotions. She received her PhD in Modern European History from the University of South Carolina and her MA in European Women’s and Gender History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has published pieces in the Journal of Civil and Human Rights and The German Quarterly. Florvil has coedited the volume, Rethinking Black German Studies, and has published chapters in To Turn this Whole World Over, Gendering Knowledge in Africa and the African Diaspora, and Audre Lorde's Transnational Legacies. Her forthcoming manuscript, Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement with the University of Illinois Press, offers the first full-length study of the history of the Black German movement of the 1980s to the 2000s. She is a Network Editor of H-Emotions and a Network Editor and an Advisory Board member of H-Black-Europe. She serves on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee for the German Studies Association, the Editorial Board for Central European History, the Executive Board for the Journal of Civil and Human Rights, and the Advisory Board of the International Federation for Research in Women’s History (IFRWH). She is also an editor of the “Imagining Black Europe” book series at Peter Lang Press. Her next projects include a volume on Black Europe, examining the experiences of Shirley Graham Du Bois in Central Europe, and analyzing the activism of Black diasporic women in 20th-century Europe. Florvil has wide-ranging interdisciplinary and intersectional interests and training in Modern European History, Black German Studies, African Diaspora Studies, Emotion/Affect Studies, Black Cultural Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her research interests include Black Europe, Black internationalism, Black intellectualism, global 1960s and the Cold War, space/Black geography, social movements, transnational feminisms, and African diasporic literature and culture. She works to excavate the narratives of Black Europeans, expanding our understanding of identity, belonging, and space. Her Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement focuses on the birth and evolution of the modern Black German movement of the 1980s to the 2000s. In it, she demonstrates how Black German women’s efforts at political activism involved intellectual, cultural, internationalist, and queer practices and strategies that shaped their larger diasporic movement. Using an array of sources from both sides of the Atlantic, Mobilizing Black Germany is one of the first books to provide a detailed history of the modern Black German movement. Co-founder and Series Editor of "Imagining Black Europe," Peter Lang Press Co-founder and Co-chair, Black Diaspora Studies Network, German Studies Association, 2016-2021 Co-founder, Advisory Board Member, and Network Editor, H-Black-Europe Co-founder and Network Editor, H-Emotions *Forthcoming Book: Mobilizing Black Germany: Afro-German Women and the Making of a Transnational Movement (Illinois, 2020) Edited Volume: Rethinking Black German Studies: Approaches, Interventions and Histories (Peter Lang, 2018) *Latest Essay: "Anti-racism Protests and Black Lives in Europe" (June 2020)