Book Launch for Black Lives Under Nazism: Making History Visible in Literature and Art
In a little-known chapter of World War II, people of African descent in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe were subjected to a variety of forms of persecution, including imprisonment in internment and concentration camps.
Paradoxically, this hypervisible victim group has remained largely invisible in the memory of World War II and the Holocaust. In the absence of public commemoration, African diaspora artists and writers have preserved and imaginatively reconstructed the stories of these forgotten victims of the Third Reich. Probing the boundaries of Holocaust memory and representation, this book talk draws attention to a largely unrecognized artistic corpus that challenges the erasure of Black wartime history.
Sarah Phillips Casteel will present her book Black Lives Under Nazism, published in Columbia University Press’ new Black Lives in the Diaspora: Past / Present / Future series. She will be in conversation with Aboubakar Sanogo and Ming Tiampo will moderate the discussion.
The book can be purchased in the NGC Boutique and is available online at ShopNGC.ca. The author will be available to sign copies following the event.
In English, with simultaneous French-language translation.
Guests requiring ASL interpretation may request an interpreter. ASL requests must be submitted at least ten (10) business days in advance of the event and are subject to availability.
Free event.
Organized by
Sarah Phillips Casteel is Professor of English at Carleton University, where she is cross-appointed to the Institute of African Studies and the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture. Her books include Black Lives Under Nazism: Making History Visible in Literature and Art (Columbia University Press, 2024), Calypso Jews: Jewishness in the Caribbean Literary Imagination (Columbia University Press, 2016), and the co-edited volume Caribbean Jewish Crossings: Literary History and Creative Practice (University of Virginia Press, 2019). The recipient of a Canadian Jewish Literary Award and a Polanyi Prize, she is a member of the Academic Council of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University. She has held visiting fellowships at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Zentrum Jüdische Studien Berlin-Brandenburg and visiting professorships at the University of Vienna and the University of Potsdam.
Aboubakar Sanogo is an Associate Professor in Film Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He is cross appointed with the Institute of African Studies (IAS), the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture (ICSLAC) and the Curatorial Studies Program. His research interests include African cinema, Afro-diasporic cinema, documentary film and media, transnational and world cinema, film archiving and film heritage, colonial cinema, postcolonialism, race and cinema and the relationship between film form, history and theory. His writings have appeared in Cinema Journal, Framework, Moving Image Review & Art Journal, Rethinking History, Journal of Film Preservation, Film Quarterly, Sight and Sound and Film Comment and the Journal of African Cinemas. He is currently completing two manuscripts on the history of documentary in Africa and on the cinema of Med Hondo and an anthology on the legendary director. Sanogo has also curated film programs at the Smithsonian Institution, The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), the Il Cinema Ritrovato Film Festival in Bologna, and the Pan African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO). He is the founder of the African Film Festival of Ottawa (AFFO), presented in partnership with the Canadian Film Institute (CFI). As the North American Regional Secretary for the Pan African Federation of Filmmakers (FEPACI), he initiated and oversees the FEPACI Archival Project. In that capacity, he was instrumental in establishing African Film Heritage Project (AFHP), a major film preservation and restoration initiative in partnership with Martin’s Scorsese’s The Film Foundation and UNESCO in collaboration with the Cineteca di Bologna.
Ming Tiampo is Professor of Art History, and co-director of the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis at Carleton University. She is interested in transnational and transcultural models and histories that provide new structures for critically reimagining global narratives. Tiampo’s book Gutai: Decentering Modernism (University of Chicago Press, 2011) received an honorable mention for the Robert Motherwell Book award. In 2013, she was co-curator of the AICA award-winning Gutai: Splendid Playground at the Guggenheim Museum in NY, and co-edited Art and War in Japan and its Empire: 1931-1960 (Brill Academic Press). Her latest book, Jin-me Yoon, was published with Art Canada Institute in 2023. Her current book projects include Mobile Subjects: Contrapuntal Modernisms, a monograph and digital humanities project that examines post-Imperial histories of migration with an emphasis on artists from Asia, Africa, and Latin America from the former French and British Empires, as well as Intersecting Modernisms, a co-edited sourcebook on global modernisms. Her research collaborations include Asia Forum, the Canadian BIPOC Artists Rolodex, and Worlding Public Cultures, for which she is the co-lead. Tiampo serves on the boards of ici Berlin, the Hyundai Tate Research Centre: Transnational, and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art.