{"id":47950,"date":"2024-04-09T19:47:02","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T19:47:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/?p=47950"},"modified":"2025-01-27T15:44:49","modified_gmt":"2025-01-27T20:44:49","slug":"upcoming-book-launch-for-sarah-casteels-black-lives-under-nazism-making-history-visible-in-literature-and-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/fass\/2024\/upcoming-book-launch-for-sarah-casteels-black-lives-under-nazism-making-history-visible-in-literature-and-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Upcoming Book Launch For Sarah Casteel\u2019s Black Lives Under Nazism: Making History Visible In Literature And Art"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Upcoming Book Launch For Sarah Casteel\u2019s Black Lives Under Nazism: Making History Visible In Literature And Art\n <\/h1>\n \n \n <\/header>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n\n\n

By Emily Putnam<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carleton\u2019s own Sarah Phillips Casteel<\/a> will be launching her new book, Black Lives Under Nazism: Making History Visible in Literature and Art<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> published in Columbia University Press’ new Black Lives in the Diaspora: Past \/ Present \/ Future series<\/a>, at the National Gallery of Canada<\/a> on Thursday April 11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first-of-its-kind book delves into a variety of often neglected literary and artistic creations that illuminate Black wartime experience in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This work underscores the importance of African diaspora experiences and artistic expression for Holocaust history, memory, and representation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Casteel says that within Holocaust studies, there has been increasing attention to neglected or overlooked victim groups. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBecause the numbers of Black victims were relatively small, they have tended to be overlooked or to be perceived as less significant. I don’t agree with that perspective, but I think it has played into the invisibility of Black experience during World War II.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She says a number of other components contributed to the lack of acknowledgement thus far.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“The historical scholarship on Black victims of Nazism is still emerging, as is the public recognition of this victim group. It\u2019s an interesting paradox because, on the one hand, there’s a hyper-visible victim population as we see from photographic evidence of Black prisoners in the Nazi camp system, for example. But at the same time, they’re invisible in the ways that World War II and the Holocaust have been remembered.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

In an often-overlooked aspect of World War II history, Black people living in Nazi Germany and occupied Europe were in some cases subjected to ostracization, forced sterilization, and incarceration in internment and concentration camps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Casteel explains that it was artworks, in particular the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum<\/a>\u2019s Josef Nassy Collection<\/a> and Ghanaian Canadian writer Esi Edugyan<\/a>\u2019s novel Half-Blood Blues<\/a><\/em> that initially got her interested in this neglected topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Josef Nassy, “Tittmoning 1943” [painting of Black prisoners in Ilag VII, Germany], oil paint, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington D.C., Gift of the Severin Wunderman Family (photograph by Sarah Phillips Casteel).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

“I think there has been a systemic erasure of Black historical experience in wartime Europe as well as more broadly,” says Casteel. “I became really intrigued with what writers and artists have done to draw attention to a chapter of the war that scholars, museums, and other institutions had overlooked.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emphasizing Black agency, Casteel\u2019s book explores both testimonial art by Black victims of the Nazi regime and creative works by Black writers and visual artists that imaginatively reconstruct the wartime era. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the absence of public recognition, African diaspora writers and artists have preserved the stories of overlooked Black victims of the Third Reich. Their works shed light on the relationship between creative expression and wartime survival and the role of art in shaping collective memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt’s been an interesting research challenge, just trying to find traces of these Black wartime stories,\u201d says Casteel. \u201cPart of the challenge is that the Nazis didn’t have a designated category for Black prisoners. So that makes it harder to trace their presence in the camp system and in the archive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the artworks Casteel examines in the book are the internment art of Caribbean painter Josef Nassy, the survivor memoir of Black German journalist Hans J. Massaquoi<\/a>, the jazz fiction of African American novelist John A. Williams<\/a>, Black Canadian novelist Esi Edugyan, and the photomontages of Scottish Ghanaian visual artist Maud Sulter<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image courtesy of Sarah Phillips Casteel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Casteel hopes that people will take away from the book a greater understanding of the interconnectedness of different histories of oppression and the diversity of experiences of Nazi persecution. <\/p>\n\n\n

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“I think there was a much wider range of experiences of persecution in Europe during World War II than we’ve really understood. We’ve tended to focus on certain kinds of images and narratives of the war. I hope this book will give us a fuller sense of the diversity of those wartime experiences, of the prisoner population within the Nazi camp system, and of the kinds of people who found themselves affected by the war.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

She notes that utilizing visual sources enables new narratives to surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Because this is a hyper-visible victim group, it’s sometimes easier to find traces of Black stories in the visual documents as opposed to the textual ones because the archive has not always recorded their presence well. Whereas when you have something like the Josef Nassy Collection, you can access a story that wasn’t recorded in written form.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Casteel says that she is struck by how artists have often pointed to underrepresented narratives before scholars have.<\/p>\n\n\n

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“I argue in the book that the artists actually get there first before scholars start to really pay that much attention to Black wartime experiences. For a long time, Black artists have been interested in recovering these overlooked wartime stories. It’s very interesting to me that often artists are ahead of us scholars in terms of what they pay attention to and what they’re interested in.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

She explains that a combination of storytelling mediums was essential to uncovering these histories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI came to the conclusion that when you’re faced with a history that’s been so invisible and so suppressed, you end up having to draw on all the resources of all the different media that you can in order to try to recover it. I think that’s why I ended up putting the book together in this way\u2014why the book is so eclectic in terms of the range of artistic genres and mediums that it addresses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image courtesy of Sarah Phillips Casteel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Casteel hopes that her work will reach beyond academia and help to bridge gaps in the historical awareness of who was affected by the Holocaust.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cMy work has long been situated at the intersection of different fields. I’ve been drawn to topics that have fallen through the cracks of different disciplines. I hope with this new book to reach multiple different audiences, and to encourage conversation between fields that usually don\u2019t talk to each other such as Black studies and Holocaust studies. In our current decolonizing moment, there’s an interest in recovering lost stories. So I hope it [the book] also contributes to that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Casteel was also interviewed in CBC Radio’s All In A Day with Alan Neal <\/a>where she discusses the book in-depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those looking to celebrate the release of Sarah Phillips Casteel’s new book can attend the free event<\/a> on April 11 at 5:30 p.m. Casteel will be in conversation with Aboubakar Sanogo<\/a>, and Ming Tiampo<\/a> will moderate the conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Organized by the Centre for Transnational Cultural Analysis<\/a> in partnership with the National Gallery of Canada, the event will be presented in English with simultaneous French translation. Following the talk, Casteel will be available to sign copies of the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sarah Phillips Casteel is a professor of English<\/a> at Carleton University, where she is cross-appointed to the Institute for Comparative Studies in Literature, Art and Culture<\/a> and the Institute of African Studies<\/a>. She is a member of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University<\/a>\u2019s Academic Council. Her previous books include Calypso Jews: Jewishness in the Caribbean Literary Imagination<\/a> (Columbia University Press, 2016) and the coedited volume Caribbean Jewish Crossings: Literary History and Creative Practice<\/a> (University of Virginia Press, 2019).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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