Jana Pareigis — Afro. Deutschland. (Afro Germany – Being Black and German)

The Departments of Africana, Puerto Rican and Latino Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and German hosted a screening of the documentary Afro. Deutschland. (Afro Germany – Being Black and German) with director and writer Jana Pareigis.

The screening is followed by a discussion ad Q&A session with Ms. Pareigis and Hunter Professor Elke Nicolai. Welcoming remarks by Chair of the Africana, Puerto Rican & Latino Studies Department Anthony Browne.

Jana Pareigis has been the anchor of the daily newscast HEUTE on German Public Television (ZDF) since 2021. She is the first Black journalist with a continued presence on German television. In 2019, she wrote the foreword for the new German translation of James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (Nach der Flut das Feuer).

Professor Nicolai is an Associate Professor in the German Department at Hunter College. She holds her Ph.D. from the "Universität Gh Siegen", Siegen/Germany. She has published a book on Klaus Mann and his literary contemporaries in the mid-twenties and early thirties; a bibliography of the international literature of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), that also came out in book form, as well as articles and reviews on the Weimar Republic, Exile Literature and Contemporary German literature. Dr. Nicolai's research and teaching focuses on literature of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The organizers are grateful to President Jennifer Raab, Dean John Rose, Dean Andrew Polsky, and the Max Kade Foundation for their generous support of this event.

Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, May 5, 2022.