Blackness Personified is a rhetorical study of images of U.S. Blackness in a German visual context. Focusing on the deep cultural, political, and historical relationship between the United States and Germany, Blackness Personified examines images of Black Americans from the German and U.S. national press, from the early twentieth century through the present. It elucidates the larger implications those images have on Black Americans, Afro-Germans, and the Global Black Diaspora as a whole.

The images of U.S. Blackness included therein are exemplary because they are not extraordinary. Rather, they are indicators of the pangs of everyday racism, or Alltagsrassismuss, felt by Black people worldwide. Blackness Personified uses a range of sources from rhetorical studies, visual studies, Black studies, German studies, sociology, Asian American studies, and news editorial journalism. It illustrates my belief that scholarly works are stronger when lean into interdisciplinary; I have no qualms about eschewing major works in one field in favor of highlighting the interconnectedness of intellectual thought across disciplines.

How a society visualizes Blackness is an inherently political act indicating historical and cultural attitudes toward race. Taken alone, those embedded images can be dismissed as innocuous. Put those singular examples into a larger tapestry of imagery across time, however, and it’s easier to see how their profound impact on how we see ourselves and (O)thers.