German Studies Program, Division of Languages and Literature, and Dean of the College Present

Uncanny Homecomings: Alterity and Racialization in Hinkemann and Drums in the Night

In this talk I will juxtapose Bertolt Brecht’s early comedy Drums in the Night (1922) with Ernst Toller’s tragedy Hinkemann (1923), considering what these two popular plays tell us about demobilization after World War One, specifically about those societal anxieties that were projected onto the bodies of returning soldiers. I will then turn to an underappreciated facet of this projection, arguing that scholars have missed important discourses of racialization that are operative in these and other plays about the soldier’s return. Drawing on historical scholarship concerned with the so-called “Black Horror on the Rhine,” i.e., with the racist propaganda campaign against nonwhite colonial soldiers during the French occupation of the Rhineland, I argue that discourse analysis of this campaign should inform more literary scholarship about the period, as well.

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For more information, call 845-758-6822, or e-mail [email protected].

Time: 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm EST/GMT-5

Location: Olin Humanities, Room 102

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