Panel on Jim Crow and the Holocaust in Comics at 2025 SAMLA Conference (SAMLA)
Event: SAMLA
Over the past few years, scholars and filmmakers have highlighted the intersections between the Jim Crow South and Nazi Germany through works such as Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Srah Botstein’s The U.S. and the Holocaust, James Whitman’s Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, Matthew Delmont’s Half American: The Heroic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad, Peter Yost’s Nazi Town, USA: The Untold Story of Nazi Sympathizers on American Soil, and others.
From the outset of the Nazi’s ascent to power in 1933, individuals, specifically African Americans, saw the connections between the Jim Crow South and Nazi positions, specifically the boycott of Jewish businesses in April 1933. Henry Banks, a student at Morehouse, wrote in the student newspaper, “We do well, therefore, to condemn the racial policies of Hitler and oppose injustice wherever it is found, but it seems to me it would be far better if we would dedicate ourselves to the serious task of setting our own houses in order first”
Graphic narratives serve as fertile ground for discussion of the connections between the Jim Crow South and Nazi Germany. Thus, we seek presentations that use graphic narratives as a focal point to explore these intersections. These presentations will add to the growing scholarship mentioned above and to works such as Ola Frahm, Hans-Joachim Hahn, and Markus Streb’s Beyond Maus: The Legacy of Holocaust Comics; Brannon Costello and Qiana Whitted’s Comics and the U.S. South; and Frances Gateward and John Jennings’ The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics & Sequential Art.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
The ways that works such as Nora Krug’s Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home address personal history and the struggling with the sins of the past.
· How superhero comics use superheroes to explore the intersections between Jim Crow and the Holocaust.
· How works such as Nate Powell’s Save It for Later call upon us to acknowledge and confront these linkages and how these linkages impact the present.
· How works such as Jason Lutes’ Berlin address African American’s experiences in Germany during the Weimar Republic before the rise of the Nazis in 1933.
Please submit a 250-300 word abstract, brief bio, and any A/V needs by August 20 to Matthew Teutsch, Piedmont University, at mteutsch@piedmont.edu.
https://samla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/19409
Matthew Teutsch