Abstract coming soon.
Biography:
Alexander L. Compton is a doctoral student and Laney Fellow in the History Department at Emory University, where he studies the role of “race,” identity, memory, colonialism, and diaspora in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Central European history. Prior to attending Emory, he completed an associate degree at Bluegrass Community and Technical College, as well as two bachelor degrees at the University of Kentucky, one in history and another in German studies. As an undergraduate student, he also studied at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg in Germany, where he conducted archival research for his thesis in history. Compton’s preliminary research projects as a graduate student have engaged with numerous topics related to Black German and Jewish German history in the imperial, Weimar, and postwar eras, but his dissertation will be geared specifically towards investigating how the intertwined dynamics of remembrance, racialization, and decolonization have affected contemporary understandings of community and self in Europe, especially as they pertain to Black German, Black European, and Black diasporic history after 1945.