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H-Slavery

H-Slavery Interview with Dr. Silke Hackenesch
Discussion published by Matthew Dawdy on Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Silke Hackenesch is an associate professor at the Institute for North American
History at the University of Cologne. She specializes in 20th century Childhood and
Adoption Studies, African American History, Commodity History, and Black Diaspora
Studies.

Dr. Hackenesch is the author of Chocolate and Blackness: A Cultural History
(Campus, 2017). Currently, she is working on a manuscript tentatively titled
"Colorblind Love or Racial Responsibility? The Adoption of Black German Children to
Postwar America," which analyzes the contested debates the intercountry adoption
of Black German children elicited in the (African) American community, from civil
rights organizations, to social work professionals and individual adoption advocates
after World War II.

Her forthcoming publications include a chapter “Sojourner Truth, Narrative of
Sojourner Truth: A Northern Slave (1850),” in Manfred Brocker (ed.), Geschichte
des politischen Denkens, Band III: Das 19. Jahrhundert (forthcoming in 2021 with
Suhrkamp); an article “The Double Standard: German Shepherds, Race, and
Violence”, together with Mieke Roscher, in Jonathan W. Thurston (ed.), Animals and
Race (forthcoming in 2021 with Michigan State University Press); and the chapter
“Love Across the Color Line? Pearl S. Buck and the Adoption of Afro-German
Children after World War II,” in her own edited volume Adopting Children across
Race and Nations: Histories and Legacies (forthcoming in 2021 with Ohio State
University Press).

Dr. Hackenesch serves as a board member for the book series “Imagining Black
Europe” at Peter Lang Publishing. Her work has been supported, by the German
Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Thyssen Foundation, the German Research
Foundation (DFG), the Society for the History of Children and Youth (SHCY), the
Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture (ASAC), and the German Historical
Institute in Washington, DC, among other institutions.

For starters, what does your research focus on? And what topics have you
explored?

Very broadly, my research interests are American Cultural History, Commodity

Citation: Matthew Dawdy. H-Slavery Interview with Dr. Silke Hackenesch. H-Slavery. 10-21-2020.
https://networks.h-net.org/node/11465/discussions/6619654/h-slavery-interview-dr-silke-hackenesch
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

H-Slavery

History, Childhood Studies, Adoption Studies, African American History, Black
German Studies, and Critical Race Theory.

In the German academic system, scholars have to complete two larger research
projects in two different fields of research (a PhD thesis / Dissertation and a
Habilitation / second book) and hence publish two books in order to be eligible for
tenure / a professorship.

I have published the monograph Chocolate and Blackness: A Cultural History, which
explores the various entanglements of cocoa and chocolate with racialized bodies
and subjectivities. It looks at chocolate and blackness from different angles; the
book provides a material analysis that takes the colonial production process of cocoa
into account; it explores the semantics of chocolate and its visual representations in
European and US advertisements and offers a discursive analysis of the connections
between cocoa and race in various (African) American spheres of cultural
production.

Currently, I am working on a manuscript tentatively titled “Colorblind Love or Racial
Responsibility? The Adoption of Black German Children to Postwar America” that
looks at the emergence of intercountry adoption. Children born to white German
women and African American soldiers during the occupation after the Second World
War, represent the first organized transnational adoptions to the U.S. – primarily on
the basis of race. In my research project, I focus on the U.S. discourses on those
Black German children who have been adopted by (mostly African) American
families between the mid-1940s and the end of the 1950s. I am interested in the
contentious debates their adoption provoked among social welfare workers, non-
professional adoption advocates and civil rights activists. My aim is to get a better
understanding of what prompted African American couples to adopt a Black child
from abroad, and to understand the nuanced, sometimes ambivalent responses to
these adoptions from civil rights groups. I argue that the civil rights movement,
discourses on the hegemonic notions of the American family, on American
citizenship as well as a Cold War rhetoric all intersected in the social practice that
became international adoption. Lobbying for the adoption of Black German children
must also be analyzed with regard to the integrationist discourse of a colorblind
society as well as the domestic adoption landscape in the United States. Related to
that research, I am editing a volume Adopting Children across Race and Nations:
Histories and Legacies that is forthcoming with Ohio State University Press.

H-Slavery

What courses do you teach? And are there any other projects that you are
currently working on?

The institute for North American History at the University in Cologne, where I teach,
offers a Master degree in North American Studies. We have a diverse student body
with students coming from Germany, the United States, Canada, Australia, France,
Iran, Bangladesh, China, Spain etc., so our courses are taught in English only. Each
semester, I am offering a lecture course “Introduction to North American History”
which is really a survey class and kind of a tour de force through American history
with an eye towards its global entanglements and with a focus on how central the
categories of race, class, and gender are for understanding the contours of American
history. For the 19th century, western expansion, genocidal policies towards Native
Americans, the transatlantic slave trade and slavery, the civil war and
Reconstruction are some of the topics that we address. The course is accompanied
by a tutorial in which students learn about the variety of primary sources, how to
work with sources and how to research a topic. At the end of the semester, students
hand in a 10 page research paper demonstrating their ability to discuss and analyze
a primary source within its historical context.

Also, every semester, I am co-teaching a research seminar with Prof. Anke Ortlepp
in which our students present their MA-theses and their dissertation projects. We
also invite colleagues from Germany and international scholars to present their
research in this format.

This fall, I will teach two additional classes; one undergraduate course on “United
States History as Urban History,” and one graduate seminar about “Chocolate City
and Vanilla Suburb: Race and Space in America.” In the previous summer term, I
have taught a graduate seminar on the Reconstruction period.

Another project I am working on right now is a collaborative piece with a Human-
Animals-Studies colleague, Prof. Mieke Roscher (Kassel University, Germany). In the
aftermath of the shooting of unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown by
a police officer in 2014 in Ferguson, protests erupted among the residents.
Watching the events unfold, especially the highly charged confrontations between
the African American residents on the one hand, and the police officers “armed”
with German shepherds on the other hand, we began a conversation about the
practice of using German shepherds as presumably effective and suitable police

H-Slavery

dogs, and the historical context of the German shepherd evolving into a signifier for
police violence and white supremacy in the United States. In our piece, we want to
explore how processes of racialization and racial dynamics have simultaneously
affected both humans and non-humans, i.e. dogs by tracing the history of the
German shepherd as a police dog and connecting this to the history of racialized
police violence against African Americans during (and after) the civil rights
movement.

How does your research inform your approach to teaching courses on
subjects such as Reconstruction?

My teaching is certainly shaped by my inclination towards cultural history
perspectives. I emphasize concepts such as agency, class, gender, race, sexuality,
and power and encourage students to develop a critical perspective towards the
material that we are using in class, primary sources as well as secondary texts. In
the seminar on the Reconstruction period, for instance, students explored what
abstract concepts such as equality and freedom actually mean, how they have to be
filled with meaning and how the terms of freedom and equality were contested and
negotiated after the abolition of slavery. We also critically addressed the role of
president Abraham Lincoln and discussed if being against slavery necessarily meant
being abolitionist or “pro-Black,” and why this may not have been the case. As for
primary sources, we used a lot of political cartoons in this class and explored how to
work with visual material. We looked at cartoons on the Freedmen’s Bureau and
cartoons that mocked President Andrew Johnson or addressed his political clashes
with Congress. We also worked with Congressional records on Ku Klux Klan violence
in the South.

The semester in Germany started mid-April and ended mid-July, so our semester
progressed as we witnessed the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter
movement turning to the streets again in the United States, but also across Europe
(in Germany, too). I felt it was important to address what was happening, especially
since many of the issues we talked about in the Reconstruction class, for example
the Lost Cause movement, Confederate monuments, white supremacy, how history
is remembered and taught, seem to be at the forefront of today’s struggles. Indeed,
many students felt that studying Reconstruction was timely since it provided them
with a better understanding of the historical legacies of institutionalized racial
inequality, and of the issues debated right now.

H-Slavery

What do you mean by "North American History?" When Iowa State
University, where I am a PhD student, teaches American History it is a two-
part survey course that goes from ancient history to the Reconstruction era,
and then from Reconstruction to about the year 2000. Does your course
focus on the country itself, or the idea of being "American?"

The survey course I am teaching is just one semester; we start with pre-Columbian
North America and look at migration routes and indigenous societies. We also look
at early maps about North America and talk about the pre-colonial era and the early
forms of contact between Europeans and Native Americans. Here, I often focus on
Cahokia, but also the “Pristine Myth” and “Columbian Exchange.” So yes, the course
is largely about the country itself, but at the same time also addresses the idea of
being American, through concepts such as Manifest Destiny and American
Exceptionalism, that we discuss critically.

How do you navigate the complicated nature of North American history to an
international student population? Could you, for example, compare and
contrast with different cultural perspectives- or is more an emphasis on the
unique "American" notions of freedom and equality?

What I often stress is that, indeed, things were and are complicated. I encourage
students to look for nuances, contradictions and complexities and not fall for the
idea that history is a progressive narrative. Getting students to talk about their own
concepts of “America,” their expectations, their beliefs, maybe also their prejudices,
is a worthwhile endeavor and often comes up in our discussions. Our students also
tend to make comparisons to what is more culturally familiar to them. This can be
misleading and it needs to be addressed that not every comparison is a productive
one. But it can also highlight the fact that U.S. history is not that unique and that
many aspects, concepts and challenges can be found in the histories of other nation
states as well.

I also think your take on Lincoln is incredibly useful. Despite all his
biographies, a hint of ambiguity seems to rest around what he truly believed.
How important do you believe the distinction between being "against
slavery" versus "abolitionist or Pro-Black" is?

H-Slavery

I think this is an extremely important observation. In our discussion, it was not so
much about what Lincoln “truly believed.” Rather, using Lincoln as a historical
figure helps students understand that there could be a variety of reasons why people
opposed slavery. Those who were frustrated because of the cheap labor competition
were not necessarily concerned about treating African Americans legally and
socially as less than equal human beings, so they were not abolitionist or pro-Black.
Also, abolitionists may have had interests that were different from (formerly)
enslaved and their complicated role is something I often address when discussing
slave narratives, for example. So again, it is about getting a better, more nuanced
understanding of people’s ideas, thoughts and motifs.

How do you navigate discussing things like Black Lives Matter, George
Floyd, and Michael Brown? Do the ideas of institutional failings get
approached, or is it more a discussion of historical legacy?

Especially this last summer semester, we talked about Black Lives Matter every
week and you could sense that it was important for students to address it. They also
made connections between the material we used in class and the events as they
were unfolding. For instance, we worked with Steve Ash’s A Massacre in Memphis in
which the author talks about racialized police violence and the antagonism between
the police and the African American residents in Memphis; this was a great way to
start talking about the Defund the Police movement, the institutional problems with
the police force etc. Apart from that, talking about the amendments during
Reconstruction, and how these gains were hollowed out and how many of the same
issues of violated citizenship rights were again addressed during the “Second
Reconstruction” made students understand that the current moment is also the
result of systemic and institutionalized failing.

Why did you decide to use political cartoons? It seems to me that historians
sometimes have problems with the idea of using visual sources in their
work.

In my experience, visual material is a great way to get students talking in the
classroom, to get them engaged with primary sources. Often, this works better than
with using (solely) textual sources. I also believe that visual material is relevant and
important and provides us with crucial insights; the cartoons, for instance, are not

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merely illustrations that accompany a text, but are relevant in their own right. It is
absolutely fascinating to listen to what students “see” in these cartoons and how
they make sense of it. Since Thomas Nast, who made many political cartoons for
Harper’s Weekly during the Reconstruction period, was a German immigrant,
students are also curious about his vita.

That's an interesting take on North American history. Do you discuss
Frederick Jackson Turner and his "Frontier Thesis?" It seems it would fit in
with the concept of Manifest Destiny and American exceptionalism.

In the survey course we only briefly touch on the Frontier Thesis, though I agree it
fits well into discussion on the Manifest Destiny and Exceptionalism. It does
underscore the self-concept and self-image of America. Turner’s work is also
insightful when talking about historiography, and why certain ideas and concepts
flourish at a certain time and become perceived as outdated or replaced with newer
concepts in different times and contexts.

Could you elaborate on your work with Prof. Mieke Roscher? As a dog lover,
I find the premise fascinating.

My colleague Mieke Roscher and myself began a conversation about the practice of
using German shepherds as presumably effective and suitable police dogs, and the
historical context of the German shepherd evolving into a signifier for police
violence and white supremacy in the United States. We were wondering why there
are not that many historical studies that thoroughly analyze the role of police dogs
in the Black freedom struggle (a great exception is Afro-Dog: Blackness and the
Animal Question by Benedicte Boisseron). Given the history of the German Shepherd
and how it is connected to the Nazi Regime and notions of racial superiority, we felt
intrigued by pushing this further and started working on an article about this. Since
I am not a Human-Animals-Scholar, this collaboration has been truly insightful and
thought provoking for me.

What about pit bulls? Could they be perceived in an opposite way? Pit bulls
seem to be ubiquitous in narratives about lower class neighborhoods. Often,
they are shown to be violent, hyper aggressive beasts by pure nature.

H-Slavery

What an interesting question! What discourses on pit bulls and how they are
represented or framed suggests, in think, the ways in which dogs as well as other
animals are racialized, gendered, and classified. They can serve as means of
distinction and become a status symbol for a particular socioeconomic class, or a
particular group of people.

How do you incorporate Cahokia? Or rather, how do you use it to set up
discussing America's story? Are there particular aspects you focus on?

Cahokia is a productive example to expose the myths and distorted ideas Europeans
had about Native Americans. There wasn’t a sparsely populated “wilderness” to be
“tamed” and “civilized,” but permanent settlements, cities, infrastructure, trade and
communication, agriculture, power structures and religious practices etc.
Contrasting Cahokia with the “pristine myth” shows students that many Europeans
were ignorant of the many facets of Native American life.

When we discuss ideas such as the "Columbian Exchange" we often get
wrapped up in the "Triangle Trade" as well. Do you see these ideas
intertwined? Or should they be analyzed as two separate, unique entities?

Great question. In the survey course that I teach, we mainly talk about the Triangle
Trade in relation to the transatlantic slave trade and the emergence of the (Black)
Atlantic world.

It seems to me that your students are willing to have a conversation that
most Americans ignore. Americans tend to view our system as working-as-
intended. How important is it for a nation to own up to their failings? More
importantly, how do you move forward? And what is our role, as historians,
in the conversations that need to occur?

What I hear from my colleagues and friends at U.S.-American universities, a lot of
them discuss the Black Lives Matter movement and the current state with their
students as well. In some respects, it might be easier to have that conversation over
here (in Germany), because the topic is not as polarizing as it is in the U.S. Also, I
might add, as someone born and raised in Germany, addressing hurtful and deeply
troubling histories is nothing new and the whole concept of patriotism is much more

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complicated and contested here in the academic and popular discourse.

I find your observation interesting that many Americans tend to see the system as
working-as-intended. Most of our students here would probably argue that the
United States grapple with a foundational contradiction; enlightenment ideas and
democratic ideals on the one hand, and mass enslavement and racist thought on the
other hand. I don’t think the US is exceptional in this, especially when looking at
European colonialism and the emergence of nation states. We discuss the
Constitution in class and I want my students to understand how the Founding
Fathers could draft such important documents that stress freedom and individualism
while being the owners of slaves, and seeing no contradiction there. Understanding
the history helps us making sense of its legacy, especially now. As a historian, I see
my role in encouraging students to be curious, to ask questions, and to think
critically about the many causes and roots for the difficult times we are witnessing
now.

Citation: Matthew Dawdy. H-Slavery Interview with Dr. Silke Hackenesch. H-Slavery. 10-21-2020.
https://networks.h-net.org/node/11465/discussions/6619654/h-slavery-interview-dr-silke-hackenesch
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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