“Double Exposure: Colonialism and its Impact on Political Solidarity Today”

The ACG and the Goethe Institut are having a discussion in Washington DC with Dr. Emily Marker and Dr. Monica van der Haagen-Wulff on “Double Exposure: Colonialism and its Impact on Political Solidarity Today”

After the end of World War II, European nations promoted European unification as a “peace project.” What remained largely ignored was the obligation resulting from the colonial past of countries like Germany, France, and Great Britain. What kind of solidarity can be expected from the descendants of the colonizers – and those who were colonized? With its legacy of slavery, similar questions came to the forefront in the context of Black Lives Matter: Is there an obligation for white majority society to show solidarity to the descendants of enslaved people? Dr. Emily Marker and Dr. Monica van der Haagen-Wulff will discuss the significance of historical injustices today – and how this plays out in the complex political environment we live in.

Emily Marker is an Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University. Her research and teaching interests are in imperial and postcolonial Europe, francophone Africa, race, religion, youth, and global history. Her recent book, Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era (Cornell, 2022), explores how public and private programs to promote solidarity between French and African youth collided with transnational efforts to make young people in Western Europe feel European after World War II. Based on several years of archival research in France, Senegal, Italy and Belgium, Black France, White Europe locates these competing generational projects at the center of the entangled history of decolonization and European integration.

In addition to her research and teaching, Dr. Marker works on initiatives for social justice and equity in the academy. A co-founder of the Race and Pedagogy Working Group at the University of Chicago (2015), she has organized workshops and community classes on power, privilege, and inclusive teaching. In 2023-24, Dr. Marker is serving as president of the Camden Chapter of Rutgers AAUP-AFT. She’s also a member of the Graduate Faculty in History at Rutgers-New Brunswick, the Executive Committee of Rutgers’ Center for African Studies, and the Faculty Advisory Board of Rutgers’ Center for European Studies. Dr. Marker is currently the president of the Western Society for French History.

Monica van der Haagen-Wulff is an Associate Lecturer at the Chair for Education and Cultural Sociology in the Department of Education and Social Sciences at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Cologne. Her teaching and research interests include cultural- and postcolonial studies, migration, intersectionality, post- and decolonial feminist theories, globalization, global cities, affect theory, embodiment, fictocritical writing, and critical heritage/memory studies. Monica has a transcultural dance and performance background, and her main research focus is on how practice and theory can be merged to create new knowledges and in so doing decenter Eurocentric knowledge constructions. She is an active member of the German Network for Anti-Racist School-Pedagogy (Netzwerk Rassismuskritische Schulpädagogik), as well as a founding member of the Forum Decolonizing Academia at the University of Cologne. Her teaching is inspired by bell hooks’ concepts of engaged pedagogy. She has published in international academic journals.