Skip to main content

Faculty Colloquium Series: Adam Seipp (HIST) 10/6/2020

‘We Are Not a Colonial People’: Race, Sovereignty, and the U.S. Army in Germany, 1950-58

Zoom Meeting information:
Meeting ID: 991 9440 2788
Password: Seipp
https://tamu.zoom.us/j/99194402788?pwd=MW5PaFM3S2tFRjdIYkl4SGp4c1d2UT09

Dr. Adam Seipp
Professor, History, 2020-21 Glasscock Internal Faculty Residential Fellow

Abstract:
This paper argues that race, and particularly the issue of African-American soldiers, was an important component of the German-American relationship in the early years of the Cold War. While there is substantial scholarship on German attitudes about race after the Second World War, historians have not paid sufficient attention to the centrality of race in the construction of bilateral relations between the United States and a critical NATO frontline state.  Focusing on two case studies, efforts by the city of Bad Kissingen to bar African-American soldiers in the early 1950s and a highly-visible rape case in 1956, Adam Seipp argues that race was integrally connected with broader questions of German sovereignty as the Federal Republic of Germany emerged from the postwar occupation.


The Faculty Colloquium offers faculty an opportunity to discuss a work-in-progress with faculty and graduate students from different disciplines. By long-standing practice, colloquium presenters provide a draft of their current research, which is made available to members of the Glasscock Center listserv. Each colloquium begins with the presenter’s short (10-15 minute) exposition of the project, after which the floor is open for comments and queries. The format is by design informal, conversational, and interdisciplinary.

The paper is available to members of the Center’s listserv, or by contacting the Glasscock Center by phone at (979) 845-8328 or by e-mail at glasscock@tamu.edu.

Join the Center’s listserv to receive regular notices of colloquium events.