Video / Audio  Race

The interconnections of migration, law, bureaucracy and race form the subject of some of the most exciting current research into the Nazis in history. The American roots of National Socialism are explored by James Whitman, one of tonight’s speakers and author of a study of the influences exerted upon the Third Reich by interwar US immigration laws. Alongside Whitman, Hans-Christian Jasch will speak about new insights to be gleaned into the emergence of the wartime German genocide through a focus on the careers, personalities and intellectual outlooks of the civil servants who participated in the Wannsee Conference, a key turning-point in the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.

This is the seventh panel of the two-day conference (April 8-9, 2016) on the popular television series The Wire, hosted by the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University. This panel is titled "Religion, Race, Politics in the Inner City." Panelists include Monica R. Miller, Lehigh University, Michael Leo Owens, Emory University, Josef Sorett, Columbia University, Rev. LaKeesha Walrond, First Corinthian Baptist Church, New York City, and Joseph R. Winters II, Duke University. The panel was organized by Josef Sorett, Institute for Research on African American Studies.

Mary Grace Albanese is a doctoral candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. Her dissertation centers on the role of the Haitian Revolution in early 19th-century French-U.S. literary exchange. Her other research interests include translation theory, the transatlantic Gothic, and the legal history of slavery. She is also a translator between French and English, with multiple areas of specialization including law, medicine, and education. As a Public Humanities Fellow, Mary Grace will create a forum for the collection, translation, and publication of Haitian history as told by Haitians themselves. Through a trans-lingual oral history initiative, the project aims to preserve and transmit contemporary Haitian narratives.