Sponsored by the Center for German and European Studies.
This lecture focuses on the institutionalization of Eurafrica as a functional part of European integration with the signing of the Treaty of Rome. And as signatory, Germany joined with France and Belgium in a post-war reassertion of the colonial project. The ensuing process of decolonization thus impacted Germany directly. It led to full participation in the European creation of strategic partnerships with the newly independent nations to the south of the Mediterranean. The 1961 creation of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development corresponded to this shift from colonial to developmental relations. These transformations in the EU-Africa foreign policy have rarely been easy. They have required not only a rethinking of the economic and political relations but also new ways of seeing. Reviewing newsreels and films, this presentation charts out the process of coming to see global partners at eye level.
Randall Halle is the Klaus W. Jonas Professor of German Film and Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He directs the European Studies Center/Jean Monnet European Union Center of Excellence at Pitt as well as the Critical European Culture Studies PhD Program. He is on the Executive Committee of the EUSA and the Council for European Studies. He is Editor in Chief of EuropeNow. His essays have appeared in journals such as EuropeNow, The International Journal of Cultural Policy, and New German Critique. He is the author of among others German Film after Germany: Toward a Transnational Aesthetic (U Illinois, 2008), The Europeanization of Cinema: Interzones and Imaginative Communities (U Illinois, 2014), and Visual Alterity: Seeing Difference in Cinema (U Illinois 2021). His research is focused now on Europe’s Moving Images. Halle has received grants from the NEH, the DAAD, and the SSRC. For the academic year 2004-5 he was a Senior Fellow in the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies at the Free University. Academic year 2009-2010 he was a Senior Fulbright Researcher in Berlin. In 2019-2020 he was Visiting Fellow at the European University Viadrina. Fall 2022 he was a Simone Veil Fellow in the Project House Europe at the LMU, Munich. He is Co-PI for the Jean Monnet Network: ValEUs.