Afropolitan Encounters

Anna von Rath lives in Berlin, Germany. Her PhD dissertation, completed at the University of Potsdam, won the Better World Award in 2020. As a literary and cultural studies scholar and former fellow of the Research Training Group Minor Cosmopolitanisms, she has published on Afropolitanism, postcolonial ecocriticism and travel narratives. Next to her academic work, she works as a freelance cultural event organizer, and social justice and diversity trainer. She is one of the founding–editors of poco.lit., an online platform for postcolonial literatures in the widest sense.

• Contents: Afropolitanism and Convivial Scholarship – Emerging Afropolitanisms – Taiye Selasi: Afropolitanism as an identity – Achille Mbembe: Afropolitanism as a political and ethical stance – Afropolitanism in London – Brian Chikwava: Afropolitanism as a dead-end road – Afropolitan London: Afropolitanism as co-existing networks – Afropolitanism in Berlin – Afropolitan Berlin: Afropolitanism as collective self-care – SchwarzRund: Afropolitanism as a strategic label – Afropolitan theory, practices and futures – Works Cited.

«Afropolitan Encounters: Literature and Activism in London and Berlin offers important scholarly insights in a local and global context that continues to confront the violence of ethnonationalism and biological essentialism, despite the efforts of scholars, artists and activists to exercise creative and political agency. Anna von Rath amplifies thinkers and creators who assert Afropolitanism as a refusal to be located, fixed and contained.»(Adam Haupt, Professor and Director, Centre for Film & Media Studies, University of Cape Town)