Offers a European view of racial attitudes in the US during the era of the Harlem Renaissance and Jim Crow, with relevance to today's Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements. Marylin, a novel by the Austrian writer Arthur Rundt about a mixed-race woman passing as white, moves from Chicago to New York City and concludes tragically on a Caribbean island. First published in 1928 and now translated into English, it offers a European view of racial attitudes in the US during the era of the Harlem Renaissance and Jim Crow. Rundt's short but powerful novel touches several vital issues in society today, engaging each in a way that prompts further examination and cross-fertilization. First, it sheds historical light on what has become painfully obvious in the Black Lives Matter era (if it wasn't before): the continued injustice experienced by Blacks in America as an effect of structural racism. Second, it confronts issues of migration and hybrid identities. Third, it has relevance for Women's Studies through the title character's interaction with the patriarchy. Through these connections, it responds to a growing current in German Studies concerned with diversity and inclusion and integrating the discipline into the broader humanities. An introduction and an afterword, both of them extensive and scholarly, contextualize the novel in its time and as it relates to ours.

A European novel of racial mixing and "passing" in early twentieth-century America that serves as a unique account of transnational and transcultural racial attitudes that continue to reverberate today. Hugo Bettauer's The Blue Stain, a novel of racial mixing and "passing," starts and ends in Georgia but also takes the reader to Vienna and New York. First published in 1922, the novel tells the story of Carletto, son of a white European academic and an African American daughter of former slaves, who, having passed as white in Europe and fled to America after losing his fortune, resists being seen as "black" before ultimately accepting that identityand joining the early movement for civil rights. Never before translated into English, this is the first novel in which a German-speaking European author addresses early twentieth-century racial politics in the United States - notonly in the South but also in the North. There is an irony, however: while Bettauer's narrative aims to sanction a white/European egalitarianism with respect to race, it nevertheless exhibits its own brand of racism by assertingthat African Americans need extensive enculturation before they are to be valued as human beings. The novel therefore serves as a unique historical account of transnational and transcultural racial attitudes of the period that continue to reverberate in our present globalized world. Hugo Bettauer (1872-1925) was a prolific Austrian writer and journalist, a very early victim of the Nazis. Peter Hoeyng is Associate Professor of German Studies at Emory University. Chauncey J. Mellor is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Kenneth R. Janken is Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

A European novel of racial mixing and "passing" in early twentieth-century America that serves as a unique account of transnational and transcultural racial attitudes that continue to reverberate today. Hugo Bettauer's The Blue Stain, a novel of racial mixing and "passing," starts and ends in Georgia but also takes the reader to Vienna and New York. First published in 1922, the novel tells the story of Carletto, son of a white European academic and an African-American daughter of former slaves, who, having passed as white in Europe and fled to America after losing his fortune, resists being seen as "black" before ultimately accepting that identityand joining the early movement for civil rights. Never before translated into English, this is the first novel in which a German-speaking European author addresses early twentieth-century racial politics in the United States - notonly in the South but also in the North. There is an irony, however: while Bettauer's narrative aims to sanction a white/European egalitarianism with respect to race, it nevertheless exhibits its own brand of racism by assertingthat African Americans need extensive enculturation before they are to be valued as human beings. The novel therefore serves as a unique historical account of transnational and transcultural racial attitudes of the period that continue to reverberate in our present globalized world. Hugo Bettauer (1872-1925) was a prolific Austrian writer and journalist, a very early victim of the Nazis. Peter Hoeyng is Associate Professor of German at Emory University. Chauncey J. Mellor is Emeritus Professor of German at the University of Tennessee. Kenneth R. Janken is Professor in the Department of African, African American, and Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina.