Kira Thurman
University of Michigan, Germanic Languages and Literatures, Faculty Member
- German History, Musicology, Africana Studies, Music and Politics, Cultural History, Opera, and 66 moreModern Germany, Cultural Musicology, 20th Century German History, History of Nationalism, Critical Musicology, History of Nationalism and Nation-Building, Nineteenth-Century Music, German History after 1945, Cultural History of Central Europe, African-American Music, 19th Century German History, Modern German History, 19th Century Prussia/Germany, German Colonial Empire, Women and Music, Nineteenth-Century Music (Music), African American Opera, History, Afro-German Studies, Black/African Diaspora, African American Studies, Music History, Germanic Languages and Literatures, German Studies, Weimar Republic, Critical Race Theory, Richard Wagner, Colonialism, American music, Empire, Nazi Germany, Music, Imperialism, British Imperial and Colonial History (1600 - ), French History, Cultural Studies, Black Studies Or African American Studies, 19th-century German philosophy, German Literature and Culture, German Romanticism, Wagner Studies, Wagner, Wagnerism, Critical Theory, Postwar Germany, Race and Ethnicity, Postcolonial Studies, Transnationalism, Cold War and Culture, Transnational History, Race and Racism, Global History, European History, Post-Colonialism, Central European history, Cultural History of Music, Black Europe, Black German Diaspora, Black European Studies, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Performance Studies, Critical European Studies, African Diaspora Studies, Historical Musicology, Ethnomusicology, and Postcolonial musicologyedit
- I am an assistant professor of History and German Studies at the University of Michigan (joint appointment). I earned... moreI am an assistant professor of History and German Studies at the University of Michigan (joint appointment). I earned my Ph.D. in history from the University of Rochester in 2013, where I also pursued a minor field in musicology through the Eastman School of Music. My research focuses on the relationship between art music and the Black diaspora in Europe and the United States.edit
When African American concert singers began to perform German lieder in central Europe in the 1920s, white German and Austrian listeners were astounded by the veracity and conviction of their performances. How had they managed to sing... more
When African American concert singers began to perform German lieder in central Europe in the 1920s, white German and Austrian listeners were astounded by the veracity and conviction of their performances. How had they managed to sing like Germans? This article argues that black performances of German music challenged audiences' definitions of blackness, whiteness, and German music during the transatlantic Jazz Age in interwar central Europe. Upon hearing black performers masterfully sing lieder by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and others, audiences were compelled to consider whether German national identity was contingent upon whiteness. Some listeners chose to call black concert singers “Negroes with white souls,” associating German music with whiteness by extension. Others insisted that the singer had sounded black and therefore un-German. Race was ultimately the filter through which people interpreted these performances of the Austro-German musical canon. This article contributes to a growing body of scholarship that investigates how and when audiences began to associate classical music with whiteness. Simultaneously, it offers a musicological intervention in contemporary discourses that still operate under the assumption that it is impossible to be both black and German.
Research Interests: Black Studies Or African American Studies, German Studies, Music, Musicology, German History, and 14 moreBlack/African Diaspora, Race and Racism, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Whiteness Studies, 20th Century German History, Critical Race Theory and Whiteness theory, Interwar Period History, Central and Eastern Europe, Austrian History, Historical Musicology, Lieder, Afro-German Studies, and Black German Diaspora
This chapter examines how white Germans and Austrians defined the relationship between art music and black musicianship in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It argues that listeners came to believe that African American spirituals –... more
This chapter examines how white Germans and Austrians defined the relationship between art music and black musicianship in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It argues that listeners came to believe that African American spirituals – more than any other form of ‘black music’ or ‘Negro music’ – were capable of entering the realm of high art music. Audiences worked out fluid, contradictory and fragile constructs of blackness and culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as they struggled to locate spirituals within the world of ‘black music.’ What if, Germans wondered, African American spirituals were proof that blacks were capable of civilization? What if these spirituals belonged in the opera house more than in an ethnological exhibit? Debates about African American spirituals and ‘Negro music’ in cities such as Berlin and Vienna illustrate how Austro-German musical culture accepted or denied black people’s ability to create high art.
Research Interests: Cultural History, Black Studies Or African American Studies, German Studies, Music, Musicology, and 14 moreGerman History, Black/African Diaspora, Race and Racism, African Diaspora Studies, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Racism, African American Studies, Black Popular Culture, African-American Music, Africana Studies, Historical Musicology, Afro-German Studies, and Black German Diaspora
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Called the "Colored Wagner" throughout his life, African American opera composer Harry Lawrence Freeman wrote dozens of operas during the Harlem Renaissance. In 2015, the Morningside Opera Company, Harlem Opera Theater, and the Harlem... more
Called the "Colored Wagner" throughout his life, African American opera composer Harry Lawrence Freeman wrote dozens of operas during the Harlem Renaissance. In 2015, the Morningside Opera Company, Harlem Opera Theater, and the Harlem Chamber Players performed one of his grand operas, Voodoo. This article analyzes their performance, contextualizing it with archival documents located in Columbia University's archives.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Black Studies Or African American Studies, Music, Music History, Musicology, and 21 morePerformance Studies, Black/African Diaspora, Race and Racism, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Wagner Studies, Performance, Cultural Musicology, African American Culture, African American History, African American Studies, Wagner, Critical Musicology, Harlem Renaissance, African-American Music, History of Race and Ethnicity, African American Opera, Richard Wagner, Historical Musicology, African American Cultures, and Opera Studies
In 1877, the African American musical ensemble known as the Fisk Jubilee Singers traveled to Germany to raise money for their university. The choir’s ten-month tour provided German listeners with one of their first significant and... more
In 1877, the African American musical ensemble known as the Fisk Jubilee Singers traveled to Germany to raise money for their university. The choir’s ten-month tour provided German listeners with one of their first significant and sustained encounters with African Americans and African American culture in the nineteenth century. As listeners throughout Germany heard the ensemble perform, they began to debate the Fisk Jubilee Singers’ musical, cultural, and ethnic origins. At the heart of their growing ethnomusicological and anthropological interest in the Jubilee Singers’ music lied the question of whether or not African Americans were fulfilling the powerful promise of the civilizing mission: were they proof that people of the black diaspora were capable of accepting “Western” art music and cultural values? This article illustrates how African American music contributed to global conversations on the civilizing mission in the nineteenth century.
Research Interests: Christianity, Cultural Studies, Black Studies Or African American Studies, German Studies, Music, and 59 moreMusic History, Musicology, Globalization, Globalisation and cultural change, German History, History of Religion, Transnational and World History, History of Christianity, Transnationalism, Postcolonial Studies, Black/African Diaspora, African Diaspora Studies, World History, Colonialism, Missionary History, Transnational History, Christian Missions, History of Missions, Post-Colonialism, Cultural Musicology, Mission Studies, Protestantism, Globalization And Postcolonial Studies, African American Culture, Global History, African American History, Postcolonial Theory, African American Studies, 19th Century German History, 19th Century (History), Postcolonial theory (Cultural Theory), Religious History, African-American Music, Black Atlantic, Diaspora and transnationalism, Classical Music, Civilizing Mission, Historical Musicology, African American Spirituals, Cultural Globalization, 19th Century Music, Music and globalization, African American Cultures, Middle Passage, Atlantic World Slavery, African Diaspora, Slavery and Medicine, Black Women's History, Violence Studies, Caribbean History, Global Culture, Black Music and Politics, African Americans, 19th Century Music Criticism, African and African American Studies, Afro-German Studies, Music Culture and Politics (19th Century Germany), Middle passage and Black Atlantic Studies, Black German Diaspora, German Protestant Theology, Civilizing Process, Negro Spirituals, Black European Studies, African American Music/history, and Postcolonialism
African American soprano Grace Bumbry sparked a controversy in West Germany when she became the first black musician to sing at the Bayreuth Festival Opera House in July 1961. This article demonstrates how race served two separate... more
African American soprano Grace Bumbry sparked a controversy in West Germany when she became the first black musician to sing at the Bayreuth Festival Opera House in July 1961. This article demonstrates how race served two separate functions for the Bayreuth Opera Festival and its postwar audience. For opera director Wieland Wagner, hiring a black singer was part of a larger agenda to sever Bayreuth’s ties from its most recent and turbulent past. German audiences discussing this historical moment, however, expressed concern that protestors of this performance were preventing Germans from moving forward into a new, democratic, and racially accepting Germany.
Research Interests: Black Studies Or African American Studies, German Studies, Music History, Musicology, German History, and 10 moreOpera, Race and Ethnicity, Music and Politics, 20th Century German History, African American Studies, Richard Wagner, Postwar Germany, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, Opera Studies, and Afro-German Studies
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Research Interests: Black Studies Or African American Studies, German Studies, German History, Black/African Diaspora, Central European history, and 12 moreAfrican American History, 20th Century German History, African American Studies, Central and Eastern Europe, Austrian History, Vienna, Postwar Germany, Austrian Studies, Afro-German Studies, Postwar Europe, Black German Diaspora, and Black European Studies
Research Interests: Black Studies Or African American Studies, German Studies, German History, Postcolonial Studies, Black/African Diaspora, and 16 moreRace and Racism, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Nationalism, Colonialism, Post-Colonialism, 20th Century German History, German Colonial Empire, Critical Mixed Race Studies, Modern Germany, Modern German History, German Nationalism, Germany, Afro-German Studies, Post Colonial Theory, and Black German Diaspora
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A review of "The Promise of Tradition: Music, Modernity, and Mass Society in Weimar Germany," by Brendan Fay.