Conference report: Blankensee-Colloquium "Sketches of Black Europe: Imagining Europe/ans in African and African Diasporic Narratives", March 23-25, 2022, Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung (ZfL) Berlin : Organizers: Sandra Folie (Univ

Africa, Europe, Afropea. Recent years have seen a new peak in academic research about the African Diaspora and Blackness in Europe. Following discussions about transnationality and inclusivity, established terms like "African Diaspora" and the "Black Atlantic" have been supplemented by newer concepts like "African European(s)" and "Afropean(s)". The Blankensee-Colloquium "Sketches of Black Europe", organized by Sandra Folie (University of Vienna) and Gianna Zocco (ZfL Berlin), aimed to explore such transnational, comparative, and inclusive frameworks specifically for the study of Black literary imaginations of Europe. Its goal was to provide a space for discussions focusing on African and African diasporic literature, with a special interest in works written in minor or mid-size European languages, which often receive less academic attention than Anglophone or Francophone works. The hybrid three-day event took place in the "Trajekteraum" (from the Latin "traiectus": "crossing over, passage") of the ZfL Berlin, and thus in a room whose name corresponds very well with the interdisciplinary and innovative orientation of the Blankensee Colloquia. These are international workshops, organized by young researchers in the Berlin region and funded by the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, that focus "on researching the processes of societal and cultural change of our time" - typically by combining "various disciplinary and methodological approaches" and pursuing "a comparative perspective".