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The Black Columbiad: Defining Moments in African American Literature and Culture Werner Sollers and Maria Diedrich, eds. The Black Columbiad: Defining Moments in African American Literature and Culture. Harvard English Studies 19. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1994. 390 pp.
Werner Sollers and Maria Diedrich claim-and the list of contributors supports such a claim-that this collection of essays "may be the most international and transnational collection to date dedicated to African American literature and culture." As such, The Black Columbiad itself represents a "defining moment" in African American criticism. While the field has blossomed since the 1970s and certainly has attracted international interest in countries such as Germany, this volume represents a global flowering of research in African American literature and culture. Contributors range from Italian, German, and French to South African, Czech, and Norwegian. (And yes, there are a few Americans too.)
In their useful and well-written introduction, Sollers and Diedrich contrast the European encounter with America with the African forced experience. The editors center the volume (which was born of a conference on the Black Columbiad in Seville, Spain) around the following questions: "What were the values, the images, and the vocabulary which accompanied our African 'explorers' on their terrifying Columbiad? And what were the values, the images,...