This issue of the Berlin Journal (covering the academic year 2020-21), features articles by journalist and fall 2020 fellow Mosi Secret, who writes about an experiment to desegregate white private schools in the 1960s South; Harvard University professor and spring 2021 fellow Robert Reid-Pharr on the surprising life of one of James Baldwin’s high-school teachers; an interview about whiteness with the Yale poet and playwright Claudia Rankine; and spring 2021 fellows and historians Nandini B. Pandey (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Erik Linstrum (University of Virginia), and Allison Blakely (Boston University), on the interplay of race, power, and empire, from ancient Rome to the contemporary Netherlands. The Features section of the magazine showcases topics ranging from Greta Garbo and Sarah Bernhardt to cross-Mediterranean migration and the Iranian Revolution, with short stories by Ayana Mathis and Alexandra Kleeman and and artist portfolio by Amy Kurzweil, introduced by the cartoon editor of the New Yorker, Emma Allen. The Mellon Workshop section includes essays by contributors to the 2019 sessions on the early ethnomusicology of Africa, led by Ronald Radano, of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Plus, book reviews by alumni of alumni, and much more.

Download the PDF of the 2020-21 Berlin Journal.

Cover image (detail): Morel Doucet, Jaded Moonlight (Gardenia), ceramic, 2019. Photo: David Gary Lloyd. Image courtesy the artist and Galerie Myrtis