Olivia Wenzel

Olivia Wenzel was born in Weimar, Germany, and now lives in Berlin. Her dramatic works have been staged in Munich, Hamburg, and Berlin. Wenzel also works as a musician and a performer. In 2022, she will lead a series of multidisciplinary workshops for young adults of color at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Priscilla Layne is Associate Professor of German and Adjunct Associate Professor of African, African American and Diaspora Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Her research and teaching draws on postcolonial studies, gender studies, and critical race theory to address topics like representations of Blackness in literature and film, rebellion, and the concept of the Other in science fiction/fantasy. In addition to her work on representations of Blackness in German culture, she has also published essays on Turkish German culture, translation, punk, and film. She is the author of White Rebels in Black: German Appropriation of African American Culture, and her current book project is on Afro-German Afrofuturism.