Dr. Adrienne Merritt is an Assistant Professor of German at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research and teaching interests range broadly from medieval beguine mysticism to Black German hip hop, poetry, and activism. The core of her research is the question of identity and its exploration through cultural production by marginalized voices. Her work is interdisciplinary鈥攆ocusing on historical and philological methodologies as well as sociology and cultural anthropology鈥攁nd crosses linguistic and modern national borders. Her current project focuses on how Black German writers, artists, and hip-hop artists find ways to explore and imagine the possibility for different social environments and ecological futures through cultural production, specifically poetics, with emphasis on worldbuilding, Black humanity as an ontological given, and expressions of Black joy. Her work has been published in聽The German Quarterly,听Monatshefte,听Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature, and聽MLN.
