There is a sense that WWII represented a seminal moment in racial thought and that the realization of the Holocaust was transformative in the role of race-thinking by state agencies and popular institutions, particularly in the U.S. Dr. Patton's research challenges this assumption, particularly since Black American soldiers went back to a country that held steadfastly to Jim Crow, which included anti-miscegenation laws. Separating race and racism in Germany and in the United States becomes impossible to untangle because they are braided together, and while many biracial German children remained in Germany, the U.S. and German governments collaborated and destroyed families by forbidding interracial coupling and encouraging white German women to put up their mixed-raced children for international adoption in an effort to keep Germany white. Dr. Patton uses her own family’s history as an exemplar, this research explores issues of race, gender, place, and nation as it relates to this largely erased history. The Sandeen Lecture in the Humanities is named for Dr. Eric Sandeen, the founding director, and now director emeritus, of the Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research. The lecture is co-sponsored by the humanities research institute and the Wyoming Humanities Council. The Sandeen Lecture takes place annually in December, on the Monday of finals week during the fall semester. Each year, the faculty fellows in the cohort of the institute's Humanities Research Group vote to decide which fellow will deliver the lecture, therefore to be chosen for it is a particular honor, showing the respect of one's peers and showcasing some of the best humanities research by UW faculty. About Dr. Tracey Owens Patton: Dr. Tracey Owens Patton is a Professor of Communication in the Department of Communication and Journalism, adjunct Professor in African American & Diaspora Studies in the School of Culture, Gender, and Social Justice, and affiliate faculty in the Creative Writing MFA Program in the Department of Visual and Literary Arts at The University of Wyoming. She also served as the Director of the African American & Diaspora Studies Program from 2009-2017 at the University of Wyoming. She made UW history by becoming the first Black woman tenured and promoted to associate professor at the University in 2006, and earned a promotion to full professor in 2012. She earned her Ph.D. in Communication at the University of Utah. Her area of specialization is critical cultural communication, critical media studies, rhetorical studies, and transnational studies. Her work is strongly influenced by critical theory, cultural studies, womanist theory, and rhetorical theory. She has authored a number of academic articles on topics involving the interdependence between race, gender, and power and how these issues interrelate culturally and rhetorically in education, media, memory, myth, and speeches. She places a strong emphasis on the interconnection between research and teaching, thus the courses she teaches involve issues concerning cross-cultural communication, rhetoric, and social justice. Dr. Patton has presented her research at nearly 80 different academic conferences and has published a co-authored book titled, Gender, Whiteness, and Power in Rodeo: Breaking Away from the Ties of Sexism and Racism (2012). This evening she is sharing a portion of her upcoming second book involving race, memory, rejection, and World War II. Photo description: Twins, Lilli (left) and Lore (right) at the Wasserturm (Water tower) in Mannheim, Germany which is a popular landmark in the city. Family photo, author’s private collection, supplied by Lilli.
