BEYOND THE SCHOLARLY sources found in specialized archives, libraries, and bookshelves (or digitized downloads), streaming services and popular series have piqued widespread interest in a Black presence in eighteenth- century European cultures. A number of binge-worthy shows— among them Shonda Rhimes Bridgerton (2021–22), Tony McNamara's The Great: An Occasionally True Story (season 1) and The Great: An Almost Entirely Untrue Story (season 2), and La cocinera de Castamar—adapted from a novel by Fernando J. M úñez by the same name, feature Black characters whose identities are comprised in unequal parts of historical fact, decolonial fantasies, and professionally progressive color-blind casting practices. Bridgerton imagines a Regency world in which Black royalty and aristocrats coexist with tradespeople and merchants. The presence of Black courtiers in the dark dramedy that unfolds in the Russia of Catherine II (The Great) raised some viewers’ eyebrows, but the historical record attests to the partial reality of this “occasionally true story.” And Múñez's novel follows the path of the protagonist, Clara Belmonte, an agoraphobic cook who catches the eye of a widowed duke in the palace Castamar, as she navigates her affliction and the marriage intrigues that surround the hero. Her character is loosely based on a composite of historical figures—the royal kitchen of Philip V was staffed by men—the person of interest is the duke's adopted brother, Gabriel de Castamar, a formerly enslaved Black man who was educated and elevated into the family. These amalgams of fact and fiction veer into controversies about historical accuracy and the inability of fantasy to right centuries of wrong. Each story indistinctly maps a topography transversed by economic, racial, and cultural politics networking Africa, Europe, and the Americas around 1800. M uch is made of Catherine's Germanness, deftly delivered by Elle Fanning, in The Great—in particular, the ability to transfer Enlightenment theory into political practice. Perhaps we can imagine a popularized version of “Frederick—The Great?,” but the Forschungsstand offers compelling reading with greater gravitas, for much current German studies scholarship is engaged in the project of decolonizing the long eighteenth century.

The Black Lives Matter movements galvanized anti-Black-racist activism, which directly or indirectly has an impact on the work we do: this scholarship itself has a history—Black lives have always mattered.