2025-26 Faculty Fellow
About
Kira Thurman is an associate professor of History with faculty affiliations in Germanic Languages & Literatures, Musicology (School of Music, Theatre, and Dance), and AfroAmerican and African Studies. Her research focuses on Europe's historical and contemporary relationship with the Black diaspora. Her first book, Singing like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms (Cornell University Press, 2021) won seven awards. NPR named it one of their best books of 2021.
As an Eisenberg fellow, Professor Thurman will begin constructing her second monograph, on Black Europe, disco, and decolonization. Currently called "Pop after Empire," this project explores how after WWII and the collapse of European imperialism, popular music industries in western Europe became dependent on the musical labor of former colonial subjects to reinvent itself in an increasingly global and English-speaking marketplace. "Pop after Empire" seeks to understand both the overwhelming presence of Black European pop stars in the post-WWII era such as Boney M. and Milli Vanilli, and also their discursive absence in European popular culture.
