Adam Blackler
Dr. Adam A. Blackler is an associate professor of history at the University of Wyoming. He is a historian of modern Germany and southern Africa, whose research emphasizes the transnational dimensions of imperial occupation and colonial violence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His scholarly interests also include the political and social dynamics of Germany’s Weimar Republic and the interdisciplinary fields of holocaust & genocide Studies and international human rights. Dr. Blackler has held invited positions as a visiting professor in the Friedrich-Meinecke-Institute at Freie Universität (Berlin, Germany) and at the Ernst-Abbe-Hochschule (Jena, Germany).
His scholarship has appeared in distinguished peer-reviewed journals, university presses, and edited collections since 2017. Dr. Blackler published his first book monograph, entitled An Imperial Homeland: Forging German Identity in Southwest Africa, with Pennsylvania State University Press in 2022. PSUP released it in paperback in 2023. Other related publications include the lead article in Central European History, entitled “From Boondoggle to Settlement Colony: Hendrik Witbooi and the Evolution of Germany’s Imperial Project in Southwest Africa, 1884-1894” (2017), a co-edited anthology, entitled After the Imperialist Imagination: Two Decades of Research on Global Germany and Its Legacies (Peter Lang, 2020), and chapters in the multi-volume collection, entitled A Cultural History of Genocide (Bloomsbury, 2021) and The Black Atlantic’s Triple Burden: Slavery, Colonialism, and Reparations (Manchester University Press, 2025).
Dr. Blackler is presently writing a second book-length monograph, entitled Scrambling Back to Africa: False Victimhood and Empire in Weimar Germany. He is also writing an analysis of Viktor Klemperer and his personal confrontations with fascist violence during the Third Reich, entitled I Will Bear Witness—Viktor Klemperer in His Time, and Ours. Numerous national and international organizations have generously funded his research, including the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD), United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Holocaust Educational Foundation (HEF), Flittie Sabbatical Award, Center for Global Studies and Engagement (CGS), College of Arts and Sciences, and the Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research (WIHR). In recognition of Dr. Blackler’s scholarly achievements, he received the University of Wyoming’s Extraordinary Merit in Research Award in 2022.
Dr. Blackler offers a wide range of popular survey, upper division, online, study abroad, alumni, and graduate courses in modern European and world history. Course topics include European colonialism, nationalism and transnationalism, comparative and opposing fascism, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, Weimar Germany, human rights and crimes against humanity, and others. Several of his MA advisees have accepted funded positions in prestigious Ph.D. programs, including UNC-Chapel Hill, University of Kansas, and Boston College. In 2024, he received both the Extraordinary Merit in Teaching Award and John “Jack” P. Ellbogen Meritorious Classroom Teaching Award. He is an active member in the Black Diaspora Studies Network and currently serves on the editorial board of Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association and the Pacific Coast Book Award Committee (American Historical Association). Dr. Blackler is also the co-chair of the AP European History Examination Development Committee.
