Opening with five intriguing urban short stories by Zora Neale Hurston that are reprinted here for the first time, and with the first publication and reproduction in facsimile of two previously unknown Hurston letters, this special issue of "Amerikastudien / American Studies", edited by Glenda R. Carpio and Werner Sollors (both at Harvard University), takes stock of current trends in African American literary studies. It presents a new short story by Jamaica Kincaid inspired by the Hurston texts, a new essay by Ishmael Reed on the origins of Black Studies, and provocative new scholarship on Hurston, the Harlem Renaissance, Richard Wright, the German American artist Winold Reiss, Paul Beatty's Germany, the blues, performance poetry, transnationalism, and on current challenges and new directions in the field. Contributors from the United States and Germany include Birgit Bauridl, George Blaustein, Eva Boesenberg, Daphne Brooks, Dorothea Buehler, Carla Cappetti, Glenda R. Carpio, Melanie Eis, Jeffrey Ferguson, Katharina Gerund, Lisa Gill, Udo J. Hebel, George Hutchinson, Stephan Kuhl, Susanne Leikam, Sieglinde Lemke, Frank Mehring, Ernest Julius Mitchell II, Scott Poulson-Bryant, Werner Sollors, Kenneth W. Warren, and M. Genevieve West.