TRANSIT 10:2: Foreword | TRANSIT

Dear Readers,

We are pleased to announce the publication of the second installment of texts for our 2015–16 tenth anniversary volume. The articles in this publication begin with a continuation of the thematic of Barriers from Volume 10.1; these are followed by two literary translations and complimented by a special topic collection of essays entitled “The Future of the Past,” inspired by an eponymous Berkeley alumni conference and guest edited by Professors Susanne Baackmann and Nancy P. Nenno. We are excited to provide our readers with this wide-ranging selection of recent German Studies scholarship, and to introduce an English-language audience to works from two contemporary German-language authors.

Barriers

The following five articles provide a cross-section of research concerning both the implementation and overcoming of barriers, and work towards a common intellectual inquiry into defining both Germany and a larger “unified” Europe, present and past. They represent a breadth of research interests and methodologies from social and political geography to performance studies, art history and economic theory to digital humanities work in spatial visualization, migrant literature and feminist theory.

The first two articles provide two very different means for framing the politics of contemporary Europe. The first portrays the continent-wide impact of localized geo-politics within the context of the Dublin Regulations and Italian policies of “Wegmobilisierung.”
Keep Moving! Strategien der Wegmobilisierung als Teil des italienischen Migrationsmanagements
Federica Benigni and Marika Pierdicca

The second demonstrates the intricate interconnectivity between contemporary postmigrant theater and politics of protest through the example of the contemporary play: Telemachos – Should I Stay or Should I Go?
Greek Dispossession Staged, or When Street Politics Meets the Theater
Olivia Landry

The third article examines cultural representations of a united Europe through a comparative study of films produced in 2002, the year of the initial practical implementation of the Euro currency.
The Currency of Europe? Representing Unified Europe as Film in the Age of the Euro
Sasha Rossman

Utilizing an array of digital mapping tools, the fourth article examines the contribution of this technology to our reading of a canonical work of German literature, Effi Briest. The article demonstrates the ways in which visualizations contribute to our understanding of the importance of rail travel in the formation of representations of 19th-century German society.
Visualizing the Railway Space in Fontane’s Effi Briest
Paul Youngman, Gabrielle Tremo, Lenny Enkhbold, and Lizzy Stanton

The final contribution to this section builds off of the author’s previous engagements with the work of feminist philosopher Rosi Braidotti: investigating the author’s concept of a “nomadic aesthetic” as prefigured in Yoko Tawada’s short story, “Wo Europa anfängt.”
Of Women and Polyglots: Yoko Tawada’s “Where Europe Begins” and Rosi Braidotti’s Transnational Feminist Nomadology
Pascale LaFountain

Translations

TRANSIT is pleased to provide the following English-language translation projects of two contemporary German-language authors:

Die Ungehaltenen
By Deniz Utlu
Translated by Katy Derbyshire.

“Wenn ich einst tot”
By José F.A. Oliver
Translated by Jon Cho-Polizzi

SPECIAL TOPIC:
The Future of the Past
Guest Editors: Susanne Baackmann and Nancy P. Nenno

The following ten articles are the product of the cooperative effort of Guest Editors Susanne Baackmann and Nancy P. Nenno. They represent the evolution of a panel of conference papers presented at a Berkeley alumni conference in honor of Professor Anton Kaes, and are preceded by a Preface by one of the conference organizers and a short Introduction by our Guest Editors:

Postmemory and the Archive

I Am Not You: On the Need for Distance
June J. Hwang, University of Rochester

Between Victim and Perpetrator Imaginary: The Implicated Subject in Works by Rachel Seiffert and Cate Shortland
Susanne Baackmann, University of New Mexico

Generation Mini-Series: Contemporary German Historical Event-Television and the Implications of its Interactive Elements
Sara F. Hall, University of Illinois at Chicago

Reanimations

Dada Futures: Inflation, Speculation, and Uncertainty in Der Dada No. 1
Kurt Beals, Washington University in St. Louis

When Texts Travel: Edward Dmytryk’s The Blue Angel (1959) Remake
Barbara Kosta, University of Arizona

Attack of the Cyberzombies: Media, Reconstruction, and the Future of Germany’s Architectural Past
Rob McFarland, Brigham Young University

Traveling Culture

Reading the “Schwarz” in the “Schwarz-Rot-Gold”: Black German Studies in the 21st Century
Nancy P. Nenno, College of Charleston

The Future of the Distant Past: On Teaching the Pre-modern History of Africans in Europe
Kristin Kopp, University of Missouri

Ernst Lubitsch & the Transnational Twenties: The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (USA 1927)
Rick McCormick, University of Minnesota

From Colonial to Neoliberal Times: German Agents of Tourism Development and Business in Diani, Kenya
Nina Berman, Ohio State University

This publication concludes our two-part tenth anniversary volume. It will be followed by a single-issue eleventh volume in 2017 addressing our current CFPs: “Reflections on (a) Changing Europe.”

I would like to thank the contributors to this issue for their cooperation and enthusiasm throughout the editorial process and the guest editors for their unparalleled precision, cooperation, and diligence. A special thanks to our TRANSIT editorial team for their labor, and to our concept coordinator, Deniz Göktürk, for her oversight and continuing support.

We would like to remind you that we continue to invite rolling submissions including literary and academic translations, scholarly articles, and multimedia projects; we welcome suggestions for collaborations with guest editors. Please follow the link if you are interested in more information about participating as a guest or peer editor.

We hope you enjoy both issues of our 10th anniversary volume, and we look forward to possibilities for future exchange.

Sincerely,

Jon Cho-Polizzi, on behalf of the editors of TRANSIT