“Nation of Assimilation”
What does it mean to make an investigative documentary on one’s family history? How could the filmmaker and her interviewees represent the joyful and eventful, as well as the painful and awkward episodes of their most intimate past? In this blog post, Berkeley Senior and L.A. native Veronica Jacques reflects on the process of making […]
Behind the Apron: An Investigatory Dive into the Lives of Overlooked “Essential Workers”
Scan products. Put items in bags. Collect payments. The repetitive and monotonous movements of supermarket cashiers often went unnoticed by the average customer — until the pandemic introduced the practice of self-checkout, which reminds us of the indispensable labor of these once “invisible” essential workers, who, it turns out, also live colorful lives outside of […]
BOOK REVIEW: Asian Fusion
by Caroline Rupprecht TRANSIT vol. 13, no. 2 Download PDF Rupprecht, Caroline. Asian Fusion: New Encounters in the Asian-German Avant-Garde.New York: Peter Lang, 2020. 264 pages. As Chunjie Zhang et. al. observe in their field-defining article, the new research area of Asian German studies has garnered much attention from scholars in various disciplines. The field, […]
After Flight
by Ilija Trojanow TRANSIT vol. 13, no. 2 Translated by Ambika Athreya Download PDF For more TRANSIT translations on migration and homeland, see the Homeland Special Issue. Translator’s Introduction Ilija Trojanow was born in 1965 in Sofia, Bulgaria and emigrated in 1971 to West Germany, where his family sought political asylum. Since then he has lived in […]
Fears
by Lena Gorelik TRANSIT vol. 13, no. 2 Translated by Nat Modlin Download PDF Translator’s Introduction Published in 2015, “Fears” grapples with the immediate aftermath of the so-called “refugee crisis” in Germany.[1]In this short text, Lena Gorelik ironizes her own political correctness by dealing with the intricacies and banalities of being perceived as both an insider […]
Paranoia als Migrationsdelirium und Vermittlungswahn um 1900: Zu den Aufzeichnungen von Anton Wenzel Grosz
TRANSIT vol. 13, no. 2 Elena Meilicke Download PDF Abstract Anhand eines konkreten Beispiels verdeutlicht mein Aufsatz die Bedeutung und Notwendigkeit einer Archivarbeit, die historisch verdrängte und marginalisierte Artefakte und Dokumente ins Licht rückt: Gegenstand der Analyse sind die handschriftlichen Aufzeichnungen und Skizzen eines Paranoikers aus den Jahren 1913/14, die mehr oder weniger zufällig in […]
Work in Single Takes
Picture source: Harun Farocki GbR Students taking the course on Documentary Forms (Film 125 / German 184) in spring 2022, taught by Deniz Göktürk and Alina Predescu, discovered possibilities of engagement with the world through documentary cinema old and new. Weekly screenings in the film series Documentary Voices, co-curated in collaboration with Kathy Geritz at […]
Polyphone Auseinandersetzungen mit kulturellen Bildern, Vorurteilen und Rassismus im Hörspiel “Bitmemiş – not finished yet” (2019) von Ralf Haarmann und Tuğsal Moğul
Picture Source: Westdeutscher Rundfunk Guest contributor Monika Preuß (Technische Universität Dortmund), author of the MGP blog post series on German radio plays, analyzes the portrayal of lived experiences of Turkish German immigrants across generations in Ralf Haarmann’s recent radio play, Bitmemiş – not finished yet (2019). Das Hörspiel Bitmemiş – not finished yet des Komponisten […]
Writing as an (Im)migrant: Calls to Action in Fatma Aydemir’s “Work”
In the latest blog post inspired by Berkeley’s “Archives of Migration” conversation series and Prof. Deniz Göktürk’s German and American Studies seminar on “Cultures of Migration,” Kavina Peters (Berkeley Freshman, Environmental Economics and Policy major) analyzes Fatma Aydemir’s short essay from that volume, focusing on how Aydemir challenges her readers to reflect on their own […]