Lost:
Black Briefcase Enis Batur Translated by Oya Erez Download PDF Acknowledgements: Translation of Enis Batur, “Siyah Bir Çanta Aranıyor (1982),” Babil Yazıları (Istanbul: AFA Yayınları, 1986), 79–81. A question that has long preoccupied the creative person: what degree of permanence is there in what I do? Will I, who am anyway impermanent, manage to be “a pleasant echo […]
Alwan’s Quest of Home: Re-Mapping Heimat and the Nation in Hussain Al-Mozany’s Der Marschländer: Bagdad–Beirut–Berlin
Yasemin Mohammad Download PDF Abstract: The German-Iraqi writer Hussain Al-Mozany’s novel Der Marschländer (1999) makes an important contribution to German transnational literature by its productive critical engagement with an ethno-cultural understanding of German nationhood. The novel is based on the travel experiences of the Iraqi male protagonist Alwan to Baghdad, Lebanon, East and West Germany in the […]
European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe, by Fatima El-Tayeb
Reviewed by Priscilla Layne Download PDF El-Tayeb, Fatima. European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006. 253 pages. Paper, $25. The issue of race has stubbornly haunted postwar Europe, complicating Germany’s transition from fascist dictatorship to democratic nation, France’s legacy of brotherhood, and Holland and the UK’s alleged histories of […]
Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition, by Yasemin Yildiz
Reviewed by Christina Butler Download PDF Yasemin Yildiz, Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition. New York: Fordham University Press, 2011. Cloth, $55.00. Yasemin Yildiz has provided a much-needed new look into the recent discourse on multilingualism and monolingualism. Rather than perpetuating a multilingual-monolingual dichotomy, Yildiz presents a new framework, in which co-existing multilingualisms and […]
Kiezdeutsch: Ein neuer Dialekt entsteht, by Heike Wiese
Reviewed by Lindsay Preseau Download PDF Heike Wiese, Kiezdeutsch: Ein neuer Dialekt entsteht. München: Beck, 2012. Pp. 280. Paper, 12,95 €. Linguist Heike Wiese has been researching the German urban youth dialect called Kiezdeutsch (literally translated as ‘neighborhood German,’ and reminiscent of English terms such as ‘hood talk’) with her colleagues at University of Potsdam […]
Orienting Europe
Download PDF The following book reviews emerged from “Orienting Europe,” a graduate seminar led by Deniz Göktürk at the University of California, Berkeley, in Fall 2011. The seminar analyzed constructions of Europe in moving-image media, with a particular focus on migration and mobility, practices of orientation, modes of spectatorship, and public formations. Screenings ranged from […]
The Visit
Hakan Savaş Mican Translated by Erik Born Download PDF Read the German text. Acknowledgements: This text originally appeared in freitext, no. 18 (October 2011). Der Besuch premiered at the Ballhaus Naunynstrasse on December 13, 2008, and was renewed on September 13, 2011. http://vimeo.com/28017101 Characters Ada wants to sell the property that she inherited in Berlin and buy a house in […]
Angry Birds Sing (Excerpts):
A Correspondence Between the Angry Birds (Marianna Salzmann, Deniz Utlu)Translated by Jenna Ingalls Download PDF Read the German text. Acknowledgements: This text originally appeared in freitext, no. 18 (October 2011). we’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl year after yearrunning over the same old ground what have we foundthe same old fears wish […]
The One Who Loves the Sound of Words
Selim Özdoğan Translated by Sultan Doughan Download PDF Read the German text. Acknowledgements: This text originally appeared in freitext, no. 18 (October 2011). I should have listened to my father. The first time I played him my track he said, “What the hell is this? This isn’t even music. This sounds more like the stuff you […]
They Misoverestimate Us: On the Attempt to Throw a Middle Class Pearl Necklace like a Lasso Around the Ballhaus Naunynstraße – A Comedy
Marianna SalzmannTranslated by Robin Ellis Download PDF Read the German text. Acknowledgements: This text originally appeared in freitext, no. 18 (October 2011). http://vimeo.com/19538758/ Laughter: is an innate expressive human behavior that develops especially in the company of others. Laughter is the natural reaction of a healthy person to comical or exhilarating experiences, but it also appears […]