The Perception of Language in Countries of Migration
Picture Source: Etsy Inspired by author Olga Grjasnowa’s talk on “Die Macht der Mehrsprachigkeit” and by Prof. Deniz Göktürk’s German and American Studies course on “Cultures of Migration,” L.A. native Emily Yepez (Berkeley Freshman, Chemical Biology major) reflects on her own experience with multilingualism as a Mexican American and critiques how the connection between native […]
Multilingual Intimacy and Pluralistic Identities
Picture Source: favim.com Angèle Yehe Zheng, author of “Letter by a Grateful Immigrant” and “Humor in Heidelberg: Saša Stanišić’s Herkunft,” reflects on multilingual speakers’ exclusive use of one language for distinct purposes in the following blog post inspired by Olga Grjasnowa’s book talk, Die Macht der Mehrsprachigkeit, and Professor Deniz Göktürk’s Fall 2021 German and […]
Letter by a Grateful Immigrant
Picture Source: International Financial Law Review Having reflected on the power of humor in her latest MGP blog post on Saša Stanišić’s Herkunft, guest author Angèle Yehe Zheng (Graduating Senior in Philosophy, UC Berkeley) returns to present a creative piece of writing about her experience as a second-generation Chinese immigrant in Luxembourg. This project grew […]
Humor in Heidelberg: Saša Stanišić’s Herkunft
After reflecting on the connection between multilingualism and multidirectional creativity in Ilija Trojanow’s Nach der Flucht, MGP editor Elise Volkmann returns, with co-author Angèle Yehe Zheng, for another blog post on the healing power of humor against trauma in Saša Stanišić’s German Book Prize-winning novel, Herkunft (2019). The second installment of the event series “Archives […]
Zerrissene Perspektiven auf die Anhörung im Asylverfahren in zwei Hörspielen
Bildquelle: Bayerischer Rundfunk Guest contributor Monika Preuß (Technische Universität Dortmund), author of the three-part MGP blog post series on radio plays about the NSU trial, analyzes the rare representation of the interrogation of asylum seekers in two recent German radio plays, “Die Anhörerin” and “Die Ohrfeige,” demonstrating both the ethical dilemma that the German bureaucrat […]
Multifaceted Views on the Interrogation of Asylum Seekers in Two German Radio Plays
Picture Source: Bayerischer Rundfunk Guest contributor Monika Preuß (Technische Universität Dortmund), author of the three-part MGP blog post series on radio plays about the NSU trial, analyzes the rare representation of the interrogation of asylum seekers in two recent German radio plays, “Die Anhörerin” and “Die Ohrfeige,” demonstrating both the ethical dilemma that the German […]
All Culture Is Remix: Confluences against Nationalist Narratives
Ambika Athreya, Ph.D. Candidate in German Studies at UC Berkeley, reflects on how Ilija Trojanow and Ranjit Hoskote challenge nationalist narratives and cultural essentialism in their co-authored essayistic monograph, Confluences: Forgotten Stories from East and West (2012). In conversation with Chunjie Zhang at the “Archives of Migration: The Power of Fiction in Times of Fake […]
Loving the Glacier with Ilija Trojanow
Verena Wolf, Ph.D. candidate of German Studies at UC Berkeley, and Valentin Rickert, visiting scholar from the University of Konstanz, reflect on Ilija Trojanow’s book EisTau (2011), situating the novel within the political discourse of German ecocriticism and the literary discourse of romance and dystopia in the age of the Anthropocene. UC Berkeley’s series of […]
Overcoming Static Inertia: Ilija Trojanow’s “Nach der Flucht”
Elise Volkmann, Ph.D. candidate of German Studies at Berkeley, reflects on our event with novelist Ilija Trojanow and his book Nach der Flucht (2017), examining how a person who has fled can turn the loss of language and the struggle with a new language into a source of multi-directional creativity. The event series “Archives of […]
Reflections on a Postmigrant Turn
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, anti-immigrant violence saw a sharp increase in Europe and North America, as frustrations about the public health conditions and the governments’ responses to the state of crisis resulted in a rising tide of xenophobia. In this blog post, guest contributors Rahel Cramer (Macquarie U), Jara Schmidt […]