Volume 5: Foreword
Welcome to the 2009-2010 issue of TRANSIT. Our first round of publications centers on a panel held at Berkeley last year featuring authors Yoko Tawada and Zafer Şenocak, along with discussant Homi K. Bhabha, organized and moderated by Deniz Göktürk. The panel featured readings by the two authors, as well as a discussion of topics […]
"Tear Down This Wall!" Internet Art Circumventing Censorship and Unveiling Secret Prisons
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Christoph Wachter and Mathias Jud are exploring the impact of different walls and borders within the context of their projects. Segregation is supposedly instituted to protect people from enemies who are either walled in or walled out. This segregation results in a limitation of our perspectives. […]
Where Europe Continues…Translingual Writers and the Cosmopolitan Imagination: Readings and a roundtable with writers Yoko Tawada and Zafer Şenocak
Discussant: Homi K. Bhabha (Harvard University) Organized and moderated by Deniz Göktürk (UC Berkeley) http://blip.tv/transitjournal/where-europe-continues-1932159This issue of TRANSIT is centered around an event held at UC Berkeley as part of an ongoing dialogue about multilingual, multicultural, and multinational issues in literature, politics, and culture in the broadest sense. The roundtable features Yoko Tawada and Zafer […]
Eastward: A Selection from the Forthcoming Novel by Zafer Şenocak
Translated by David Gramling Download PDF In the course of their earthly existence, humans have no freedom, except for the possibility of ending their own lives prematurely. To a certain extent, humans are taken into protective care from the first moment of their life. The orphaned baby only becomes such at the moment when he […]
Zafer Şenocak im Gespräch: Auszüge
Elke Segelcke Download PDF Der deutsche Autor türkischer Herkunft Zafer Şenocak (geb. 1961) bezeichnet sich selbst als Wanderer zwischen den Welten, der in beiden Sprachen und Kulturen Zuhause ist. Seine häufig im Themenbereich Orient-Okzident angesiedelten transnationalen Werke werden international rezipiert und gehören inzwischen vor allem in den USA zum festen Bestandteil der German und Cultural […]
Dejima and Huis Ten Bosch — Two Dutch Cities in Japan
Yoko Tawada (Translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky) and Bettina Brandt Download PDF Hausutembosu (Huis ten Bosch) by Bettina Brandt Looking for traces of historical Dutch-Japanese trade relations in the Nagasaki area, Y and I stopped at Huis ten Bosch, a Dutch theme park in Sasebo that doubles as a waterfront resort-cum-residential area, drawing […]
The Naked Eye, by Yōko Tawada, Translated from the German by Susan Bernofsky
Reviewed by Ashwin Manthripragada Download PDF Yōko Tawada, The Naked Eye. Trans. Susan Bernofsky. New York, NY: New Directions, 2009. Pp. 256. Paper, $13.95. “The gaze of the nameless lens licks the floor like a detective without grammar.” (1) The first paragraph of Yōko Tawada’s The Naked Eye is a blueprint for the novel’s itinerancy, […]
Amerika und die deutschsprachige Literatur nach 1848. Migration — kultureller Austausch — frühe Globalisierung, Christof Hamann, Ute Gerhard, und Walter Grünzweig, Hrsg.
Reviewed by Hinrich C. Seeba Download PDF Christof Hamann, Ute Gerhard, und Walter Grünzweig, Hrsg., Amerika und die deutschsprachige Literatur nach 1848. Migration – kultureller Austausch – frühe Globalisierung. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2009, 296 S., Broschiert, 29,80 €. Wie Amerika am Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts als Land der Zukunft gefeiert wurde, weil von seinem technischen […]
Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosua, by Allen Wells
Reviewed by Yael Allweil Download PDF Allen Wells, Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR, and the Jews of Sosua. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. Pp. 485. Paper, $27.95. Tropical Zion is a study that aims at large goals. Through a small, forgotten episode of Jewish survival at the hands of a Latin American tyrant, Professor […]
Sonderzeichen Europa, by Yoko Tawada and László Márton
Reviewed by Kurt Beals Download PDF Yoko Tawada and László Márton, Sonderzeichen Europa. RanitzDialog1. Ottensheim an der Donau, Austria: Edition Thanhäuser, 2009. 72pp., Paper, 20€. Although billed as a dialog, this exchange on topics ranging from the history and protean definition of Europe to the sartorial choices of Japanese teenagers is hardly a standard conversation […]