TRANSIT vol. 15, no. 2 CfP

WORDS AND LIVES IN TRANSIT

In Burhan Qurbani’s Kein Tier. So Wild (2025), the anti-heroine Rashida York speaks the lines of Richard III’s opening monologue into a luscious German before a bathroom mirror in a gilt-and-velvet Berlin lounge. It is a stunning act of ventriloquism, a testament to the virtuosity of migrating Shakespeare via translation into a contemporary Germany of many migrants. Meanwhile, migration and translation seem to be meeting—with far less virtuosity—on the platforms of Germany’s railway stations, where people waiting for Deutsche Bahn’s famously delayed trains can now read AI-translated and summarized snippets of Weltliteratur. Qurbani’s film, and Deutsche Bahn’s bizarre gambit, are both stories of words and lives in transit, and both, despite, or perhaps because of, the aesthetic gulf between them, worthy of attention. 

For the second issue of the fifteenth volume of TRANSIT, we continue to solicit submissions that consider the intersection of translation and migration, literal and metaphorical, and the aesthetic and ethical judgments that circulate in discourse about both. In a world where the voluntary migration of people is increasingly policed, and translation increasingly automated (and ubiquitous), such normative analyses are high stakes and demand special care. Possible avenues for inquiry include: 

• How are aesthetic judgments on translated works, or works by artists/authors with a migration history, applied to the “performance” of migrants in a host society? 
• How does the anticipation of eventual translation into a more “lucrative” language impact a creator’s choices in the production of the source text? Does this lead to a homogenized “international style”? 
• What are the dynamics of translation in the circulation of ideas and cultural content (including fiction) among members of the global far-right? 
• How do translation and migration intersect in music, sport and other hyper-visible domains of pop culture, especially those in which minoritized populations occupy a prominent role? 
• How is migration between identities, languages or realities—not just nations—being negotiated in current German-language film and literature? 

This CFP encourages contributions from all fields that engage with German language, culture and thought. Such disciplines include, but are not limited to, literary studies, linguistics, language pedagogy, history, film and media studies, performance studies, geography, philosophy, translation, critical theory, and anthropology. As always, TRANSIT  is also eager to receive translations of literary works, including poems, essays and excerpts of novels. The deadline for submissions for this issue will be June 30th, 2026.  However, we also accept articles, translations, reviews and other creative pieces on a rolling basis. Please see our submission guidelinesand submit via our eScholarships submissions portal. Please send inquiries to: transitjournal@berkeley.edu CC asathreya@berkeley.edu (Ambika Athreya, Co-Managing Editor) and krvk@berkeley.edu (Kayla Rose van Kooten, Co-Managing Editor). For the fifteenth volume of TRANSIT, we invite submissions that reflect on the shared life of translation and migration, two modes of movement—one between places, another between languages—whose self-evident connection is often relegated to ancillary status in scholarship. Translation has long played a role in facilitating the flow of bodies, words and ideas, an indispensable, if inconspicuous conduit, in networks of transnational solidarity and collaboration. It has just as well allowed for the consolidation of difference, feeding flawed notions of originality and treason, and undergirding a corporatized model of cultural production dominated by a handful of hegemonic languages.