Who defines identity? Germany’s struggle with inclusivity. This last week in class, we discussed the limits of Germany’s capacity to take in immigrants and what it means to be German. Proponents of reducing the number of foreigners in Germany believe that the “boat” of Germany’s capacity for incorporation of foreigners is “full.” To these native-born […]

On October 4, 2015, a panel on “Ethnography and the Study of Diversity in Germany” held in Washington, D.C., questioned paradigms of research on transnational migration and diversity, focusing on the impossibility of containing these categories within nation-based frameworks of analysis. As part of a series of five panels on “Ethnography and German Studies,” organized […]

This course addresses questions of mobility and borders in our increasingly connected and disjointed world. We will approach the history of post-World War II Germany through the lens of migration, reading a variety of texts critically and relating them to broader questions of economic and cultural globalization: the long term consequences of “guest worker” recruitment; […]

A Path through the Woods: Remediating Affective Landscapes in Documentary Asylum Worlds Bettina Stoetzer Download PDF Abstract In his book Landscape and Memory, Simon Schama argues that an engagement with the legacies of German nationalism requires a track through the woods: throughout German history, forests have played a key role as origin myth to found […]

“On the Train” by Emine Sevgi Özdamar Translated by Leslie A. Adelson Download PDF Translator’s Introduction Emine Sevgi Özdamar, born in 1946 and raised as what the author herself calls a ‘child of Istanbul’, first attracted widespread attention from German literary critics in 1991 when she was awarded the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for Literature for […]

As part of their work in the Multicultural Germany undergraduate seminar at UC Berkeley, students in the course have reviewed recent German films relating in various ways to topics of migration, multiculturalism, and contemporary German identity. Julia Schroeder reviewed Fatih Akin’s 2004 film “Gegen die Wand” (Head-On):  Der Film “Gegen die Wand” von Fatih Akin ist eine […]