Precarious Intimacies: Narratives of Non-Arrival in a Changing Europe
TRANSIT vol. 11, no. 2 by Maria Stehle and Beverly Weber Download PDF Abstract The representation of intimacy in depictions of immigration exists alongside histories of deeply racist contacts and connections. Yet intimate connection may also produce moments of joy, sustaining solidarity and resistance to violent forms of exclusion. In this essay, we develop the […]
Migration and Its Discontents: Israelis in Berlin and Homeland Politics
Yael Almog Download PDF Abstract The essay discusses some ethnic and racial presumptions which subtend discussions of the recent Israeli migration to Germany, specifically the description of the Israeli presence in Berlin as signifying a “return” of Jews to Europe after the Holocaust. The essay argues that this description perpetuates the grounding of Zionism in […]
True Stories of Being Black in Germany, Lakshmi Sarah
Lakshmi Sarah, one of the participants in the course Multicultural Germany, produced an article published in KQED entitled “True Stories of Being Black in Germany” in which she introduces a traveling exhibit from the Goethe Institut and its curator Victoria Toney-Robinson. Please click on this link to read the article in full: “True Stories of […]
Contemporary Remediations of Race and Ethnicity in German Visual Cultures
TRANSIT vol. 9, no. 2, Special Issue Angelica Fenner and Uli Linke, Guest Editors Download PDF Acknowledgements The impetus for this Special Issue of Transit emerged out of the 6th Toronto German Studies Symposium, which took place at the University of Toronto in April 2013 and was co-organized by Angelica Fenner and Uli Linke around the […]
The New Diversity and the New Public:
Impressions of dOCUMENTA (13) Barbara Wolbert Download PDF Abstract Long before dOCUMENTA (13) opened in 2012, designated documenta director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev pledged that “her” documenta would stay clear of what she called the “Biennale-Syndrome.” What was the Biennale-Syndrome, and why did she want to avoid it? What seemed to be the challenge here? The Venice […]
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 a national identity (Schama 1995). In today’s forests, these entanglements between the […]
Ming Wong’s Imitations
Barbara Mennel Download PDF Abstract The article “Ming Wong’s Imitations” analyzes the installation Life of Imitation, created by visual artist Ming Wong for the Singapore Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. Life of Imitation restages a key scene from Douglas Sirk’s 1959 melodrama Imitation of Life, in which the African American character Annie […]
Remediating Fassbinder in Video Installations by Ming Wong and Branwen Okpako
Katrin Sieg Download PDF Abstract Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s tackling of race, immigration, and interracial relationships in his early plays and films is often applauded for offering a prescient treatment of topics largely neglected in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His experimentation with and blending of both queer and leftist political styles appeals to contemporary […]
Hardboiled Performance and Affective Intimacy: Remediations of Racism in the Cenk Batu Tatorte
Claudia Breger Download PDF Abstract Although not around to stay, the first Turkish German detective to be featured in the Germany’s most popular television crime series, Tatort nonetheless represented a major TV event (2008–12). In his sixth episode as an investigator in a series famous for its continued engagement with topical social issues, Cenk Batu […]
The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality, by Wolfram Wette
Reviewed by Steve Choe Download PDF Wolfram Wette. The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality. Trans. Deborah Lucas Schneider. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. Pp. 372. Paper, $17.95. Wolfram Wette’s The Wehrmacht: History, Myth, Reality is a translation of the original German text published by S. Fischer Verlag in 2002. It aims to debunk the legend of […]