Paradigms of Refuge: Reimagining GDR Legacy and International Solidarity in Jenny Erpenbeck’s Gehen, Ging, Gegangen (Go, Went, Gone)
TRANSIT vol. 12, no. 2 Anna Horakova Download PDF Abstract This article examines a recent refugee novel, Jenny Erpenbeck’s Gehen, ging, gegangen (Go, Went, Gone, 2015) in relation to debates on the refugees who have arrived in contemporary Germany in the context of the so-called “refugee crisis.” The article’s point of departure is Go, Went, […]
Performing Empire: Theater and Colonialism in Caroline Link’s Nirgendwo in Afrika
TRANSIT vol. 12, no. 2 Peter Erickson Download PDF Abstract In Caroline Link’s popular 2001 film Nirgendwo in Afrika, a Jewish family fleeing the Holocaust finds refuge in British-controlled Kenya. Theater plays a crucial role in the film: Members of the Redlich family explicitly call upon one another to engage in roleplaying. They make use […]
Willkommenskultur: A Computational and Socio-Linguistic Study of Modern German Discourse on Migrant Populations
TRANSIT vol. 12, no. 1 Sabina Hartnett Download PDF Abstract In the lingering wake of the European Refugee Crisis of 2015, population demographics within Germany’s borders continue to change. As these changes occur, sentiments in relation to incoming populations also shift. This essay details the findings of a socio-linguistic study of the portrayal of migrant […]
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 […]
“Still Alive: Memory of Economic Contribution of the Korean Guest Workers” by Jung Woo Park
As the wave of immigrants continues to flood into Germany fleeing the war-torn countries such as Syria, the refugee crisis in Europe dominates the newspaper headlines around the world. Interestingly, however, not all of the newspapers seem to have the same focus. While major Western news sources mostly focus on the political implications of this […]
The End of Migration As We Knew It
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 […]
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 […]
Transit Heimat: Transnational Subjectivity and Mobility in German Theatre
Denise Varney Download PDF. Abstract: This paper is interested in themes of translation, transnational subjectivity and mobility in German theatre between 1994 and 2004. It is set within the broader context of the expansion of Europeanisation that followed German reunification and the lifting of the Iron Curtain in central and eastern Europe. It is therefore […]