TRANSIT BLOG

TRANSIT Blog was formerly part of the Multicultural Germany Project (MGP), which we are now merging with Transit Journal. Founded in 2001 by the German Department at UC Berkeley, MGP served as a research collaborative and continuously updated archive of migration, supported by the tireless energy and willpower of our very own Deniz Göktürk and UC Berkeley’s graduate students. Our blog includes reactions to current events and news, research materials, and teaching resources. Maintained mainly by students at Berkeley, the blog provides a window into our activities and campus discussions. We hope that TRANSIT Blog continues to serve as a resource and forum for both aspiring and continuing professionals in German Studies and its adjacent fields; we welcome contributions of short thought-pieces of ca. 1000-1500 words year-round. If you would like to contribute your own blog post or other materials (in English or German), please contact us at transitjournal@berkeley.edu.

  • CFP (edited volume): Charting Asian German Film History: Imagination, Collaboration, and Diasporic Representation (ed. Qinna Shen, Zach Ramon Fitzpatrick, Qingyang Freya Zhou)

    Since the beginning of 2020, anti-Asian violence saw a sharp increase in Europe and North America, as frustrations about the COVID-19 pandemic were taken out on those marked as Asian or “asiatisch gelesen.” In response to the March 2021 shootings in Atlanta, the Berlin-based network for Asian German perspectives korientation posted the open letter “Atlanta –…

  • Reflections on a Postmigrant Turn

    Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, anti-immigrant violence saw a sharp increase in Europe and North America, as frustrations about the public health conditions and the governments’ responses to the state of crisis resulted in a rising tide of xenophobia. In this blog post, guest contributors Rahel Cramer (Macquarie U), Jara Schmidt…

  • Überlegungen zu einem Postmigrant Turn

    Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, anti-immigrant violence saw a sharp increase in Europe and North America, as frustrations about the public health conditions and the governments’ responses to the state of crisis resulted in a rising tide of xenophobia. In this blog post, guest contributors Rahel Cramer (Macquarie U), Jara Schmidt…

  • A Tale of Three Cities: Part III – How to Politicize Public Health

    In an exclusive three-part series for our blog, UC Berkeley undergraduate and MGP contributor Jezell Lee reflects on a personal experience of misinformation and polarization during the coronavirus pandemic, caught between the gravitational pull of Los Angeles, Berlin, and Taipei and heavily mediated through social media and the particularity of each locale. In the concluding…

  • A Tale of Three Cities: Part II – Polarization and Conspiracy on Social Media

    In a new three-part series for our blog, UC Berkeley undergraduate and MGP contributor Jezell Lee reflects on a personal experience of the pandemic and political polarization, caught between the gravitational pull of the United States, Germany, and Taiwan and heavily mediated through social media and the particularity of each locale. In the second installment,…

  • A Tale of Three Cities: Part I – Instagram as Pandemic Archive

    In a new three-part series for our blog, UC Berkeley undergraduate and MGP contributor Jezell Lee reflects on a personal experience of quarantine caught between the gravitational pull of the United States, Germany, and Taiwan, heavily mediated through social media and the particularity of each locale. In the first installment, Jezell thinks through the role…

  • Reflections on Archival Resistance: Conversations with Sharon Dodua Otoo, Zafer Şenocak and Yoko Tawada

    In spring 2021, we hosted a series of conversations with contemporary writers titled “Archives of Migration: The Power of Fiction in Times of Fake News.” Organized jointly by Professors Deniz Göktürk and Elisabeth Krimmer (UC Davis), this series was supported by the German Consulate General San Francisco, and co-sponsored by the German Historical Institute Pacific…

  • Border Talk in Dresden: Imagining Cohesion through Difference with Zafer Şenocak

    In this thoughtful commentary, UC Berkeley Class of 2021 alumna and MGP contributor Ardo Ali, who participated in our workshop with Turkish-German author Zafer Şenocak, grapples with the troubled legacy of German reunification as reflected in the rise of so-called right-wing populism in Germany, which has been disproportionately steep in the formerly socialist East. Ali…

  • New Visions of Belonging in German Studies

    The latest installment in our Mission Possible series of reflections on the future of German Studies comes courtesy of the MGP’s own Elizabeth Sun, who situates Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Ingeborg Bachmann Prize-winning short story “Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin” in the context of recent trends in German literature and film as well as tendencies in…

  • Traveling in Pandemic Times: Yoko Tawada and Poetic Border-Crossing

    Yoko Tawada’s guest appearance in the third installation of “Archives of Migration” sparked a lively and contemporarily relevant conversation on the potential of poetic border-crossing in pandemic times, where physical mobility has been intensely challenged by closed-off national borders and the anxiety over cross-person contamination. A native of Japan, Tawada writes and publishes prolifically in…