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.

  • Aus dem Nichts (In the Fade)

    With actors Diane Kruger and Numan Acar. Loosely based on the 2004 bombing of a Turkish neighborhood in Cologne, Fatih Akin’s drama won international accolades for its German-American star Diane Kruger and the prize for Best Foreign Film at the 2018 Golden Globes. The film follows Katja Şekerci (Kruger) as her Kurdish-German husband (Numan Acar)…

  • Ausländer raus! Schlingensiefs Container (Foreigners Out! Schlingensief’s Container)

    With Christoph Schlingensief. German artist and agent provocateur Christoph Schlingensief’s controversial 2000 project “Bitte liebt Österreich“, a commentary on the presence of the far-right Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) into Austria’s governing coalition, is documented in this account of the weeklong installation. Schlingensief farcically applies the reality TV model of Big Brother-style competitive cohabitation to a…

  • Panel: German Cinema in the Netflix era

    The Berlin & Beyond Film Festival, this year in its first online incarnation, marked the April release of the second edition of The German Cinema Book with a panel discussion featuring three of the book’s editors: Erica Carter, Professor of German and Film Studies at King’s College, London; film historian and filmmaker Claudia Sandberg, currently…

  • Lambert: Troubling the Surface of Germanistik

    In a new age of modesty in literary and cultural criticism, Germanistik’s rich archive of  theory offers exactly what we need to revive our critical engagements with the unrelenting information flows of the Internet age. The UC Berkeley German Department’s own PhD candidate Sean Lambert encourages us to not merely take it all in, but…

  • Teupert: From Pretzels to Baklava

    How might we reanimate interest in German Studies without the lure of stale cultural clichés like pretzels and beer? Our own Jonas Teupert, PhD Candidate in German Studies here at UC Berkeley and coordinator of a new student blog focusing on pop culture called Aufmerksamkeitsdefizit, suggests baklava. At the Zoom roundtable “New Directions in German…

  • Jara Schmidt on Postmigrant Literature and German Studies

    On the day of the 2020 presidential election in the United States, the MGP is honored to publish the second guest commentary in our Mission Possible series of hot takes on the purpose of German Studies. Dr. Jara Schmidt, research collaborator at the University of Hamburg’s Institut für Germanistik, captures the essence of recent shifts…

  • Jara Schmidt: Postmigrantische Literatur und Germanistik

    On the day of the 2020 election in the United States, the MGP is delighted to publish the second guest commentary in our Mission Possible series of hot takes on the purpose of German Studies. Dr. Jara Schmidt, research collaborator at the University of Hamburg’s Institut für Germanistik, captures the essence of recent shifts in…

  • Albrecht Classen: Why German Studies Today?

    The first guest commentary in our Mission Possible series of hot takes on the purpose of German Studies comes courtesy of Dr. Albrecht Classen, Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of German Studies at the University of Arizona. His response to the question, “Why study German today?”, is an elegant reflection on the…

  • Acts of Border Crossing in G. W. Pabst’s Comradeship (Kameradschaft, 1931)

    On October 8, 2020, Yiddishkayt, an organization dedicated to the presentation and broadcasting of the legacy of Jewish culture, held a panel discussion on German film director Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s 1931 classic, Comradeship (Kameradschaft), as part of the organization’s LAYKA Lens film discussion series. Boris Dralyuk (Executive Editor, Los Angeles Review of Books) moderated the conversation…

  • Mission Possible: Why German Studies Today?

    Building on existing synergies in the Department of German at the University of California, Berkeley discussed at a recent workshop, the Multicultural Germany Project (MGP) invites you to submit brief takes responding to the question “Mission Possible: Why German Studies Today?”  These short and spiffy takes on your stakes in the field of approx. 600 words length can…