Blog

A Note to Readers: Our blog includes news items, research materials,
and teaching resources – browse past posts by month on the right. If
you would like to contribute your own syllabus or other materials (in
English or German), please contact us at mgp@berkeley.edu.

Multifaceted Views on the Interrogation of Asylum Seekers in Two German Radio Plays

Picture Source: Bayerischer Rundfunk Guest contributor Monika Preuß (Technische Universität Dortmund), author of the three-part MGP blog post series on radio plays about the NSU trial, analyzes the rare representation of the interrogation of asylum seekers in two recent German … Continue reading

All Culture Is Remix: Confluences against Nationalist Narratives

Ambika Athreya, Ph.D. Candidate in German Studies at UC Berkeley, reflects on how Ilija Trojanow and Ranjit Hoskote challenge nationalist narratives and cultural essentialism in their co-authored essayistic monograph, Confluences: Forgotten Stories from East and West (2012). In conversation with … Continue reading

Loving the Glacier with Ilija Trojanow

Verena Wolf, Ph.D. candidate of German Studies at UC Berkeley, and Valentin Rickert, visiting scholar from the University of Konstanz, reflect on Ilija Trojanow’s book EisTau (2011), situating the novel within the political discourse of German ecocriticism and the literary … Continue reading

Overcoming Static Inertia: Ilija Trojanow’s “Nach der Flucht”

Elise Volkmann, Ph.D. candidate of German Studies at Berkeley, reflects on our event with novelist Ilija Trojanow and his book Nach der Flucht (2017), examining how a person who has fled can turn the loss of language and the struggle … Continue reading

CFP: Berkeley Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference on “Arrested Mobilities: Stillness, Power and Modernity” (Feb. 25-26, 2022, Online)

As early as the 1920’s, Robert Musil remarked on the enormous effort it takes to stand still in a world that demands constant motion. Reflecting on the zooming street he sees through his window, the protagonist of Der Mann ohne … Continue reading

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 … Continue reading

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 … Continue reading

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 … Continue reading

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 … Continue reading

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 … Continue reading

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 … Continue reading

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 … Continue reading

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 … Continue reading

Asian German Filmography: A Teaching Guide

As a rising field within Germanistik, Asian German Studies has been a hotspot for recent scholarship on postcolonialism, orientalism, gender and sexuality studies, area studies, migration studies, and more. Asian German films, along with literature, television series, and new media, … Continue reading

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 … Continue reading