Subjectivities of Migration: Poetics and Genre in the Literary Imagination of Migrant Experience since 1989, Berlin
13 – 14 September 2021
Barenboim-Said Akademie
Französische Str. 33D, 10117 Berlin
Literature on migration from the last thirty years deals with phenomena as diverse as war, climate change, cosmopolitan sensibilities, and increased demands for labor mobility. The conference “Subjectivities of Migration” discusses the poetic procedures of recent migration literature and interprets genres in this literature as expressions of similar migration experiences. In her reading ‘Whispers in the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem’, International Booker Prize-nominated Palestinian author Adania Shibli will shed light on the contemporary life of Armenians in Palestine, who escaped the Armenian genocide but not the ensuing forced migration and expulsion. Elleke Boehmer, author and prominent literary scholar at Oxford University, will read from her collection of stories To the Volcano. In a keynote lecture on ‘Migration, Subjectivity and the South in J.M. Coetzee’s post-2013 Writing’, she will discuss how Coetzee’s recent novels dramatize experiences of migration through a ‘southern’ poetic. Musical performances by students of the Akademie will accompany the readings.
All lectures and readings in English. Please register here for all events.
Concept and Organization: Prof. Dr. Kai Wiegandt. Co-funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
13 September
11.00 – 11.30 Welcome and Introduction
Michael Naumann, Rector of the Barenboim-Said Akademie
Kai Wiegandt, Professor of Literature at the Barenboim-Said Akademie
Section 1: Genres and Species in Migration Literature
11.30 – 13.00 Peter Arnds (Dublin): Wolves and the Politics of Dehumanization in the Contemporary Novel of Forced Migration
Julia Hoydis (Graz): ‘Stranger than Fiction’? (Im)probability, Multi-Species Migration, and Climate Change in Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island
13.00 – 14.30 Lunch break
14.30 – 16.00 Katrin Becker (Siegen): Coming of Age, Coming of Class: Subjectivities of Migration in Zadie Smith’s NW (2012) as Second/Third-Generation Bildungsroman
Núria Codina (Leuven): Transculturality as Intertextuality: Thematic and Aesthetic Crossings in Migration Literature
16.00 – 16.30 Coffee break
Section 2: Ghosts and the Gothic in Migration Literature
16.30 – 18.00 Iris-Aya Laemmerhirt (Dortmund): Moving from the Shadows: The Spectral Turn in Vietnamese American Refugee Narratives
Kai Wiegandt (Berlin): Neo-Imperial Gothic: Western Migrant Fiction’s Imagination of Reverse Domination
18.00 – 18.30 Break and Refreshments
18.30 – 20.00 Elleke Boehmer (Oxford)
Reading: To the Volcano
With a musical performance by BSA students
14 September
10.00 – 11.30 Elleke Boehmer
Keynote: Migration, Subjectivity and the South in J.M. Coetzee’s post-2013 Writing
11.30 – 12.00 Coffee Break
Section 3: Migrants and Postmigration in Germany
12.00 – 13.30 Kyung-Ho Cha (Bayreuth/Greifswald): Forms of Protest in German Postmigrant Theatre
Lea Laura Heim (Manchester): Appropriating the Bildungsroman: Literary Means of Voicing Social Criticism in Fatma Aydemir's Ellbogen
13.30 – 15.15 Lunch Break
Section 4: Female Migrants from Africa and the Middle East
15.15 – 16.00 Leon Osu (Owerri): Migrating Prose: Contemporary Nigerian Female Novelists and Their Poetics of Migration
16.00 – 16.30 Coffee Break
16.30 – 18.00 Amina Elhalawani (Berlin/Alexandria): Inhabiting the Hyphen: On Identity and Being in a Selection of Poems by Arab-American Women Writers
Sara Vakili (Tübingen): Fighting Two Wars: Iranian Diasporic Women
Writings
18.00 – 18.30 Break and refreshments
18.30 – 20.00 Adania Shibli (Berlin/Jerusalem)
Reading: Whispers in the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem
With a musical performance by BSA students