Carolin Mueller | The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (original) (raw)
Papers by Carolin Mueller
Critical Arts, 2024
Critical pedagogy has become a crucial element in managing post-migration societies, especially c... more Critical pedagogy has become a crucial element in managing post-migration societies, especially concerning the social cohesion dilemma that diversity creates. Through an ethnography of critical music pedagogy with refugee youth that emerged from an activist context in the city of Dresden, Germany, this article demonstrates what is at stake for empowerment. Music pedagogy that aspires to be critical remains a discursively shallow diversity campaign when self-representations reproduce hegemonic epistemologies of domination. I show that discursive products silence potential reflexivity when political goals overshadow shared learning experiences. There is a theoretical fallacy in understanding critical cross-cultural pedagogy in music through the social change emphasis. Opportunities for communication on equal terms turn into performative acts that idealise the aesthetic sphere of music through discourse. I conceptualise such acts as lingua universalis and describe how they promote an imagined shared sensorial memory that flattens nuances of musical speech, resulting in the dominance of music as a universal language in diversity discourses. My findings lead me to argue for a reconceptualization of music pedagogy through the concept of lingua mundi to capture the individual transgressive acts that do take place and the spaces where care work is possible and allows for empowering one another.
Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2023
Left-wing movements are said to invest mainly in class struggle to address global capitalism and ... more Left-wing movements are said to invest mainly in class struggle to address global capitalism and the growing dominance by the far right. Recent left-wing movements, however, increasingly invest in culture. This article explores this investment with a focus on the mobilisation of heritage (historical architecture, cultural traditions, histories, and narratives). Through the case of Dresden’s No-Pegida movement, I show that heritage is an often-unrecognised sphere of mobilising radical politics from the left. Attention to how the left mobilises heritage can indicate that investments in culture occur in intersectional and transversal ways. This article uses examples from a qualitative study of No-Pegida to discuss heritage mobilisation in demonstrations and community work. I show that heritage comes to matter for the left when responding to heritage populism from the far right. The left’s heritage mobilisation can be understood as a refusal of authoritarian populism and an opposition to the far right’s spatial cleansing attempts. It is further an important step for reconfiguring the local creative middle-class through the inclusion of refugee and migrant artists and for centring subaltern philosophies about culture.
Zapruder World, 2023
In activism, music plays a crucial role in disturbing oppressive spaces, actors, and institutions... more In activism, music plays a crucial role in disturbing oppressive spaces, actors, and institutions. Activists credit the communicative function of music to create solidarity among different people at demonstrations 1. Music has a specific value in this space. On the one hand, music makes possible pleasurable bodily experiences. On the other hand, the tapestry of music and chants in the activist setting enable the formation of an imagined stage that can be elevated or on street level. From that stage, the desired political encounter can take place, can be seen, and experienced together. The stage is crucial in the activist dramaturgy. As part of that, music helps create a scene in which the political struggle can come into existence visibly and audibly. The musical coulisse sets in motion a dialogue between audience and performers. This dialogue is felt bodily, but the method in which the dialogue is staged also reveals that there is a political function assigned to music. Music is supposed to encourage and enable the audience to recognize ways in which injustices can be called attention to and unmasked creatively and collectively. This way of using music shows the audience how injustices work to sustain themselves. Music serves to unveil the theatricality of the phenomenological world, and with that seeks to encourage action from the audience. Jacques Rancière’s has discussed this method of unveiling as the “method of scene” 2. This paper investigates such methods through the example of musically assisted anti-right-wing activism that has been taking place in the city of Dresden, Germany via the work of the brass collective Banda Comunale. The methods of scene that musicians use in this protest setting are the focus of this paper and specific attention will be paid to the role that transcultural engagement takes. Banda Comunale has been active in musical street activism since 2001 but became the prominent opponent to the right-wing-movement Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident) that took hold of the city of Dresden in 2015. When thousands of Pegida supporters marched the city’s streets, calling for anti-immigration policies and a removal of supportive measures for migrants from Syria, Banda Comunale played international brass classics to recode the city’s sonic tapestry and sonically drown out right-wing chants. The function of the music was to use the cultural heritage with which the band associated the newly settled residents to demonstrate that the people from Syria and other places in the Global South had a right to establish a home in Dresden. Banda Comunale’s music in the streets and on stages throughout the city came to symbolize the possibility of arriving and making a life for oneself in the city despite strong and growing resistance from right-wing groups. My contribution draws on my 2017-20 ethnographic study of the ensemble that revealed Banda Comunale deeply engaged in aesthetic debates on multiculturalism and transnational connections in music to fuel the band’s visibility as a blueprint for social integration through music and music as a pathway to the right to belong. In this paper, I argue that understanding Banda Comunale’s musical aesthetic through looking at the band’s dramaturgy in protest encounters reveals how the band’s music unveils right-wing propaganda, and how it stages transcultural music to give migrants and refugees the opportunity to be seen and heard in political terms. Along with this critical reflection, I provide narrative map via www.soundofheimat.wordpress.com that tracks the transformative process of Banda Comunale’s music in relation to the ever-changing political landscape in Dresden.
American Music Perspectives , 2023
At rights-based protests, music and sound can communicate feelings of crisis. As different feelin... more At rights-based protests, music and sound can communicate feelings of crisis. As different feelings about crisis come together at demonstrations, their meaning is translated into reduced sonic expressions. Simultaneous speeches, chants, songs, and sounds create a sonic tapestry that resembles the sound of battlefields. What begs the question is how sonifications of crisis affect protest modes. Drawing on fieldwork from a standoff between right- and left-wing groups in the city of Dresden in 2020, this article discusses strategic creations and uses of sound to direct the demonstration’s sensory intensity. Using affect theory, the article highlights that differently felt anger, despair, fear, and exhaustion can mobilize people to form or join provisional sound collectives. This article shows that sonifications of crisis are perceived as vessels to get specific political messages across. Further, the article demonstrates that the discourses surrounding sounded political battlefields can stimulate new modes of protest that reach beyond the street.
GRITIM-UPF Working Paper Series, 2023
Diversity management gradually gains significance regarding recent migrations and growing hostili... more Diversity management gradually gains significance regarding recent migrations and growing hostility in Germany's urban societies. In the state of Saxony, where right-wing extremism is on the rise, cultural and social policies and civil society initiatives have tried to use cultural and social education and participation (CSEP) to remedy unmanaged diversity and to reduce negative effects of discrimination against negatively racialized people. Zapata-Barrero (2017) speaks of the intercultural turn when diversity is seen as a resource, an advantage, and an opportunity for community cohesion and conflict mitigation. This article sheds light on the intercultural turn in CSEP in Saxony through a case study of the right-wing hotspot Dresden. A qualitative analysis of Dresden's diversity management policies and 2017-22 ethnographic data identifies the premises, opportunities, and challenges: commitments to interculturality are cross-sectional; diversity projects increased; vertical forms of participation emerged, but also pointed to loopholes that leave migrants at a disadvantage.
Deconstructing Doctoral Discourses Stories and Strategies for Success, 2023
This chapter presents a collected account of narratives by women doctoral students from diverse f... more This chapter presents a collected account of narratives by women doctoral students from diverse fields to discuss the challenges that they have faced, the strategies that they have created and the alliances that they have formed with mentors and peers. The discussion focuses specifically on women's experiences in doctoral programmes because their stories reveal the close connections that academia continues to frame between women's bodies and the quality and value of their intellectual contributions to their fields and laboratories. The chapter points to the imbalances that leave women at a disadvantage in academia. I draw on conversations with women academics and debates to illustrate what contemporary academia needs to do to make intellectual spaces more inclusive of and accommodating to the needs of different women.
IMISCOE PhD Network Blog, 2022
A New House for Migration Research and Exchange for PhD Students: The IMISCOE PhD Network Buddy S... more A New House for Migration Research and Exchange for PhD Students: The IMISCOE PhD Network Buddy System.
Glocal Magazine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2022
Music and dance are the basis for a collaborative creative youth project on migration, featuring ... more Music and dance are the basis for a collaborative creative youth project on migration, featuring groups in Colombus OH, and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
Abbas Khider, 2021
The peculiarity of prisons lies in the ambivalence of walls as spaces of both disappearance and a... more The peculiarity of prisons lies in the ambivalence of walls as spaces of both disappearance and appearance. While the overt purpose of these boundaries is to limit individuals in their ability to practice the freedoms of movement and speech, epigraphs can be understood as prisoners’ way of disrupting the politics of the prison panopticon. This paper focuses on what can be learned from epigraphs in carceral narratives to understand the significance and difficulties of writing memory in in-between places. Using Hannah Arendt’s concept of the ‘space of appearance’, I provide a reading of Die Orangen des Präsidenten, a 2011 novel by Iraqi diaspora author, Abbas Khider, to trace how writing on walls can function as an act of claiming space. I discuss the ambiguity of the wall as a metaphor of both boundary and passage. In the novel, the young protagonist Mahdi Muhsin consults the architectural space for clues about prison experiences. While the walls transmit knowledge about the space’s inhabitants, Mahdi discovers that the architectural modifications hint to the power struggles undergone to make them visible. The presence of individual testimonies on the walls is contrasted with the impact of the wardens’ efforts to erase these stories and the prisoners’ bodies, and with that any traces of the writers’ presence. I argue that the constant mark-making in the carceral complex leaves traces of the silenced prisoner voices, and can be seen as an act of claiming space. The deeply engraved notes are their way to appear in a space whose sole function is to erase their existence.
Social Sciences, 2021
Anti-racism in Europe operates in political, policy, and civic spaces, in which organizations try... more Anti-racism in Europe operates in political, policy, and civic spaces, in which organizations try to counter racial discrimination and violence. This paper applies a textual analysis to the European discourse of the transnationally connected anti-racism movement that shaped the European Union (henceforth EU) anti-racism action plan 2020–2025. The plan seeks to address structural racism in the EU through an intersectional lens. Alana Lentin, however, cautions that the structuring principles of anti-racism approaches can obscure “irrefutable reciprocity between racism and the modern nation-state”. Against the backdrop of a critique intersectionality mainstreaming in global anti-racist movements, this paper draws on Kimberly Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality to critically examine the practices outlined in the EU anti-racism action plan to understand (1) the extent to which the EU anti-racism action addresses the historical baggage of European imperialism, (2) the influence of transnational anti-racism organizations such as the European Network Against Racism (henceforth ENAR) in reinforcing universalisms about notions of humanity in anti-racism activism through language and (3) the limitations that the EU anti-racism action plan poses for the empowerment of racially marginalized groups of people.
IMISCOE PhD Blog, 2021
There is a need to interrogate prevalent understandings of migrant activists’ positionality in co... more There is a need to interrogate prevalent understandings of migrant activists’ positionality in contemporary protest movements in Germany to evaluate the way in which migrants’ engagement in social movements in the country influences migrants’ sense of belonging and opportunities to social and political participation.
The Activist History Review, 2020
Following Irish Republican leader James Connolly’s statement, that “no revolutionary movement is ... more Following Irish Republican leader James Connolly’s statement, that “no revolutionary movement is complete without its poetic expression,”[ix] this article explores how contrasting resistance groups in Germany use the affective relationship between audiences and familiar music to curate political fellowship.
Drawing on 2017-19 ethnographic research on music activism conducted in the city of Dresden, Germany, I show how two groups with opposing political ideology use the same musical material in the service of their disparate agendas. Audiences’ responses to music are guided by music’s potential to evoke affective responses. Popular music, specifically, interlaces perceived and felt emotions and lends itself to communicating information. The question that my study, thus, seeks to answer is what happens if the same familiar music is used to communicate contrasting information?
Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture, 2019
Across European nations, the binary distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ has been reinforced by ri... more Across European nations, the binary distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ has been reinforced by right-wing populists seeking to frame global mass migration waves as the backdrop against which increased social fragmentation can be explained. While persisting resentments and continuing ethnicization of different social groups amplify hatred towards migrants, refugees and people of colour, many artistic and cultural institutions have taken a stand against such discriminatory rhetoric, trying to use their programmes as gateways to imagine new forms of solidarity and possibilities of organizing living with difference. This account focuses on developments in the city of Dresden, Germany, one of the hotspots for understanding the impact of racist and right-wing extremist legacies on contemporary responses to migration into Europe. Following the influx of refugees in 2015, Dresden became the centre of right-wing extremist protest, but also a focal point of its resistance in the arts and cultural institutions. In theatre and music, people have organized protests, founded community groups and established recurring programmes that focus on pivotal issues of belonging, citizenship, gender and home to reframe the social imaginary of what life with people of different backgrounds would look like in the city. This article draws on ethnographic work with three music initiatives in the city whose work centres on issues of ‘borders’ to show how ‘borderness’, a term used by social anthropologist Sarah Green to describe the sense of border, is experienced through and lived in music, educational practice and political activism. Findings show that collaborations between resident and refugee musicians resulted in narrations of border-experiences and transformed music repertoire. Spaces of music-making could become cultural borderlands themselves. Projects engaged in dismantling ‘the everyday construction of borders through ideology, cultural mediation, discourses, political institutions, attitudes and everyday forms of transnationalism […] that create and recreate new social-cultural boundaries and borders’ (Yuval-Davis et al. 2018: 229) in music education, which yielded a transcultural dialogue in the classroom in politically heated neighbourhoods. Theatre projects addressed gender-specific needs that provided women with opportunities to participate.
On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture, 2019
The current age of migration and mobility has seen a rise in right-wing conservatism and renewed ... more The current age of migration and mobility has seen a rise in right-wing conservatism and renewed nationalisms, against which social and cultural movements have formed strong oppositions across Germany. Creative strategies yielded new resilience and turned the focus of debates towards new forms of democratic citizenship and new
ways of signaling belonging. Shaped by the evolution of divided communities, the production of culture has become one of the few vehicles through which effective and diverse critiques can be articulated in a manner accessible to people of different backgrounds.
This account explores how the production of culture has been complicit in molding empowered speakers and critical voices from excluded communities. Drawing on my 2017/18 ethnographic study of the German brass ensemble “Banda Internationale”, this paper examines what can be learned about the formation of critical voices through
music-making. I allude to the processes and practices involved in constituting a critical voice in music production, performance and activism; discuss how the practices in the band relate to the fundamental principles of immanent critique; and raise the issue that questions of citizenship and belonging are, without exception, rooted in the analysis of how voicing critique becomes possible in a climate that resists and prohibits the diverse articulation of subjectivities.
The International Encyclopedia ofArt and Design Education, 2019
The question of what constitutes art education within the modern institutional context has inform... more The question of what constitutes art education within the modern institutional context has informed many of the debates among educators, intellectuals, and artists all over the world. In the aftermath of World War II a number of different approaches to teaching art in school developed in Germany, challenging the importance of folk art and industrial design. Their development led to an array of approaches, concepts, and strategies in art education that shaped the art pedagogical landscape throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.1 Correspondingly, a heterogeneous history of German art pedagogy hints at the potential for a diverse range of contemporary trends and working groups, to which this chapter will refer. Ongoing discussions at the Federal Congress of Art Pedagogy (BuKo12) between 2010 and 2012 reveal the complexity of the considerations facing contemporary art educators in Germany (Heil, Kolb, and Meyer 2012).
Sketching out the problems that arise when over how to integrate the work ofcontemporary artists in classroom teaching, Konstanze Schütze and Robert Hausmann (2012) draw an analogy between the fear ofdealing with contemporary art and the fear ofbeing bitten by a dog. Faced with the fear of uncertainty, individuals resort to a set of rules and clues to guide their way through the unknown. Schütze and Hoffmann argue that similar strategies are continually employed in engaging with the unknown in classroom art, which the authors consider insufficient, and which should not be regarded as the solution for overcoming the fear; instead, individuals should accept the possibility of ignorance and uncertainty and take the risk of engaging with contemporary art. Challenged by a plethora of different questions of how, why, and what art education
should teach in an ever-changing teaching environment, the art educator faces another fear, that of taking a clear position in relation to art, pedagogy, and research in order to answer those questions. There is a range of contemporary voices in German art pedagogy today, reflecting its diverse history, an understanding ofwhich is helpful in addressing the central concerns of the discipline today. A variety ofideological developments in German history have shaped the field of art pedagogy including educators’ approaches to teaching and their understanding of the roles of student and teacher, such as the way in which educators react to contemporary art in the classroom. This chapter outlines the questions that preoccupy contemporary art education in Germany by highlighting the influences of past practices, ideas, and preoccupations in German art pedagogy since the early twentieth century.
Abbas Khider Anthology
The peculiarity of prisons lies in the ambivalence of walls as spaces of both disappearance and a... more The peculiarity of prisons lies in the ambivalence of walls as spaces of both disappearance and appearance. While the overt purpose of these boundaries is to limit individuals in their ability to practice the freedoms of movement and speech, epigraphs can be understood as prisoners’ way of disrupting the politics of the prison panopticon. This paper focuses on what can be learned from epigraphs in carceral narratives to understand the significance and difficulties of writing memory in in-between places. Using Hanna Arendt’s concept of the ‘space of appearance’, I provide a reading of Die Orangen des Präsidenten, a 2011 novel by Iraqi diaspora author, Abbas Khider, to trace how writing on walls can function as an act of claiming space.
I discuss the ambiguity of the wall as a metaphor of both boundary and passage. The young protagonist Mahdi Muhsin consults the architectural space for clues about prison experiences. While the walls transmit knowledge about the space’s inhabitants, Mahdi discovers that the architectural modifications hint to the power struggles undergone to make them visible. The presence of individual testimonies on the walls is contrasted with the impact of the wardens’ efforts to erase these stories and the prisoners’ bodies, and with that any traces of the writers’ presence. I argue that the constant mark-making in the carceral complex leaves traces of the silenced prisoner voices, and can be seen as an act of claiming space. The deeply engraved notes are their way to appear in a space whose sole function is to erase their existence.
Textpraxis, 2019
Traversing through different geographical and temporal spaces can render social worlds that make ... more Traversing through different geographical and temporal spaces can render social worlds that make plain the interdependencies of power and movement. Practices of everyday life are enmeshed in new cultures of discourse that are localized in spaces of transit. Liminal spaces and border zones have become today’s stages of negotiating both the concept of an abject human body and the possibility of new social realities. This paper focuses on what can be learned from the strategies revealed in narratives of mobile subjects to understand the significance and difficulties of writing social life in in-between places. Using Victor Turner’s conceptions of “liminality” and “comunitas”, I provide a comparative reading of Abbas Khider’s Der falsche Inder (2008) and Briefe in die Auberginenrepublik (2013) to trace how different forms of movement can function as indicators for the destabilization of identities and dislocation of a sense of belonging, but also open up opportunities to recognize agency.
I discuss the ambiguities of the conditions of contemporary borderlands which Khider’s protagonists inhabit and utilize. Experiencing the conditions of indefinite liminality, Rasul Hamid struggles to establish relationships to the places through which he journeys in Der falsche Inder. While he gets to know many people on his way, it is only with those already marginalized that he can form temporary relationships. His social world is characterized by uncertainties, with which he only comes to terms in writing himself into being in his diaries and notes. Articulating himself, his aspirations and sexual desires, however, becomes a dangerous affair as he is struggles to negotiate the different cultural codes that he encounters. I argue that Rasul’s account can be seen to signify the new position of borderland men as what Giorgio Agamben terms “denizens”. The lack of belonging and relationship to place characterizes the organization of social spheres in borderzones portrayed in the novel. The threshold condition looms large as circulating subjectivities adapt to their precariousness.
In Briefe in die Auberginenrepublik, Salim who is already in exile in Bengasi sends his love Samia a letter to Bagdad, which builds the narrative framework of the novel. A list of characters are introduced as his writing crosses borders, and his deeply personal account meets their lives. Even though, Samia has long left Bagdad and there is no one to receive Salim’s writing, the letter serves as a trope that reveals the struggles which communal practices encounter in war zones. Despite the destabilized political order, quotidian traditions and rituals remain recurrent practices with which characters reassure themselves their purpose in the places of transit and uncertainty. I argue that the arrangement of personal accounts through the narrative structure of the letter facilitates a discussion in which the strategies of mobility and survival become visible. Rearticulating pre-existing perceptions of threshold people against the framework of “helplessness” is useful for recognizing agency amidst chaos. While everyday practices are imbued by conflict and displacement, individuals develop coping strategies for alternative organizations of a life on the border.
Orange is the new Black, a TV-series based on Piper Kerman’s autobiographical narrative, is all ... more Orange is the new Black, a TV-series based on Piper Kerman’s autobiographical narrative, is all over the news and in our living rooms attempting to give us an insight of what life behind bars is like for women. The show has been criticized for inaccurately depicting the story of Piper Chapman, as the main character is called in the series. However, the broadcast and discussion of the story draws attention to the actual narrative by Piper Kerman on which the show is based. In her autobiographical novel also entitled Orange is the new Black, Kerman narrates her life in prison after being convicted of drug offense after 10 years. As a consequence of her actions in the past, Kerman was sentenced to 13 months in a federal prison facility. After her release, she put her experiences in writing to raise awareness of the flaws of the U.S. federal prison system. In her narrative, she draws attention to a number of different issues; among them the maltreatment of women of all colors, origins, backgrounds and sexes in American prisons. Consequently, the publication of her story offers shocking insights into the way incarcerated women are treated and thus highlights the necessity to talk about these horrifying practices.
Conference Presentations by Carolin Mueller
Critical Arts, 2024
Critical pedagogy has become a crucial element in managing post-migration societies, especially c... more Critical pedagogy has become a crucial element in managing post-migration societies, especially concerning the social cohesion dilemma that diversity creates. Through an ethnography of critical music pedagogy with refugee youth that emerged from an activist context in the city of Dresden, Germany, this article demonstrates what is at stake for empowerment. Music pedagogy that aspires to be critical remains a discursively shallow diversity campaign when self-representations reproduce hegemonic epistemologies of domination. I show that discursive products silence potential reflexivity when political goals overshadow shared learning experiences. There is a theoretical fallacy in understanding critical cross-cultural pedagogy in music through the social change emphasis. Opportunities for communication on equal terms turn into performative acts that idealise the aesthetic sphere of music through discourse. I conceptualise such acts as lingua universalis and describe how they promote an imagined shared sensorial memory that flattens nuances of musical speech, resulting in the dominance of music as a universal language in diversity discourses. My findings lead me to argue for a reconceptualization of music pedagogy through the concept of lingua mundi to capture the individual transgressive acts that do take place and the spaces where care work is possible and allows for empowering one another.
Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2023
Left-wing movements are said to invest mainly in class struggle to address global capitalism and ... more Left-wing movements are said to invest mainly in class struggle to address global capitalism and the growing dominance by the far right. Recent left-wing movements, however, increasingly invest in culture. This article explores this investment with a focus on the mobilisation of heritage (historical architecture, cultural traditions, histories, and narratives). Through the case of Dresden’s No-Pegida movement, I show that heritage is an often-unrecognised sphere of mobilising radical politics from the left. Attention to how the left mobilises heritage can indicate that investments in culture occur in intersectional and transversal ways. This article uses examples from a qualitative study of No-Pegida to discuss heritage mobilisation in demonstrations and community work. I show that heritage comes to matter for the left when responding to heritage populism from the far right. The left’s heritage mobilisation can be understood as a refusal of authoritarian populism and an opposition to the far right’s spatial cleansing attempts. It is further an important step for reconfiguring the local creative middle-class through the inclusion of refugee and migrant artists and for centring subaltern philosophies about culture.
Zapruder World, 2023
In activism, music plays a crucial role in disturbing oppressive spaces, actors, and institutions... more In activism, music plays a crucial role in disturbing oppressive spaces, actors, and institutions. Activists credit the communicative function of music to create solidarity among different people at demonstrations 1. Music has a specific value in this space. On the one hand, music makes possible pleasurable bodily experiences. On the other hand, the tapestry of music and chants in the activist setting enable the formation of an imagined stage that can be elevated or on street level. From that stage, the desired political encounter can take place, can be seen, and experienced together. The stage is crucial in the activist dramaturgy. As part of that, music helps create a scene in which the political struggle can come into existence visibly and audibly. The musical coulisse sets in motion a dialogue between audience and performers. This dialogue is felt bodily, but the method in which the dialogue is staged also reveals that there is a political function assigned to music. Music is supposed to encourage and enable the audience to recognize ways in which injustices can be called attention to and unmasked creatively and collectively. This way of using music shows the audience how injustices work to sustain themselves. Music serves to unveil the theatricality of the phenomenological world, and with that seeks to encourage action from the audience. Jacques Rancière’s has discussed this method of unveiling as the “method of scene” 2. This paper investigates such methods through the example of musically assisted anti-right-wing activism that has been taking place in the city of Dresden, Germany via the work of the brass collective Banda Comunale. The methods of scene that musicians use in this protest setting are the focus of this paper and specific attention will be paid to the role that transcultural engagement takes. Banda Comunale has been active in musical street activism since 2001 but became the prominent opponent to the right-wing-movement Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident) that took hold of the city of Dresden in 2015. When thousands of Pegida supporters marched the city’s streets, calling for anti-immigration policies and a removal of supportive measures for migrants from Syria, Banda Comunale played international brass classics to recode the city’s sonic tapestry and sonically drown out right-wing chants. The function of the music was to use the cultural heritage with which the band associated the newly settled residents to demonstrate that the people from Syria and other places in the Global South had a right to establish a home in Dresden. Banda Comunale’s music in the streets and on stages throughout the city came to symbolize the possibility of arriving and making a life for oneself in the city despite strong and growing resistance from right-wing groups. My contribution draws on my 2017-20 ethnographic study of the ensemble that revealed Banda Comunale deeply engaged in aesthetic debates on multiculturalism and transnational connections in music to fuel the band’s visibility as a blueprint for social integration through music and music as a pathway to the right to belong. In this paper, I argue that understanding Banda Comunale’s musical aesthetic through looking at the band’s dramaturgy in protest encounters reveals how the band’s music unveils right-wing propaganda, and how it stages transcultural music to give migrants and refugees the opportunity to be seen and heard in political terms. Along with this critical reflection, I provide narrative map via www.soundofheimat.wordpress.com that tracks the transformative process of Banda Comunale’s music in relation to the ever-changing political landscape in Dresden.
American Music Perspectives , 2023
At rights-based protests, music and sound can communicate feelings of crisis. As different feelin... more At rights-based protests, music and sound can communicate feelings of crisis. As different feelings about crisis come together at demonstrations, their meaning is translated into reduced sonic expressions. Simultaneous speeches, chants, songs, and sounds create a sonic tapestry that resembles the sound of battlefields. What begs the question is how sonifications of crisis affect protest modes. Drawing on fieldwork from a standoff between right- and left-wing groups in the city of Dresden in 2020, this article discusses strategic creations and uses of sound to direct the demonstration’s sensory intensity. Using affect theory, the article highlights that differently felt anger, despair, fear, and exhaustion can mobilize people to form or join provisional sound collectives. This article shows that sonifications of crisis are perceived as vessels to get specific political messages across. Further, the article demonstrates that the discourses surrounding sounded political battlefields can stimulate new modes of protest that reach beyond the street.
GRITIM-UPF Working Paper Series, 2023
Diversity management gradually gains significance regarding recent migrations and growing hostili... more Diversity management gradually gains significance regarding recent migrations and growing hostility in Germany's urban societies. In the state of Saxony, where right-wing extremism is on the rise, cultural and social policies and civil society initiatives have tried to use cultural and social education and participation (CSEP) to remedy unmanaged diversity and to reduce negative effects of discrimination against negatively racialized people. Zapata-Barrero (2017) speaks of the intercultural turn when diversity is seen as a resource, an advantage, and an opportunity for community cohesion and conflict mitigation. This article sheds light on the intercultural turn in CSEP in Saxony through a case study of the right-wing hotspot Dresden. A qualitative analysis of Dresden's diversity management policies and 2017-22 ethnographic data identifies the premises, opportunities, and challenges: commitments to interculturality are cross-sectional; diversity projects increased; vertical forms of participation emerged, but also pointed to loopholes that leave migrants at a disadvantage.
Deconstructing Doctoral Discourses Stories and Strategies for Success, 2023
This chapter presents a collected account of narratives by women doctoral students from diverse f... more This chapter presents a collected account of narratives by women doctoral students from diverse fields to discuss the challenges that they have faced, the strategies that they have created and the alliances that they have formed with mentors and peers. The discussion focuses specifically on women's experiences in doctoral programmes because their stories reveal the close connections that academia continues to frame between women's bodies and the quality and value of their intellectual contributions to their fields and laboratories. The chapter points to the imbalances that leave women at a disadvantage in academia. I draw on conversations with women academics and debates to illustrate what contemporary academia needs to do to make intellectual spaces more inclusive of and accommodating to the needs of different women.
IMISCOE PhD Network Blog, 2022
A New House for Migration Research and Exchange for PhD Students: The IMISCOE PhD Network Buddy S... more A New House for Migration Research and Exchange for PhD Students: The IMISCOE PhD Network Buddy System.
Glocal Magazine, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2022
Music and dance are the basis for a collaborative creative youth project on migration, featuring ... more Music and dance are the basis for a collaborative creative youth project on migration, featuring groups in Colombus OH, and Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.
Abbas Khider, 2021
The peculiarity of prisons lies in the ambivalence of walls as spaces of both disappearance and a... more The peculiarity of prisons lies in the ambivalence of walls as spaces of both disappearance and appearance. While the overt purpose of these boundaries is to limit individuals in their ability to practice the freedoms of movement and speech, epigraphs can be understood as prisoners’ way of disrupting the politics of the prison panopticon. This paper focuses on what can be learned from epigraphs in carceral narratives to understand the significance and difficulties of writing memory in in-between places. Using Hannah Arendt’s concept of the ‘space of appearance’, I provide a reading of Die Orangen des Präsidenten, a 2011 novel by Iraqi diaspora author, Abbas Khider, to trace how writing on walls can function as an act of claiming space. I discuss the ambiguity of the wall as a metaphor of both boundary and passage. In the novel, the young protagonist Mahdi Muhsin consults the architectural space for clues about prison experiences. While the walls transmit knowledge about the space’s inhabitants, Mahdi discovers that the architectural modifications hint to the power struggles undergone to make them visible. The presence of individual testimonies on the walls is contrasted with the impact of the wardens’ efforts to erase these stories and the prisoners’ bodies, and with that any traces of the writers’ presence. I argue that the constant mark-making in the carceral complex leaves traces of the silenced prisoner voices, and can be seen as an act of claiming space. The deeply engraved notes are their way to appear in a space whose sole function is to erase their existence.
Social Sciences, 2021
Anti-racism in Europe operates in political, policy, and civic spaces, in which organizations try... more Anti-racism in Europe operates in political, policy, and civic spaces, in which organizations try to counter racial discrimination and violence. This paper applies a textual analysis to the European discourse of the transnationally connected anti-racism movement that shaped the European Union (henceforth EU) anti-racism action plan 2020–2025. The plan seeks to address structural racism in the EU through an intersectional lens. Alana Lentin, however, cautions that the structuring principles of anti-racism approaches can obscure “irrefutable reciprocity between racism and the modern nation-state”. Against the backdrop of a critique intersectionality mainstreaming in global anti-racist movements, this paper draws on Kimberly Crenshaw’s concept of intersectionality to critically examine the practices outlined in the EU anti-racism action plan to understand (1) the extent to which the EU anti-racism action addresses the historical baggage of European imperialism, (2) the influence of transnational anti-racism organizations such as the European Network Against Racism (henceforth ENAR) in reinforcing universalisms about notions of humanity in anti-racism activism through language and (3) the limitations that the EU anti-racism action plan poses for the empowerment of racially marginalized groups of people.
IMISCOE PhD Blog, 2021
There is a need to interrogate prevalent understandings of migrant activists’ positionality in co... more There is a need to interrogate prevalent understandings of migrant activists’ positionality in contemporary protest movements in Germany to evaluate the way in which migrants’ engagement in social movements in the country influences migrants’ sense of belonging and opportunities to social and political participation.
The Activist History Review, 2020
Following Irish Republican leader James Connolly’s statement, that “no revolutionary movement is ... more Following Irish Republican leader James Connolly’s statement, that “no revolutionary movement is complete without its poetic expression,”[ix] this article explores how contrasting resistance groups in Germany use the affective relationship between audiences and familiar music to curate political fellowship.
Drawing on 2017-19 ethnographic research on music activism conducted in the city of Dresden, Germany, I show how two groups with opposing political ideology use the same musical material in the service of their disparate agendas. Audiences’ responses to music are guided by music’s potential to evoke affective responses. Popular music, specifically, interlaces perceived and felt emotions and lends itself to communicating information. The question that my study, thus, seeks to answer is what happens if the same familiar music is used to communicate contrasting information?
Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture, 2019
Across European nations, the binary distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ has been reinforced by ri... more Across European nations, the binary distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ has been reinforced by right-wing populists seeking to frame global mass migration waves as the backdrop against which increased social fragmentation can be explained. While persisting resentments and continuing ethnicization of different social groups amplify hatred towards migrants, refugees and people of colour, many artistic and cultural institutions have taken a stand against such discriminatory rhetoric, trying to use their programmes as gateways to imagine new forms of solidarity and possibilities of organizing living with difference. This account focuses on developments in the city of Dresden, Germany, one of the hotspots for understanding the impact of racist and right-wing extremist legacies on contemporary responses to migration into Europe. Following the influx of refugees in 2015, Dresden became the centre of right-wing extremist protest, but also a focal point of its resistance in the arts and cultural institutions. In theatre and music, people have organized protests, founded community groups and established recurring programmes that focus on pivotal issues of belonging, citizenship, gender and home to reframe the social imaginary of what life with people of different backgrounds would look like in the city. This article draws on ethnographic work with three music initiatives in the city whose work centres on issues of ‘borders’ to show how ‘borderness’, a term used by social anthropologist Sarah Green to describe the sense of border, is experienced through and lived in music, educational practice and political activism. Findings show that collaborations between resident and refugee musicians resulted in narrations of border-experiences and transformed music repertoire. Spaces of music-making could become cultural borderlands themselves. Projects engaged in dismantling ‘the everyday construction of borders through ideology, cultural mediation, discourses, political institutions, attitudes and everyday forms of transnationalism […] that create and recreate new social-cultural boundaries and borders’ (Yuval-Davis et al. 2018: 229) in music education, which yielded a transcultural dialogue in the classroom in politically heated neighbourhoods. Theatre projects addressed gender-specific needs that provided women with opportunities to participate.
On_Culture: The Open Journal for the Study of Culture, 2019
The current age of migration and mobility has seen a rise in right-wing conservatism and renewed ... more The current age of migration and mobility has seen a rise in right-wing conservatism and renewed nationalisms, against which social and cultural movements have formed strong oppositions across Germany. Creative strategies yielded new resilience and turned the focus of debates towards new forms of democratic citizenship and new
ways of signaling belonging. Shaped by the evolution of divided communities, the production of culture has become one of the few vehicles through which effective and diverse critiques can be articulated in a manner accessible to people of different backgrounds.
This account explores how the production of culture has been complicit in molding empowered speakers and critical voices from excluded communities. Drawing on my 2017/18 ethnographic study of the German brass ensemble “Banda Internationale”, this paper examines what can be learned about the formation of critical voices through
music-making. I allude to the processes and practices involved in constituting a critical voice in music production, performance and activism; discuss how the practices in the band relate to the fundamental principles of immanent critique; and raise the issue that questions of citizenship and belonging are, without exception, rooted in the analysis of how voicing critique becomes possible in a climate that resists and prohibits the diverse articulation of subjectivities.
The International Encyclopedia ofArt and Design Education, 2019
The question of what constitutes art education within the modern institutional context has inform... more The question of what constitutes art education within the modern institutional context has informed many of the debates among educators, intellectuals, and artists all over the world. In the aftermath of World War II a number of different approaches to teaching art in school developed in Germany, challenging the importance of folk art and industrial design. Their development led to an array of approaches, concepts, and strategies in art education that shaped the art pedagogical landscape throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.1 Correspondingly, a heterogeneous history of German art pedagogy hints at the potential for a diverse range of contemporary trends and working groups, to which this chapter will refer. Ongoing discussions at the Federal Congress of Art Pedagogy (BuKo12) between 2010 and 2012 reveal the complexity of the considerations facing contemporary art educators in Germany (Heil, Kolb, and Meyer 2012).
Sketching out the problems that arise when over how to integrate the work ofcontemporary artists in classroom teaching, Konstanze Schütze and Robert Hausmann (2012) draw an analogy between the fear ofdealing with contemporary art and the fear ofbeing bitten by a dog. Faced with the fear of uncertainty, individuals resort to a set of rules and clues to guide their way through the unknown. Schütze and Hoffmann argue that similar strategies are continually employed in engaging with the unknown in classroom art, which the authors consider insufficient, and which should not be regarded as the solution for overcoming the fear; instead, individuals should accept the possibility of ignorance and uncertainty and take the risk of engaging with contemporary art. Challenged by a plethora of different questions of how, why, and what art education
should teach in an ever-changing teaching environment, the art educator faces another fear, that of taking a clear position in relation to art, pedagogy, and research in order to answer those questions. There is a range of contemporary voices in German art pedagogy today, reflecting its diverse history, an understanding ofwhich is helpful in addressing the central concerns of the discipline today. A variety ofideological developments in German history have shaped the field of art pedagogy including educators’ approaches to teaching and their understanding of the roles of student and teacher, such as the way in which educators react to contemporary art in the classroom. This chapter outlines the questions that preoccupy contemporary art education in Germany by highlighting the influences of past practices, ideas, and preoccupations in German art pedagogy since the early twentieth century.
Abbas Khider Anthology
The peculiarity of prisons lies in the ambivalence of walls as spaces of both disappearance and a... more The peculiarity of prisons lies in the ambivalence of walls as spaces of both disappearance and appearance. While the overt purpose of these boundaries is to limit individuals in their ability to practice the freedoms of movement and speech, epigraphs can be understood as prisoners’ way of disrupting the politics of the prison panopticon. This paper focuses on what can be learned from epigraphs in carceral narratives to understand the significance and difficulties of writing memory in in-between places. Using Hanna Arendt’s concept of the ‘space of appearance’, I provide a reading of Die Orangen des Präsidenten, a 2011 novel by Iraqi diaspora author, Abbas Khider, to trace how writing on walls can function as an act of claiming space.
I discuss the ambiguity of the wall as a metaphor of both boundary and passage. The young protagonist Mahdi Muhsin consults the architectural space for clues about prison experiences. While the walls transmit knowledge about the space’s inhabitants, Mahdi discovers that the architectural modifications hint to the power struggles undergone to make them visible. The presence of individual testimonies on the walls is contrasted with the impact of the wardens’ efforts to erase these stories and the prisoners’ bodies, and with that any traces of the writers’ presence. I argue that the constant mark-making in the carceral complex leaves traces of the silenced prisoner voices, and can be seen as an act of claiming space. The deeply engraved notes are their way to appear in a space whose sole function is to erase their existence.
Textpraxis, 2019
Traversing through different geographical and temporal spaces can render social worlds that make ... more Traversing through different geographical and temporal spaces can render social worlds that make plain the interdependencies of power and movement. Practices of everyday life are enmeshed in new cultures of discourse that are localized in spaces of transit. Liminal spaces and border zones have become today’s stages of negotiating both the concept of an abject human body and the possibility of new social realities. This paper focuses on what can be learned from the strategies revealed in narratives of mobile subjects to understand the significance and difficulties of writing social life in in-between places. Using Victor Turner’s conceptions of “liminality” and “comunitas”, I provide a comparative reading of Abbas Khider’s Der falsche Inder (2008) and Briefe in die Auberginenrepublik (2013) to trace how different forms of movement can function as indicators for the destabilization of identities and dislocation of a sense of belonging, but also open up opportunities to recognize agency.
I discuss the ambiguities of the conditions of contemporary borderlands which Khider’s protagonists inhabit and utilize. Experiencing the conditions of indefinite liminality, Rasul Hamid struggles to establish relationships to the places through which he journeys in Der falsche Inder. While he gets to know many people on his way, it is only with those already marginalized that he can form temporary relationships. His social world is characterized by uncertainties, with which he only comes to terms in writing himself into being in his diaries and notes. Articulating himself, his aspirations and sexual desires, however, becomes a dangerous affair as he is struggles to negotiate the different cultural codes that he encounters. I argue that Rasul’s account can be seen to signify the new position of borderland men as what Giorgio Agamben terms “denizens”. The lack of belonging and relationship to place characterizes the organization of social spheres in borderzones portrayed in the novel. The threshold condition looms large as circulating subjectivities adapt to their precariousness.
In Briefe in die Auberginenrepublik, Salim who is already in exile in Bengasi sends his love Samia a letter to Bagdad, which builds the narrative framework of the novel. A list of characters are introduced as his writing crosses borders, and his deeply personal account meets their lives. Even though, Samia has long left Bagdad and there is no one to receive Salim’s writing, the letter serves as a trope that reveals the struggles which communal practices encounter in war zones. Despite the destabilized political order, quotidian traditions and rituals remain recurrent practices with which characters reassure themselves their purpose in the places of transit and uncertainty. I argue that the arrangement of personal accounts through the narrative structure of the letter facilitates a discussion in which the strategies of mobility and survival become visible. Rearticulating pre-existing perceptions of threshold people against the framework of “helplessness” is useful for recognizing agency amidst chaos. While everyday practices are imbued by conflict and displacement, individuals develop coping strategies for alternative organizations of a life on the border.
Orange is the new Black, a TV-series based on Piper Kerman’s autobiographical narrative, is all ... more Orange is the new Black, a TV-series based on Piper Kerman’s autobiographical narrative, is all over the news and in our living rooms attempting to give us an insight of what life behind bars is like for women. The show has been criticized for inaccurately depicting the story of Piper Chapman, as the main character is called in the series. However, the broadcast and discussion of the story draws attention to the actual narrative by Piper Kerman on which the show is based. In her autobiographical novel also entitled Orange is the new Black, Kerman narrates her life in prison after being convicted of drug offense after 10 years. As a consequence of her actions in the past, Kerman was sentenced to 13 months in a federal prison facility. After her release, she put her experiences in writing to raise awareness of the flaws of the U.S. federal prison system. In her narrative, she draws attention to a number of different issues; among them the maltreatment of women of all colors, origins, backgrounds and sexes in American prisons. Consequently, the publication of her story offers shocking insights into the way incarcerated women are treated and thus highlights the necessity to talk about these horrifying practices.
This presentation focuses on ways to promote interactive acquisition of L2 language and content l... more This presentation focuses on ways to promote interactive acquisition of L2 language and content learning about migrants in Europe through a project-based engagement organized around Anna Thommen’s documentary Neuland (2014). This presentation consists of two parts. In the first part, I present the instructional techniques and class projects that were used in teaching a lower intermediate German language course through the context of the political, social and cultural history of migration in Europe. I will share the ways in which Anna Thommen’s documentary Neuland (2014), resources from print and digital media, collaborations with Germany-based guest speakers, and performative assessment tools were used to: integrate learner’s interests in aspects of the subject matter; improve L2 proficiency; promote intercultural competence and understanding of solidarity; contrast and compare contemporary and past understandings of migration, social intervention and issues of representation in a democratic society.
The second part of my presentation focuses on the assessment tools developed in this project-based teaching methodology. I will present strategies in which language instructors are able to integrate task-based teaching and assessment tools into the language classroom when teaching culturally-specific materials and contexts. I will show how the design of assessment tools and rubrics can prepare students for comparative assessment while at the same time correspond to and build on their individual skill level and needs, making learners contributors to the learning experience and outcomes.
This presentation focuses on the illustrations of the limitations and implications of educational... more This presentation focuses on the illustrations of the limitations and implications of educational strategies and empathy for refugee youth in Switzerland as presented in Anna Thommen’s documentary Neuland (2014). Following students of a Swiss German ‘integration class’ in Basel for two years, Thommen creates authentic narratives taken out of the everyday experiences of young adults who enter Switzerland as refugees. The documentary style serves as the vehicle through which issues of rights and belonging, aspirations and reality, and diverse intercultural contacts are raised and visually discussed.
The integration program promises the youth entry into the Swiss workforce and society. However, as the narratives show, that is only given to a chosen few. Thommen contrasts the artificiality of the system with the individual narratives of terror and flight of those young adults. Their testimonies are contrasted with dream-like thought-sequences, through which both the still prominent images of the past and the helplessness in the present is illustrated.
This presentation will show that Thommen’s technique of contrast raises both pressing questions about transport and travel of refugee minors in a contemporary setting, and the inability of making these experiences of refugee youth’s rights violations accessible through a western lens. The clear documentary style illustrates the inability to work through and engage with the program’s participants’ experiences from a western perspective. Instead, the film’s tangible depiction of youth narratives focuses on the utopian promises of the future. Therefore, this presentation argues that Thommen’s documentary, on the one hand, provides first-hand accounts of refugee youth arrival in the western world. Secondly, she brings to attention that the West has detached itself from the reality of human rights violations in the East by highlighting silence and pausing in moments where discussion and exchange are needed to bridge the gap of misunderstanding.
This presentation focuses on ways to promote interactive acquisition of L2 language and content l... more This presentation focuses on ways to promote interactive acquisition of L2 language and content learning about the GDR period through Markus Goller’s film Friendship and the interactive web portal zeitklicks. The presentation consists of two parts. In the first part, I present the instructional techniques and class projects that were used in teaching a lower intermediate German language course through the context of the political, social and cultural history of the GDR. I will share the ways in which the retrospective on GDR history offered in Friendship and the interactive material on zeitklicks was used to: integrate learner’s interests in aspects of the subject matter; improve L2 proficiency; promote intercultural competence; contrast and compare contemporary and past understandings of democracy and social order.
The second part of my presentation focuses on student’s feedback regarding their experience watching and discussing Friendship, working with zeitklicks, and the collaborative class projects. A survey was conducted mid-way through and at the end of the semester including questions eliciting student’s development of intercultural understanding and competency; the students’ self-assessment of their skill-development, the usage of video-recordings to reflect on viewed and discussed content-material, and the video-recordings impact on the improvement of L2 language acquisition. The students concluded an overall positive experience with the variety of filmic and interactive web-material, and the methods for exchange that were made available through projects and collaborative work in and outside the classroom. The filmic material and the interactive web platform build on the students’ personal interest and skill-level, enabled them to feel more comfortable in the verbal application and exchange of information on a historical subject, and strengthened their perception of themselves as competent L2 speakers.
Our presentation focuses on ways to promote collaborative L2 language and content learning in a d... more Our presentation focuses on ways to promote collaborative L2 language and content learning in a digitally enhanced and globally connected classroom environment. The presentation consists of two parts. In the first part, we present the instructional techniques and digital tools that were used in teaching an intermediate/advanced German course on the current influx of migrants and refugees in Germany and the challenges and issues it has brought. The course also focused on the students’ German language development. We will share how digital tools such as Microsoft OneNote and Zoom (online videoconferencing) were used to: enhance collaboration among learners on a shared project; connect OSU learners locally and globally with other learners and experts for online interviews and discussions; integrate learner’s interests in aspects of the subject matter; enhance learner’s research skills and engagement with collected materials and recorded online interviews; improve L2 proficiency; promote intercultural competence, and learn basic
rules and etiquette for teleconferencing online. Here, we will also provide details in regards to teaching techniques, instructions and task-design for students’ online collaborative assignments and the online videoconference meetings with their partners and experts in Germany. This part will also include instructions that were given to students for the assigned follow-up work with the repository of recorded meetings. The second part of our presentation focuses on students’ feedback regarding their experience using the digital tools and collaborative project for the course. An online survey was conducted which included questions eliciting the students’ development of intercultural understanding and competency; strengths and weakness of the application of digital technologies in the language classroom, and the students’ self-assessment of their skill-development. The students concluded an overall positive experience with the variety of digital and print media, and the methods for exchange that were made available to them in and outside of class. The tools of the digitally enhanced and globally connected classroom build on the students’ personal interest and skill-level, enabled them to feel more comfortable in the verbal application and exchange of information on a current political debate, and strengthened their perception of themselves as competent L2 speakers.
Our presentation reports on a collaborative German language and content pedagogy project that con... more Our presentation reports on a collaborative German language and content pedagogy project that concentrated on the current influx of migrants and refugees in Germany and some of the challenges and issues that it has brought to postwar Germany. Using advanced technology, students at three different campuses (Denison, OSU, and the American University in Bulgaria) met regularly via video-conferencing services to work collaboratively on different aspects of the refugee situation in German, while practicing and developing their German linguistic skills. In addition to working with a diverse collection of materials (including video clips, audio, websites, smart phone apps, film), students met with volunteers in Germany via video conferencing services to discuss their involvement with the refugees in helping them to integrate in Germany.
Institutions of all types and size that have a form of CLAC (also referred to as FLAC/C-LAC/LAC/L... more Institutions of all types and size that have a form of CLAC (also referred to as FLAC/C-LAC/LAC/LxC) participate in the shared idea that: “Knowledge exists within and is shaped by culture and, therefore, just as materials in many languages can and should be incorporated into all parts of the curriculum, intercultural perspectives can and should inform the teaching of academic content in many curricular contexts. CLAC strives to make translingual and transcultural competence a reality for all students, not simply for those who major in a foreign language or participate in immersive study abroad programs. CLAC engages languages and intercultural perspectives to achieve a better and more multi-faceted understanding of content. It focuses less on bringing disciplinary content or culture into the language classroom than on assimilating languages and cultures into instruction and research across a wide range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts” (CLAC Consortium).
Gabriele Dillmann hosted this year’s CLAC conference at Denison University with several Ohio-based institutions faculty and staff members presenting and/or participating. Rosemary Feal from the Modern Language Association provided a keynote speech on the state of language education in US higher institutions, which complemented the interests and goals of CLAC practitioners succinctly and demonstrated further how CLAC pedagogy can contribute to a healthy and sustained growth in the languages in higher education.
In this session, the overall concept of CLAC, i.e. its pedagogy, curricular application, institutional models, and scholarly research are introduced with a special focus on the potential for German programs at our various institutions. The session will be joined by two OSU German graduate students as representatives of our next generation of language teachers and scholars in terms of the promise they see in CLAC as an innovative language infusion model and a future-oriented pedagogy.
Workshop sponsored by the Performance Studies Working Group at the Ohio State University. WHAT: ... more Workshop sponsored by the Performance Studies Working Group at the Ohio State University.
WHAT: We will be working actively with our body to try out various PAS techniques and watch some videos about PAS in Europe. Please plan for a 2 hour workshop and bring comfortable clothes. If you would like to get an idea about it beforehand, check out the PAS Programs lead by BBB Johannes Deimling: http://pas.bbbjohannesdeimling.de/
IMPORTANT NOTE: Bring one material that you would like to work with in the workshop. It should be something in larger quantity (clips, paper, string, etc.).
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television , 2017
European cinema not only occupies a dominant place in film history, it is also a field that has b... more European cinema not only occupies a dominant place in film history, it is also a field that has been raising more interest with the expanding work on the transnational. Euro-Visions asks what idea of Europe emerges, is represented and constructed by contemporary European film. Adopting a broad and wide-ranging approach, Euro-Visions mixes political sources, historical documents and filmic texts and offers an integration of policy and economic contexts with textual analysis. Mariana Liz examines costume dramas, biopics and war films, mainstream co-productions and tales of 'Fortress Europe' by renowned auteurs, showing how films from different European nations depict and contribute to the formation of the idea of Europe. Case studies include Girl with a Pearl Earring, La Vie en Rose, Black Book, Good Bye Lenin!, Match Point and The Silence of Lorna.
Border Criminologies
Like a swarm of angry bees, repeating images of walls, fences, and other barriers communicate tha... more Like a swarm of angry bees, repeating images of walls, fences, and other barriers communicate that there is something vital at stake in political and social life across the globe today. In addition to discernible material barriers at state borders, there are invisible bordering processes and border brutalities that constitute and control the everyday lives of people. Bordering offers a multi-local ethnography of material and immaterial “bordering scapes”, a term that refers to the spatial zones in which local and global hierarchies govern the mobility of some but not all people. The book pays particular attention to how border performances in everyday lives in the UK inform citizenly behaviour, identity constructions and claims to belonging. ...