Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Writing Prompt for Week 5 readings




Thinking about the readings you have down so far (GHOSTS OF BERLIN, INTRODUCING GLOBALIZATION, AGE OF IMMIGRATION, NEW ETHNIC MINORITIES, IDENTITY and LANGUAGE LEARNING and EUROPEAN OTHERS, as well as "What Does it Mean to be a German?" discuss one or more of the themes of the programs (per the topic list below) and how the readings speak to these theme(s).  Also, consider what research you will be doing in Berlin and begin to craft a research question and topic statement. 
**For a reminder and guidelines on research in Humanities and Education visit: 
Humanities Research 
Education Research

On Saturday, we will discuss research methods in more depth and more specifically international interdisciplinary research methods as we prepare for Berlin.

Topic List
This course investigates individual, cultural, and national identity formation, what determines identity labels and who defines social capital. We will use a comparative interdisciplinary model to learn about topics including:

   Literature of Migration (literature of identity) Asylum policies (Dublin 2 and 3 laws);
   Urban Identity and Border Identity;
   Identity and natural world (distance of the natural world to urban world and reconsidering what makes us human);
   Migration and Education;
   Identity and Environment;
   Identity Migration and Education;
   Borders and Frontiers (Canada/Mexico/US border; German east and west border; Arctic border and territory issues and its global ramifications related to national and individual identity formation; border patrol policy at the US/Mexico cross-roads, for example);
   Refugee/migration movements in US and Germany related to identity politics and the view of the “refugee and “immigrant” as cultural tokens and foils (individual, family, and nation-state);
   Investigation of identity reformulation/myth making of refugees and migrants (including a parallel study of east German, and U.S./Mexican identities).


We will also address art and performance as forms of resistance serving to deflect identity tropes.

Wednesday, April 22, 2015




Continue reading the main storyVideo


PLAY VIDEO|1:39

Europe’s Migrant Crisis

Europe’s Migrant Crisis

Humanitarian experts predict the number of migrants who die crossing the Mediterranean Sea in 2015 could reach record levels.
 By Quynhanh Do on  Publish Date April 20, 2015. Photo by Alessandra Tarantino/Associated Press.

ROME — European leaders were confronted on Monday with a humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean, as estimates that as many as 900 migrants may have died off the Libyan coast this weekend prompted calls for a new approach to the surging number of refugees crossing from Africa and the Middle East.

Maxim Gorki Theater Leads an Immigrant Vanguard in Berlin

BY CHRISTOPHER D. SHEA
Shermin Langhoff, a native of Turkey and the artistic director of the Maxim Gorki Theater, is putting immigrant actors and playwrights in the spotlight.

BERLIN — Standing in her office at the Maxim Gorki Theater here, a pack of Gauloises cigarettes in hand, Shermin Langhoff gestured at an image of one of Jeff Koons’s gleaming balloon sculptures hanging on her wall.

Slowing the pace of her usually rapid German, she said: “It’s lunacy. This object is 20 years old, and for 20 years nothing has happened in art, other than in the performing arts. 
Ms. Langhoff, 45, who immigrated from Turkey as a child, was contrasting what she sees as visual art’s static legacy with that of the firebrand theater she took over in 2013 and has since made a nexus for plays tackling issues like immigration, race and assimilation. A small but influential house in the Mitte district in the city center, it is one of the five major theaters here run primarily with public money.

Read more:







Photo

Vorra, a town in northern Bavaria with a population of 1,000, is one of many villages in Germany struggling to make room for refugees from countries like Syria and Libya.CreditGordon Welters for The New York Times 

Read More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/world/europe/germany-immigration-refugees-asylum-integration.html?ref=world

UW Conference of Interest - Gendered Mobilizations in an Expanding Europe



Here is a conference of interest at the UW organized by colleague Sabine Lang, Professor of Political Science and the Jackson School (April 30-May1). Please feel free to drop in on the sessions or stay for the entire conference. Check out the details here:

http://jsis.washington.edu/euc/conferences/genderedmobilizations.shtml

The European Union Center of Excellence at the University of Washington, in cooperation with the EU Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder and the EU Center at the University of Oklahoma will hold a conference on Gendered Mobilizations in an Expanding Europe from April 30 to May 1, 2015 on the University of Washington campus. Organized by Sabine Lang, UW Department of Political Science, the conference will investigate to what degree the eurozone crisis has generated stronger cross-and intersectional alliances between European women’s movements and anti-poverty, LGBT, ethnic, and disability movements.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

German Wages May Boost Economy




They’ve helped save Europe, so why not the world? Germans are getting a pay raise, which is expected to boost consumer spending and, in turn, eurozone trade. 

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Tuesday, April 7, 2015

German Quandary: How to Deal with Anti-Immigration Movement - NYT Article

DRESDEN, Germany — German leaders are struggling with how, and how much, to engage with supporters of a protest movement formed around fears of an “Islamization” of their country.

Local leaders have started reaching out to supporters of the group known by its German acronym, Pegida, or the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West, to listen to their complaints and try to forestall the movement. Although still largely confined to Dresden, it has found sympathizers in other cities across Germany.

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