Subjectivities of Migration

Literature on migration from the past 30 years deals with phenomena as diverse as war, climate change, cosmopolitan sensibilities, and increased demands for labor mobility. The conference “Subjectivities of Migration,” hosted by the Barenboim-Said Akademie, discusses the poetic procedures of recent migration literature and interprets its genres as expressions of similar migration experiences.

Two of the conference’s events are aimed at a larger public and will take place in the Pierre Boulez Saal: in her reading Whispers in the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem, International Booker Prize–nominated Palestinian author Adania Shibli sheds 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 literary scholar at Oxford University, reads from her collection of stories To the Volcano. The authors will be in conversation with Kai Wiegandt after the readings. Both readings will be accompanied by musical performances featuring students of the Barenboim-Said Akademie.

Presented by the Barenboim-Said Akademie with support of the German Research Foundation. Concept and Organization: Prof. Dr. Kai Wiegandt.

Attendees are asked to register here.

Monday, 13 September 2021

11 am
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 am – 1 pm
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

1 pm – 2.30 pm
Lunch break with tour of the Akademie

2.30 pm – 4 pm
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

4 pm – 4.30 pm
Coffee break

Section 2: Ghosts and the Gothic in Migration Literature

4.30 pm – 6 pm
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

6 pm – 6.30 pm
Break and Refreshments

6.30 pm – 8 pm
Elleke Boehmer (Oxford)
Reading: To the Volcano
Featuring musical performances by students of the Barenboim-Said Akademie

Tuesday, 14 September 2021

10 am – 11.30 am
Elleke Boehmer
Keynote: Migration, Subjectivity and the South in J.M. Coetzee’s post-2013 Writing

11.30 am – 12 pm
Coffee Break

Section 3: Migrants and Postmigration in Germany

12 pm – 1.30 pm
Kyung-Ho Cha (Bayreuth/Greifswald)
The postmigrant subjectivity in Deniz Ohde’s Streulicht [Scattered Light]

Lea Laura Heim (Manchester)
Appropriating the Bildungsroman: Literary Means of Voicing Social Criticism in Fatma Aydemir’s Ellbogen

1.30 pm – 3.15 pm
Lunch Break

Section 4: Female Migrants from Africa and the Middle East

3.15 pm – 4 pm
Leon Osu (Owerri)
Migrating Prose: Contemporary Nigerian Female Novelists and Their Poetics of Migration

4 pm – 4.30 pm
Coffee Break

4.30 pm – 6 pm
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

6 pm – 6.30 pm
Break and refreshments

6.30 pm – 8 pm
Adania Shibli (Berlin/Jerusalem)
Reading: Whispers in the Armenian Quarter in Jerusalem
Featuring musical performances by students of the Barenboim-Said Akademie

8 pm
Closing Remarks