Migration and Nation in Contemporary Literature

This course focuses on representations of migration in contemporary German-language literature. As a result of the ongoing war in Ukraine, Europe is currently witnessing the largest displacement of humans in a century--and this not far on the heels of 2015, which the UNHCR had previously termed Europe's year of the so-called "refugee crisis." Yet Germany has a long, painful, and varied history of migration in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a history this course explores through three themes: forced migration, labor migration, and political migration. How does literature chronicle experiences of migration, displacement, and resettlement? How does it work to archive, critique, and reimagine German national identity in an age of profound sociopolitical transformation? In addition to shorter texts, we will read a complete novel and also consider the role that recent theater and performance art play in thematizing migration. Authors/artists to include: Irmgard Keun, Hannah Arendt, Güney Dal, Herta Müller, Rafik Schami, Wladimir Kaminer, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Christoph Schlingensief, Melinda Nadj Abonji, Yoko Tawada, Jenny Erpenbeck, Elfriede Jelinek, Vladimir Vertlib, Ilija Trojanow, and Abbas Khider.