Border Crossings: Teaching Inclusiveness in German Culture and Film Courses

Border Crossings: Teaching Inclusiveness in German Culture and

Film Courses

Inclusive Excellence in TeachingStetson University’s Diversity

Council Summer WorkshopMay 14th 2912

Re-thinking German National Culture

• Where is Germany?

• What is Germany?

• Who are the Germans?

(Frank B. Tipton, A History of Modern Germany Since 1815)

Germania:The quest fornational unity

Defining German National Identity

Dem Deutschen Volk – To the German PeopleDer Bevőlkerung – To the Population

Border Crossings:

• the experience of being fremd – a “stranger”

• the fusion of different cultures and identities

• the complicated meanings of Heimat and Exil

• the hopes and tragedies of border crossings

The New German ‘We’ – An Inclusionary and Exclusionary Place?

• “Where are you from”?• The Year 1990. Home/land and Unity from an Afro-German Perspective

“Deutsch-deutsch Vaterland…Täusch-Täusch Vaderlan…Tausch-Täusch Väterli”

(deutsch-German; täusch-to cheat;tausch-to exchange)

“My fatherland is Ghana, mo mother tongueis German, my homeland I carry with me in my shoes” (May Ayim)

• Without borders and impudentA poem against the German mock unity(Einheit-Scheinheit-seemingness)

Turks in GermanyFrom German Turks to Turkish-German

• Germany – A Home for Turks?

Reconfiguring Turkish diaspora and

German nation as Tropical Germany

• Dialogue about the Third Language

Germans, Turks and Their Future:

the fusion of different cultures and

identities – living together or

side by side? (parallel society)

Words Create Places

• “In my own language, tongue means language. A tongue has no bones and can turn in any direction. I sit with my tongue turned in this city Berlin.”

• Yoko Tawada: Ein Wort, ein Ort, or: How Words Create Places

• “If the languages we speak help define us, what happens to the identity of persons displaced between cultures?”

(Translators’ Note, Where Europe

begins)

Between Heimat and Exile

• Im Land meiner Eltern /In the Country of my Parents:

“Had it not been for Hitler, I would have

been born a German-Jewish child.

More German than Jewish…

I was born in Argentina, my

mother tongue is Spanish.

I came to Germany 17 years ago.”

(Jeanine Meerapfel,

In the Country of my Parents)

Die Kümmeltürkin geht / Melek leaves

(A film by Jeanine Meerapfel)

Documentary and fiction:

a collection of images and

associations about Melek’s Istanbul dreams and

her Berlin reality

Migrating Identities

(strange / foreign skin)

A film byAngelina Maccarone

(On the

other side)

A film by Fatih Akin