What is the significance of exile today? For the refugees themselves, exile is first and foremost a brutal form of punishment. Yet in spite of all the anxiety and pain, many victims of forced exile have found opportunities to rebuild their lives in new ways.\u00a0Consequently, while the plight of refugees remains a tragic symbol of our times, evoking images of terrible suffering, many victims of forced exile feel\u00a0hopeful as well \u2013 both imprisoned and free at the same time.<\/p>\n
Although individual circumstances and political contexts vary widely, refugees \u2013 no matter where they come from or what caused them to flee \u2013\u00a0identify with one another’s experiences in ways that transcend the specific cultural, political and historical details that separate them. At the present time, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people have been forced into exile. And as they struggle to survive, often under dire and deadly circumstances in foreign lands, they also feel a sense of alienation or exile from themselves. And this second exile, Julia Kristeva reminds us, which is\u00a0deeply rooted in the human condition,\u00a0is not entirely negative.<\/p>\n
Keeping Kristeva’s insight in mind, the participants in this webinar will challenge us to theorize about exile as both a deeply existential and political malaise. Exile is part of our human condition today and of our past and future. Re-examining the idea, requires thinking about it collectively, with political activists\/dissidents,\u00a0political\/social theorists, and artists.<\/p>\n
Invited Guests:<\/strong><\/p>\n Mohamad Moustafa Alabsi<\/strong> is trained in political philosophy. He is a refugee from Syria, who recently received his doctorate from the Universit\u00e9 Grenoble-Alpes. He is currently editing The Arabic Encyclopedia of Political Philosophy. For the past year, Dr. Alabsi has been affiliated with Columbia University’s Global Centers, Amman Jordan. He is also a member\u00a0of the New University in Exile Consortium.<\/p>\n Christina von Braun<\/strong> was born in Rome. Until 1981 she lived as a freelance author and filmmaker in New York and Paris: she has authored 50 films and numerous books. Since 1994 she has been Professor at Humboldt University: she founded and directed Gender Studies. Now Christina von Braun is one of the founders and Senior Advisor of Selma Stern Center for Jewish Studies. Christina von Braun’s research examines the mental and political life of the \u201cOther.\u201d She is particularly interested in looking at \u201cStrangers\u201d from the perspective of gender and sexuality. Professor von Braun’s research focuses on the experience of Jews in the Diaspora; she has also worked with Palestinians in Ramallah.<\/p>\n Volker Heins<\/strong> is Professor of Political Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen, member of the Faculty of Social Sciences and fellow at the Institute for Cultural Studies there. He is also Faculty Fellow at the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University. Volker Heins’s research focuses on exile studies, and migration and democracy. Among his recent publications, he is the author of \u201cCan the Refugee Speak? Albert Hirschman and the changing meanings of exile\u201d (Thesis Eleven, no. 158, pp. 42-47). Professor Heins has written this article in conversation with the ideas of Hannah Arendt, in particular with her essay \u201cWe, refugees,\u201d and with the work of Judith Shklar.<\/p>\n Yevgeniy Fiks<\/strong> is a Jewish-Russian refugee artist, who is based in New York City. He was raised in Moscow, where he started his artistic education as a social realist painter and continued his studies in the US. In 1994 he migrated to the US, becoming part of more diasporas: queer, Russian and Jewish. His work draws on his experience as a political exile and as a member of the LGBQT community. Yevgeniy Fiks is particularly interested in exploring queerness from an exilic perspective.<\/p>\n Kader Konuk<\/strong> is Professor and Head of Turkish Studies at the University of Duisburg-Essen; she is also Director of the Academy in Exile. In her book East West Mimesis: Auerbach in Turkey (Stanford University Press 2010), Professor Konuk discusses the experience of reciprocity in exile, in the case of German-Jewish emigration to Turkey. With Vanessa Agnew and Jane O. Newman, she has co-edited a book Refugee Routes: Telling, Looking, Protesting, Redressing. Kader Konuk was Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan.<\/p>\n Conveners:<\/strong><\/p>\n The conveners of this seminar are Professor Pawel Leszkowicz<\/strong> and Dr. habil. Tomasz Kitlinski<\/strong>, who are authors, academics, and queerfeminist activists from Poland, in exile in Berlin. Tomasz is a\u00a0member of the Academy in Exile and the New University in Exile Consortium. He studied with H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Cixous and Julia Kristeva in Paris. Pawel conducted research at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. They were both Fulbright scholars at The New School in New York. An installation on the Holocaust at Lublin\u2019s Hospitality Festival, curated by Kitlinski, and his protests against xeno- and homophobia made it impossible for him to remain in Lublin.<\/p>\n Acknowledgements:<\/strong><\/p>\n We would like to thank Professor Judith Friedlander for her editing\u00a0the English of our announcement. This seminar is indebted to Professors Arien Mack, Kader Konuk, and Elzbieta Matynia, who have for years rescued scholars-refugees. The help with our\u00a0webinar of Dr Sabine Vosskamp, Miriam Wienhold, Helena Rose, and last\u00a0but not least Emily Beyer is much appreciated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":7254,"template":"","event_category":[511,460],"class_list":["post-7167","veranstaltung","type-veranstaltung","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","event_category-angst","event_category-events-in-english"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kulturwissenschaften.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/veranstaltung\/7167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kulturwissenschaften.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/veranstaltung"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kulturwissenschaften.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/veranstaltung"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kulturwissenschaften.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kulturwissenschaften.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"event_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kulturwissenschaften.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/event_category?post=7167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}