How do literary texts from the 18th to the 21st centuries present the refugee experience and the confrontation with refugees? How does German literature of the 20th century deal with questions of belonging to a community? How does literature reflect concepts of nation and nationality and the problem of statelessness? What is the role of themes such as 'documents', 'borders', 'language', 'objects', 'waiting'? The course has two parts which can be taken independently.
We will discuss literary texts by authors such as J.W. Goethe, Solomon Maimon, Kurt Tucholsky, Bertolt Brecht, Joseph Roth, Anna Seghers, Peter Weiss, W.G. Sebald, Jenny Erpenbeck, and others; image/text forms such as “Ellis Island Revisited” by Robert Bober and George Perec; films, e.g. Charlie Chaplin’s “The Immigrant”; and theoretical essays by Georg Simmel, Hannah Arendt, and Vilèm Flusser.
Some of the texts have been translated into Hebrew, almost all are available in English.
We will discuss literary texts by authors such as J.W. Goethe, Solomon Maimon, Kurt Tucholsky, Bertolt Brecht, Joseph Roth, Anna Seghers, Peter Weiss, W.G. Sebald, Jenny Erpenbeck, and others; image/text forms such as “Ellis Island Revisited” by Robert Bober and George Perec; films, e.g. Charlie Chaplin’s “The Immigrant”; and theoretical essays by Georg Simmel, Hannah Arendt, and Vilèm Flusser.
Some of the texts have been translated into Hebrew, almost all are available in English.
- Teacher: Brigit Ardel