USB Journals (Univ. Köln)
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Frontmatter and Editorial
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the editorial:
With target essays focusing on a wide range of issues from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century colonial historical documents to the discourse of masochism in Austrian nineteenth-century novellas as well as to recent postcolonial American historiographic metafiction, Rac(e)ing Questions II investigates interactions of gender and race in the (post)colonial from interdisciplinary perspectives. It thus continues the examination of gender- and race-biased power relations of Rac(e)ing Questions I in an endeavour to provide a broadened insight into contemporary theoretical approaches to questions of gender and racial difference
Review: Peter Boag: Same-Sex Affairs: Constructing and Controlling Homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest.
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
True to its subtitle, Peter Boag\u27s marvelous study, Same-Sex Affairs, details the myriad shapes of same-sex relationships in the United States\u27 Pacific Northwest as well as how they developed, became defined, were labeled, and, ultimately, how they were controlled. Clearly a labor of love and certainly a research triumph, Boag\u27s book propels the reader through tantalizingly detailed narratives of male-male desires and public response to them in and around Portland, Oregon, during the early part of the twentieth century. Boag has a special talent for making the lives of his subjects leap from the page and for interweaving complex theories of gender and sexuality with specific historical information so that the reader witnesses as philosophy becomes embodied. Among many fresh ideas for understanding same-sex sexuality during the early decades of the twentieth century, Boag\u27s most compelling arguments include his revision of the implications for working-class transgressive sex acts, his determination that the modern, urban-centered, gay identity grew out of the middle class, and his suggestion that Progressive Era attempts to control homosexuality in the Pacific Northwest lay the groundwork for later assays nationwide
More to the Story: Discursive Violence in Aimée and Jaguar
Get PDFThe story of Aimée and Jaguar can be read on multiple levels. Indeed, it comes to us already in two incarnations. Erica Fischer published her novel Aimée and Jaguar: A Love Story, Berlin 1943 in 1994. In 2001, Max Färberböck\u27s movie, Aimée and Jaguar: A Love Greater than Death was released. Though these two different representations reveal oppositional and competing sociological, political, and cultural agendas, what emerges is that there is no ultimate, objective \u27truth.\u27 This story, as is it is told by Fischer and Färberböck, represents lesbianism as a site of resistance to the National Socialist eugenicist agenda. But finally, this story reinscribes the racist and classist dynamics it sets out to critique. What emerges from close readings of both the novel and the film is that non-heteronormative relationships are not inherently revolutionary, but instead often reproduce (whether consciously or not) hegemonic power relations and discursive violence. 
Introduction
Get PDFSpeculative fiction encompasses various types of exploratory genres and media, including science-fiction, fantastic artworks, utopian and dystopian writing, weird fiction and film, as well as post-apocalyptic narratives in literature, on screen, and in video and online games. Depending on their research interests, scholars of speculative fiction across different media have outlined a variety of histories of the genre. Many of the literary texts evoked in these histories combine imaginaries of social and political organization with explorations of gender and issues of violence. For example, Thomas More\u27s Utopia (Lat. 1516, Engl. 1551) imagines a more egalitarian society that nonetheless remains strictly patriarchal. It also imagines a perfect government that ensures prosperity and peace by fighting preventive wars, encouraging (assisted) suicide, administering the death penalty to adulterers, and promoting corporal punishment for unruly women and children. Margaret Cavendish\u27s The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World (1666), a text in which women leaders bring about a utopian society through armed invasion, anticipates late 19th-century feminist utopian visions such as Mary Bradley Lane\u27s Mizora: A Prophecy (1880-81), where women\u27s liberation is achieved through a state-driven biopolitical project of selective reproduction that eradicates both men and racial others. Mary Shelley\u27s gothic novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus (1818) famously examines the gendered implications of creativity, science, and reproduction, but it can also be read as a commentary on different types of gendered violence and how they are perpetuated by formal and informal social institutions such as universities or the nuclear family. In H. G. Well\u27s science fiction classic The Time Machine (1895), to give a final example, human beings have evolved into two separate but co-dependent species: the predatory Morlocks breed and slaughter the gentle Eloi, who no longer present recognizable gender differences, because, as Well\u27s narrator notes, they are kept in a pre-social and pre-political state of abundance in which competition and interpersonal violence is almost nonexistent, a fact that has made a "specialization of the sexes" obsolete
Review of Ecofeminist Science Fiction: International Perspectives on Gender, Ecology and Literature (2021), edited by Douglas A. Vakoch
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the article\u27s introduction:
"Science fiction serves to further valorize science as a tool for domination, not only of Earth but of the fictious worlds beyond” (148), argue Lydia Rose and Teresa M. Bartoli in their contribution to Ecofeminist Science Fiction: International Perspectives on Gender, Ecology and Literature (2021). As Douglas A. Vakoch’s edited collection proves, however, science fiction can also serve as a means to explore alternative—ecofeminist—forms of living. Mainly focusing on debates around technology, gender, and the environment, the 14 contributions to Ecofeminist Science Fiction examine examples of science fiction in literature and on screen.. Each contribution foregrounds “alternative modes to help prevent the replication of oppressive patterns” (113) by presenting analyses whose structuring ideas can be adapted to read materials beyond those discussed in the assembled contributions. Vakoch does not claim to have collected essays that provide a definite reading- or watch-list for scholars interested in ecofeminism and science fiction; rather, the selected essays bring together established and new scholarly perspectives on gender, technology, and the nature/culture binary and offer insights into how discourses and debates surrounding this set of topics are projected into different, sometimes posthuman futures. The articles are clustered into four sections, whose titles do not always indicate precisely what the essays have in common. The essays differ in quality, some would have benefitted from more thorough editing. Still, Vakoch has delivered an intriguing volume on science fiction for the series Routledge Studies in World Literatures and the Environment
Queering Postcolonial Worlds: An Introduction
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The ensemble of cultural, literary, and theoretical representations engaged with throughout this issue are based on presentations given at the Postgraduate Forum of the German Association of Anglophone and Postcolonial Studies (GAPS), which we—the guest editors of this issue—co-organized in October 2023 at the University of Bremen. The creative works examined here present the world “slantwise” in how they articulate queer, postcolonial relations and conditions in different ways (cf. also Buckley and Ilott 1). In their (re-)orientations toward institutionalized religion, temporality, space, legal frameworks, and colonial legacies, these cultural productions reflect, and facilitate reflection on, how we situate ourselves in our multifaceted worlds. In doing so, they begin to challenge how ostensibly postcolonial worlds intersect with queer subjectivities and the plurality of queer experiences. Indeed, Ahmed posits that “different orientations, different ways of directing one’s desires, means inhabiting different worlds” (86). Alongside and in dialogue with the contributors to this special issue, we ask: What worlds are opened up at the nexus of postcoloniality and queerness? How do the histories and legacies of colonialism inform genealogies of queer writing? In what ways do contemporary queer cultural productions “queer” established postcolonial frameworks? And where do we find queer orientations in postcolonial cultural productions
Queer Diasporic Forms: A Conversation with Logan February
Get PDFThe following interview with poet and artist Logan February is part of a special issue on “Queering Postcolonial Worlds,” which explores the overlaps and intersections between queer studies and postcolonial studies, particularly as they emerge in contemporary global anglophone literature. The conversation took place on May 3, 2024, in Münster, Germany and is a continuation of a dialogue that began with a public reading and discussion of Logan’s poetry on April 30, 2024, at the University of Münster. During the reading, we explored topics such as translation, queer representation, family, and spirituality. Our questions center around Logan’s poetry collection Mental Voodoo, which was published in 2024 by Engeler Verlag in a bilingual English/German format, probing the ways poetry can be a form for representing and giving shape to queer diasporic themes. Logan’s responses touch on their experiences in Nigeria, the United States, and most recently, in Berlin, Germany, as a literature fellow at the DAAD Artists-in-Residence program
L’origine et la signification du glossonyme lingala
Get PDFCet article démontre que le nom lingála ou mangála[1] que l’on utilise comme glossonyme est une forme raccourcie ou une expression elliptique de mangála má libɔkɔ ou parfois, lingála lí mabɔkɔ qui signifie « le langage des marchés » en bobangi. Le nom lingála ou mangála, en soi, signifie « le langage » ou « le jargon » pendant que libɔkɔ signifie « le grand marché ». Le présent travail démontre les limites des autres hypothèses sur l’origine du nom de la langue qui ont été suggérées dans la littérature, à savoir: (i) le glossonyme lingala ne peut provenir de l’ethnonyme bangala, car le peuple Bangála n’a jamais existé; (ii) le nom li-ngála/ma-ngála ne peut non plus provenir du nom mongálá signifiant le bras de rivière. Il s’agit de deux racines complètement différentes et avec les tons différents en bobangi; et enfin, (iii) la désignation de la langue avec le préfixe li- (li-ngála) ne pourrait être une invention des missionnaires catholiques, car la langue ou jargon s’appelait déjà soit, le bobangi, le mangala ou le lingala avant la colonisation. Ce travail s’appuie sur la sociolinguistique historique ainsi que la grammaire du bobangi et du lingala pour expliquer l’origine et la signification du glossonyme. Il rend compte de comment les Africains nommaient cette langue avant les divers glossonymes proposés par les Européens.In diesem Artikel wird argumentiert, dass die Namen Lingála oder Mangála, die als Glossonyme verwendet werden, Kurzformen oder elliptische Ausdrücke von mangála má libɔkɔ, oder manchmal lingála lí mabɔkɔ sind, die in Bobangi „die Sprache der Märkte“ bedeuten. Die Namen Lingála oder Mangála bedeuten an sich „Sprache“ oder „Jargon“ und libɔkɔ bedeutet „großer Markt“. In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden die Grenzen alternativer Hypothesen aufgezeigt, die in der Literatur vorgeschlagen wurden, nämlich (i) dass das Glossonym Lingala vom Ethnonym Bangala abstammen könnte (falsch, da das Volk der Bangála nie existiert hat), (ii) dass die Namen li-ngála/ma-ngála vom Substantiv mongálá abstammen, das „der Arm des Flusses“ bedeutet: mongálá und ma-ngála enthalten in Bobangi zwei völlig unterschiedliche Wurzeln mit unterschiedlichen Tönen, oder schließlich (iii) dass die Bezeichnung der Sprache mit der Vorsilbe li- (li-ngála) eine Erfindung katholischer Missionare war: Das kann nicht sein, denn die betreffende Sprache oder der betreffende Jargon wurde bereits vor der Kolonisierung entweder Bobangi, Mangala oder Lingala genannt.
Diese Arbeit stützt sich auf die historische Soziolinguistik sowie die Grammatik von Bobangi und Lingala, um den Ursprung und die Bedeutung des Glossonyms zu erklären. Es wird dargelegt, wie die Afrikaner diese Sprache genannt haben, bevor die Europäer verschiedene Glossonyme dafür erarbeitet haben.This article argues that the names Lingála or Mangála, used as glossonyms, are short-forms or elliptical expressions of mangála má libɔkɔ, or sometimes lingála lí mabɔkɔ, which mean ‘the language of markets’ in Bobangi. The names Lingála or Mangála, in themselves, mean ‘language’ or ‘jargon’ and libɔkɔ means ‘big market’. The present work establishes the limits of alternative hypotheses that have been suggested in the literature, namely (i) that the glossonym Lingala may come from the ethnonym Bangala: erroneous because the Bangála people never existed), (ii) that the names li-ngála/ma-ngála come from the noun mongálá meaning ‘the arm of the river’: mongálá and ma-ngála contain two completely different roots and with different tones in Bobangi, or finally (iii) that the designation of the language with the prefix li- (li-ngála) was an invention of Catholic missionaries: this cannot be, because the language or jargon in question was already called either Bobangi, Mangala or Lingala before colonization. This work draws on historical sociolinguistics as well as the grammar of Bobangi and Lingala to explain the origin and meaning of the glossonym. It gives an account of how Africans named this language before the various glossonyms proposed by Europeans
Game Based Learning und Serious-Game-Entwicklung in einem interdisziplinären, projektbasierten Kooperationsseminar
Get PDFDer Beitrag plädiert am Beispiel eines Pilotprojekts dafür, Game Based Learning in einer Kombination der Perspektiven professioneller Spiele-Entwicklung und fachlich wie wissenschaftlich fundierter Didaktik zu gestalten – auch im Rahmen der Lehrkräfte- sowie berufsbezogenen Hochschulbildung. Dazu stellt der Beitrag zuerst kurz die curricularen Ausbildungen von angehenden Game Designer*innen an der Hochschule Macromedia Leipzig und von Lehramtsstudierenden an der Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg vor. Diese führten Dozierende in einem interinstitutionellen Joint Venture im Sommer 2022 mit einem gemeinsamen Seminar zusammen. Die didaktische Konzeption zielte dabei auf die multiprofessionelle Kooperation der Studierenden, die in Kleingruppen anspruchsvolle Serious Games für den Unterricht gestalteten. Die Ergebnisse bestätigen, dass eine hochschulische Lehrkräftebildung, die nicht nur auf digitale Tools für den schulischen Lehrbetrieb ausgerichtet ist, sondern kollaborative Entwicklungsarbeit an eigenen Serious-Games-Projekten unterstützt, die (lernspiel-)didaktischen und (Selbst-)Lernkompetenzen sowie die Medienkompetenzen künftiger Lehrkräfte zu steigern vermag.
Abstract (english):
The article advocates for designing game-based learning through a combination of perspectives from professional game development and pedagogically as well as scientifically grounded didactics, using a pilot project as an example. This approach is also applicable within the context of teacher education and vocational higher education. To illustrate this, the article first briefly introduces the curricula for prospective game designers at the Macromedia University of Applied Sciences Leipzig and for student teachers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. In the summer of 2022, instructors brought these groups together in an inter-institutional joint venture through a shared seminar. The didactic concept aimed at fostering multiprofessional cooperation among the students, who worked in small groups to design sophisticated serious games for use in the classroom. The results confirm that teacher education at the university level, which not only focuses on digital tools for school instruction but also supports collaborative development of serious games projects, can enhance future teachers\u27 didactic and (self-)learning competencies, as well as their media literacy