USB Journals (Univ. Köln)
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“I understand the culture. So, I understand who is lying” – Language and cultural mediators as brokers and para-ethnologists
Get PDFThe increasing linguistic and ethnic diversity in Germany due to growing numbers of refugees and asylum seekers presents state authorities in particular with challenges. How do they deal with situations of multilingualism? A look at the interactions of state officers and their increasingly diverse clientele illustrates the crucial underlying difference in language. To interpret different languages, and moreover to translate different normative ideas in everyday interactions, numerous institutions and state authorities rely on the support of a group that describes itself as language and cultural mediators, most of whom have bicultural backgrounds. Their translating services appear crucial for mutual understanding between the state officials and their clients; and therefore, for the whole functioning of bureaucratic processes.
This paper is based on my recent explorative fieldwork on language and cultural mediators in two German federal states. In the course of my research, I visited three social associations that offer language and cultural mediation and interviewed different language mediators as well as authorities, who had already used these or other language mediation institutions. Moreover, I took part in a three-day training course for interpreters and tried to shadow and accompany language mediators in their job, as often I could
Frontmatter and Editorial
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the editorial:
gender forum started out almost 20 years ago. Since then, it has turned into a vibrant medium of excellent research and expanded its scope in innovative ways. At its launch in 2002 gender forum was the first English-language academic e-journal in gender studies in Germany. Founded and based at the University of Cologne our peer-reviewed open-access journal has been dedicated to the international and interdisciplinary discussion of gender issues, with a strong focus on literature/media and cultural studies in the anglophone world, and on theoretical perspectives in the field. Throughout our mission always aimed at widening the scope to explore transdisciplinary intersections highlighting gender issues in a wide range of areas from politics to social and religious institutions, from criminal justice to health care systems
Die Herleitung der Regel zur Bruchdivision – revisited
No full textDer Diskurs zur Frage der Herleitung der Regel zur Bruchdivision sowie die Entwicklung von Unterrichtsvorschlägen dazu wurde bis in die 1980er-Jahre geführt. Demgegenüber ist erkennbar, dass sich aktuelle Schulbücher überwiegend nicht an diesem Diskursstand orientieren. Gleichzeitig fällt auf, dass sich die Einschätzung von Lehrkräften zur Frage nach der Praktikabilität der angebotenen Wege in der Forschungsliteratur nicht wiederfindet. Die Zielsetzung dieses Beitrags ist eine erneute und vertiefte Betrachtung der Bruchdivision mit Blick auf die Herleitung der Regel zur Bruchdivision („Kehrwertregel“). Dabei werden sowohl die Fähigkeiten und Vorstellungen von Schüler:innen als auch die Perspektiven von Lehrkräften berücksichtigt. Dieser umfassende Blick auf das Thema dient der konstruktiven Wendung im Sinne einer sich empirisch vergewissernden, konstruktiven Stoffdidaktik
‘A Little Bit Married’ while Black: A Personal and Political Meditation on Marriage, Single Adulthood and Relationship Literacy
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the article:
The 2015 Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges affirmed the equal right of all citizens to marry. However, in the wake of subsequent events such as the Orlando massacre, the election of socially conservative legislative majorities in Washington and in state capitals, and the elevation of a high-profile opponent of marriage equality to the vice presidency (Mike Pence), it becomes clearer that the 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges established a legal framework for ending discrimination in marriage law, but culturally contested questions as to what marriage means remain to be grappled with in many other contexts. This includes attitudinal gaps in the acceptance of marriage equality within public opinion after the 2016 election. Among so-called “values voters” – white religious conservatives that tend to oppose marriage equality – a preference was expressed for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton by a margin of 81% to 16%, a higher margin than that of Mitt Romney, John McCain, or George W. Bush over their socially more liberal opponents (Smith and Martinez). Gaps in acceptance of same-sex marriage in the 2010s by age, region, religion, and other factors echo the measurable but uneven shifts in public acceptance of interracial marriages after the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case, and it is noted that fifty years after that decision, racial homogeny “is still the norm for intimate relationships today” (Toledo 775). These findings remind us that while a landmark court case may remove legal prohibitions, such legal changes do not “eradicate the forces motivating those barriers” (Toledo 772). Those forces include stereotyping, social shaming, and institutional discrimination that stigmatize relationships which appear to fall outside of heteronormative frameworks
Re/calling Scheherazad: Voicing Agency in Mohja Kahf’s Poetry
No full textIn her collection of spoken word poetry entitled Emails from Scheherazad, Syrian American poet, Mohja Kahf, invokes the orality of Scheherazad’s storytelling to voice her agency and dispel perceived silences about Muslim women. Kahf uses the role of storyteller to strengthen discussion of misunderstood subjects like violence, desire, passion, and sex, perceived as “off limits” to Muslim women. Conducting an autobiographical reading of Kahf’s poetry, I assert that her writing comes from a personal place, infused with anecdotes from her own life experiences. In surveying Mohja Kahf’s inclusion of the autobiographical voice in her poetry, it becomes clear the author pushes the boundary of the autobiographical ‘I’ to include additional voices and vantage points, such as the third person perspective, in the sphere of life writing. Whether cast in a classroom, a PTA meeting, or in the bathroom of Sears, Kahf’s poetic subjects illuminate their simultaneous maneuvering of Muslim and Syrian traditions against an American backdrop. To read her poetry in a political light, Mohja Kahf’s Emails from Scheherazad becomes a creative, autobiographical work that uses hybridity – both in genre and identity- to humanize American Muslims. This article, therefore, traces the motif of storytelling in Emails from Scheherazad to determine how in autobiographical poetics, the author rejects Islamophobic critics through reclaiming one’s own story. Drawing on Arab American studies scholars like Steven Salaita, Leila Ahmed, Waïl Hassan, and Nouri Gana and fusing their criticisms with research conducted by autobiographical studies scholars like Sidonie Smith, Julia Watson, and Nawar al-Hassan Golley, this article bridges gaps between Middle Eastern literary studies and autobiographical studies. In doing so, it illustrates the way in which Kahf challenges discriminatory attitudes against Muslims as she stitches American Muslims into the fabric of ethnic American literature
Review: “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo”
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first pragraph of the review:
First published to Youtube on January 4, 2016, and later in the inaugural Digital Creators Program at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival, “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo” soon became a queer audience favorite. Since premiering, the series has earned a nomination for a Gotham Independent Film Award and garnered over 400,000 Youtube views of its pilot episode (Dry). “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo” quickly proved itself to be the type of eccentric queer content that a digital audience craves
Power, Consent, and The Body: #MeToo and The Handmaid’s Tale
No full textFeminist rhetorics have long been concerned with interrupting power, questioning norms, and challenging the status quo. First-wave feminists concerned themselves with not only women’s suffrage, but also with the ways in which women were portrayed in cinema and other media. We believe critical attention must continue to be paid to the relationship between media and contemporary protest. As Simone de Beauvoir writes, “It would appear...that every female human being is not necessarily a woman; to be so considered she must share in that mysterious and threatened reality known as femininity” (253). Now, more than ever, women’s concerns with rape culture, sexual assault, and sexism are making their way into public discourse. While the #MeToo movement has been a critical point of activism both on the ground and online, another axis from which women are questioning the normalization and silencing of sexual violence against women has been through television. One of the most prolific outlets has been the television series adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which showcases the ways in which women struggle within power structures surrounding consent and the body. While Atwood’s novel was published in 1985, in the midst of second-wave feminism, and while Atwood was living in West Berlin, surrounded by the Berlin Wall (Field), the 2017 adaptation of the text, for which Atwood is a producer, is a timely response to contemporary feminist concerns.
In this article, we unpack the ways in which The Handmaid’s Tale provides a dystopic articulation of rape culture in the United States. While we relate some of the dis/connections between Margaret Atwood’s novel and its televisual articulation, we foremost discuss the ways in which the adaptation uses ritualized rape to challenge the normalization of sexual assault and sexism in American politics, law, education, and family life. Drawing on the dialectic between the #MeToo movement and the series, we discuss the ways in which contemporary protest and feminist activism has integrated key terms and concepts that draw our attention to power, consent, and the body. Feminist narratologist Susan S. Lanser argues that narratives, text-based and otherwise, must be analyzed within the social context in which, and for whom, they were produced: “[T]he authority of a given voice or text is produced from a conjunction of social and rhetorical properties. Discursive authority… is produced interactively; it must therefore be characterized with respect to specific receiving communities” (6). Drawing from feminist narratology, we dissect the rhetoric of ritual to discuss how The Handmaid’s Tale has become a critical counterpart to what has otherwise been conceptualized as a social media-driven fourth wave
Trolling Humanism: New Materialist Performativity in Border
No full textDirector Ali Abbasi’s film Border (2018; Swedish: Gräns) contributes to new materialism’s ontological and ethical reconsiderations of matter, which call for new cultural imaginaries that equipoise the concerns of interdependently connected humans and nonhumans. This essay examines Border as a new materialist intervention in debates about the meaning and ethics of care in a more-than-human world. The essay also gestures toward how works of representation may contribute to new materialist inquiry, pointing toward underexplored archives by highlighting the multimodal forms through which theoretical inquiry may take place. I argue that Border’s articulation of care work does more than represent material entanglements; it also redefines human responsibility for a posthuman age, one of the most pressing tasks of recent research in new materialism
Review: Drude Dahlerup: Has Democracy Failed Women?
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
In recent years, researches have been conducted from different perspectives—such as cultural differences, economic influences, and institutional policies—to investigate the existing obstacles limiting women’s participation and leadership in political institutions and organizations worldwide (Thames and Williams 3). There are numerous research literature tackling the topic on the representation of women in politics: for instance, Women, Politics, and Power: A Global Perspective by Pamela Paxton and Melanie M. Hughes has a broad discussion on all factors relating to the political representation of women and presents regional studies on women in political institutions around the globe; Contagious Representation: Women’s Political Representation in Democracies around the World by Frank C. Thames and Margaret S. Williams explains the contagious influences of women’s political participation on both institutional and societal levels; and Torild Skard’s Women of Power: Half a Century of Female Presidents and Prime Ministers Worldwide gives regional analyses and case studies of women’s political leadership in national institutions. Contributing to the research on women and institutional policies, Drude Dahlerup’s Has Democracy Failed Women focuses on political institution per se with a global perspective and critically engages with the disconnection between women and political institutions both on national and international levels. In particular, Dahlerup investigates how the traditions and policies in political institutions and organizations have resulted in women’s underrepresentation in the political field, why it is of great significance to promote gender equality by adopting gender quotas and women-friendly policies, and what difference can be made in policy-making if national and international political institutions and organizations become more gender-balanced. Moreover, apart from the analysis on political governance, the scope of this book extends further to address women’s representation and perspectives with regard to economic governance and peace-building in transnational or international organizations (121-34)
Review: Seyran Ateş: Selam, Frau Imamin. Wie ich in Berlin eine liberale Moschee gründete
No full textIn lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph of the review:
By asking these questions, Seyran Ateş publicly expressed her disappointment with the German Left in the popular Austrian political TV talk-show Talk im Hangar 7, titled Ist der Islam noch zu retten? (Is it possible to save Islam?, my translation) that aired in 2017. Ateş, a well-known human rights lawyer and female Imam, had recently founded the Ibn Rushd-Goethe mosque in Berlin, which is the only self-described ‘liberal’ mosque in Germany. It is important to add here that the adjective ‘liberal’ in reference to Islamic places of worship or Islamic movements is a rather vague description, given the fact that many Muslims claim this attribute for their specific religious orientation. Ateş’s definition of ‘liberal’ implies – based on her claims made in Selam, Frau Imamin. Wie ich in Berlin eine liberale Moschee gründete (2017) (Selam, Mrs. Imam. How I Founded a Liberal Mosque in Berlin, my translation) – that the Ibn-Rushd-Goethe mosque serves as a counter-model to a place of worship where women and man are strictly separated. Moreover, women are encouraged to lead prayers and head coverings are not mandatory. In the spirit of building bridges between Muslim and non-Muslim cultures, Ateş explains that the mosque is purposely named after medieval Andalusian-Arabic polymath Ibn Rushd and German writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Both are representatives of, in many ways, avant-garde thinking in different times and cultures. People of all genders, sexual orientations and religious denominations are welcome to visit the mosque and partake in the ceremonies