Tuesday, October 5, 2010

YSN Inaugural Workshop: Transcending Diaspora: Whiteness, Performativity and the Politics of the Body

The inaugural workshop of the DFG Young Scholars Network “Black Diaspora and Germany“ will take place in Muenster, Germany on December 3-4, 2010. It will address the potential and limitations of current conceptualizations of diaspora as a category of analysis and identity construction in the German context.
It is the two-fold aim of the workshop to, first, question and re-evaluate the suitability of the terminology of a ‘Black diaspora’ in the case of Germany and to determine the factors that differentiate the Black diaspora from other collective identities. Second, theoretical approaches in current Black diaspora scholarship that have so far been neglected will be further developed and empirically substantiated. Based on specific case studies, the concept of diaspora will be located within the force field of nationality, transnationality, and ethnicity and interrogated as to its transgressive potential. Exemplary studies dealing with the interdependencies of the body, politics, ethnicity, culture, the territorial state and deterritorialized identities will illuminate transnational parameters and transcultural practices and deconstruct essentializing definitions of diaspora.
The thematic spectrum of the workshop participants ranges from counterhegemonic approaches rooted in critical whiteness studies over analyses of the performativity of diaspora to aspects of body history that understands physical as well as imagined bodies as arenas of power and discursive conflict.

The Workshop is organised jointly
by Christina Oppel, Silke Stroh, Holger Droessler and Frank Mehring

Confirmed Keynote Speakers

Prof. Dr. Tina Campt (Associate Professor of Women's Studies, History and German, Duke University; Visiting Professor of Women's and Africana Studies , Barnard College, Columbia University)

Prof. Dr. Alexander Weheliye (Associate Professor of English, African American Studies, Northwestern University)


Network Participants Presenting at the Workshop

Christina Oppel (English Seminar, WWU Muenster)

Dr. Frank Mehring (JFK Institute, FU Berlin)
Holger Droessler, MA (Harvard / LMU Muenchen)

Dr. Silke Stroh (English Seminar, WWU Muenster)

For further information and conference registration contact the workshop organizers at bdg[ad]uni-muenster.de

1 comment:

smplcv said...

I was too late to come here and missed the workshop, anyways this time i have added this blog to my Google reader


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