"Violence Elsewhere" Blog
The research project “Violence Elsewhere”: Imagining Violence Outside Germany since 1945 brings together researchers from a variety of different disciplines and international institutions. Each of them brings to the project their own understanding of “Violence Elsewhere” and how it relates to their work. This blog is intended to give them and their colleagues a forum to elaborate on the significance and relevance of “Violence Elsewhere”, and to present their research to audiences beyond the project’s workshops and conference.
In addition to that, this blog allows us to deepen and extend the project beyond the academic sphere by giving space and time to voices that otherwise would not have found their way into the project, but whose perspectives expand and enrich our understanding of “Violence Elsewhere”.
On 3 December 2020, members of our research project participated in a screening of the documentary film Die Arier/The Aryans (2014) and a virtual Q&A with its creator and director, Mo Asumang. In this written exchange, Francesca Lewis and Kathrin Wunderlich, both of whom worked as Project Coordinators on the Violence Elsewhere Project, discuss the event and their own responses to the documentary.
Lizzie Stewart, Benedict Schofield and Beni Atanasov from King's College, London take an in-depth look at "Violence Elsewhere" in Kathrin Röggla's really ground zero and Nachtsendung.
Dr. Steffen Hendel published his first monograph on the wars in Yugoslavia in German literature. His findings are based on analyses of more than 80 texts. In this interview, he discusses the reasons why these conflicts became so important for German politics and culture.
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Dr Katie Stone is an Assistant Professor in German Studies at the University of Warwick and a core researcher with the "Violence Elsewhere" project. In this interview she discusses her recent work on contemporary German-language fiction about the War on Terror. She focuses on the dimensionality of "violence elsewhere" and explores how novels bring together a temporal and geographical "elsewhere" to explore political concepts of apathy and responsibility towards war.
Activist Abdel Amine Mohammed and filmmakers Musquiqui Chiying and Gregor Kasper, the Berlin-based collaborators behind short film Café Togo talk about Berlin's so-called African quarter's relationship with Germany's colonial past and the power of counter-narratives.
Rabab Haider is a Syrian author and translator from Damascus. In this interview she talks about what writing about war means to her, the complications of burning jeans for fuel and explains why sadness can be a luxury to those affected by violence.
Annika Reich is co-founder and artistic director of Weiter Schreiben, a German initiative that offers authors from war and conflict zones a platform to keep writing. In this interview she talks about the project's background and ongoing relevance, the process of writing "violence elsewhere" and the joy found in an Iraqi author's letter to Heinrich Böll.
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