Migration is not just a matter of people moving from one place to another: the climate, capital, words and languages are all integral to it, both as agents of movement and as its objects. This half-day, bi-lingual conference with workshop discussion will shed light on some of the ways in which migration is entangled with literature and language, climate, and industrialization. Remote only; partly in English and partly in German.

December 4, 2021

9:00 – 9:10 (CST) / 16.00 – 16.10 (MEZ): 

David Martyn and Christiane Frey: Einführung (in German)

9:10 – 10:00 (CST) / 16.10 – 17.00 (MEZ): 

Kyung-Ho Cha (Germanistik, Universität Bayreuth): “Borderland Europa. Die Dialektik der Migration im Diskurs über Europa” (in German)

Hanna M. Hofmann (Germanistik, RWTH Aachen): Respondenz (in German)

Der Vortrag widmet sich Yoko Tawadas poetischer Konstruktion eines mehrsprachigen Europas, das in ihren Texten als ein Grenzraum erscheint, der durch die Migration der Sprachen entsteht. 

10:00 – 10:45 (CST) / 17.00 – 17.45 (MEZ): Workshop with Thomas Nail (Philosophy, Univ. of Denver) and students of the sponsoring universities on his The Figure of the Migrant (Stanford Univ. Press 2015) (in English)

11:00 – 11:45 (CST) / 18.00 – 18.45 (MEZ):

Thomas Nail (Philosophy, University of Denver): “The Climate Migration Industrial Complex” (in English)

The past two decades have seen the rise of an increasingly powerful global climate-security market designed to profit from the ever-recurring flows of migrants. We are witnessing the emergence of what we might call a “climate-migration-industrial complex.”

A transatlantic cooperation between Macalester College and RWTH University Aachen with support from a Mellon Foundation grant. Organized by David Martyn and Christiane Frey.

Registration Link: https://macalester.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMpdu6rqTIrHdbLzPOb77FZH7hHRWBaN_Lh

Please direct questions to martyn@macalester.edu or c.frey@germlit.rwth-aachen.de