The Persian Approach to Migration in Germany

For the annual conference of the Modern Language Association 2015, January 8-11
in Vancouver, the panel “The Persian Approach to Migration in Germany” invites
papers that address the migration of Iranians to Germany. Many Iranians left their
homeland to the Unite States of America and to Europe after the Islamic
Revolution in 1979. More than thirty years later – after an entire generation –
disciplines as sociology, history and literature turn their views back to the
migration of Iranians and analyze the process of migration with Iranian actors on
the one hand, and the effects and values of migration on the other. The panel “The
Persian Approach to Migration in Germany” is primarily interested in the question
of medial reflections of Iranian migration/migrants, particularly in German culture,
but without excluding the European frame of the process of migration. We welcome
papers that address films and literature that discuss the consequences of
migrations for both societies – for German as well as for Iranian societies. In
today’s social and political debates on the “new” German generation, the question
of “migrant” and “citizen” is still dominant. With respect to German citizenship, it
still seems difficult for German society to recognize social formation and “new”
citizens in Germany in a global age and cross-cultural era. Literary texts of German
authors with Iranian background broach the issue of migration, foreignness,
homeland and language, and discuss those topics in ways not always wholly
congruent with Turkish and Arabic approaches to European migration. The main
goal of this panel would be to question the contextualization of such texts in
contemporary German literature. The panel is also interested in papers that focus
on social and historical debates about migration with specific relation to Iran.
Please send a 250-word abstract and a CV by March 20 to Hamid Tafazoli
([log in to unmask])

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The German Studies Call for Papers List
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