Deutsches Haus at NYU and Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU present "Berlin Asian Diaspora Anthology Project" a public lecture and conversation with Selma Siew Li Bidlingmaier, DAAD Visiting Scholar and postdoc researcher and teaching fellow at the American Studies Department, Humboldt University Berlin and Feng-Mei Heberer, Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at NYU. The talk will introduce the nascent Berlin Asian Diaspora Anthology Project and discusses the goals, methods, mediums, as well as challenges facing this endeavor.
Contemporary public (his)stories of East, South, and South East Asians in Germany often tend to locate the community within disparate migratory “moments”, particularly during the Cold War and the postwar era. The Vietnamese being the largest “Asian” community in Germany are most visible in public discourses. The history of GDR guest workers (“Gastarbeiter”), and refugees who came during the Vietnam War are well documented, often telling larger histories of Germany’s postwar geopolitical positionality and role. However, due to varying reasons, little attention is given to other diasporas such as the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Pakistani, Thai, and Filipinx. The histories of interconnections between the various diasporas that began as early as the 19th leaves a gap not only within the histories of Asians in Germany but also the historiography of Germany as a nation.
In 2020, as Covid raged around the world, anti-Asian racism and hate crimes soared in the US, Canada, and Europe. Asians were once again pitted as the perpetual foreigner and discourses of race and disease regained political and social currency. The Berlin Asian Diaspora Anthology Project emerged during this period to address hegemonic ideologies of Asian foreignness in Berlin and in Germany. The main goal of this project is to collect and publish forgotten cultural works by the Asian diaspora including literature, correspondences, photographs, archival material that establishes these communities’ long presence in Berlin and Germany.
To RSVP for in-person attendance, please click here.
Composite Image Photo Credits:
Yoko Tawada “Three Streets”, Storybook, New Directions, NY, 2022.
Yoko Tawada “Talisman”, Konkursbuch, Tübingen, 1996.
Han Sen “Ein Chinese mit dem Kontrabass”, List Taschenbuch, München 2001.
Topçu, Özlem, Alice Bota, und Khuê Pham, “Wir Neuen Deutschen”, Rowohlt, Hamburg, 2012.
Khuê Pham, “Wo auch Immer Ihr Seid”, btb/Penguin Random House, München, 2021.
About the participants:
Selma Siew Li Bidlingmaier is a postdoc researcher and teaching fellow at the American Studies Department, Humboldt University Berlin. Within the field of cultural history and literature, her research focuses on the history of urban planning, ecocriticism, the environment and decoloniality, and the intimacies of Asian diaspora in the US, Europe, and South East Asia. She is currently writing a book on the influence of eugenics and euthenics on New York City’s urban planning during the Progressive Era.
Feng-Mei Heberer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies. She is also a faculty affiliate of the department’s Asian Film and Media Initiative. Her research interests lie at the junctures of labor, transnational migration, and Asian diaspora, and her work draws heavily on the insights of ethnic studies, queer studies, feminist studies, and critical area studies. Heberer is the author of Asians on Demand: Mediating Race in Video Art and Activism (University of Minnesota Press, 2023). The book explores a multilingual archive of contemporary queer and feminist videos by Asian diasporans in North America, Europe, and East Asia. It grapples with the pressing question how media representation can critique and advance social justice for racialized minorities in the wake of today’s unprecedented rise of onscreen diversity.
Attendance:
While NYU has ended COVID-19 related restrictions and policies, we continue to remind and recommend to members of the NYU community that they stay up-to-date on their boosters and stay home if they feel sick. Masks are always welcome.
To RSVP for in-person attendance, please click here.
"Berlin Asian Diaspora Anthology Project: A Conversation with Selma Siew Li Bidlingmaier" is funded by the DAAD from funds of the German Federal Foreign Office (AA).
