Deutsches Haus at NYU presents a conversation among Hengameh Yaghoobifarah, Sharon Dodua Otoo, Sasha Marianna Salzmann, and Jon Cho-Polizzi, which will be moderated by Tiffany Florvil to celebrate the digital publication of the English-language translation of Your Homeland Is Our Nightmare with TRANSIT Journal.

Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum (Ullstein Verlag), edited by Fatma Aydemir and Hengameh Yaghoobifarah, appeared in Germany on February 22, 2019 – the one-year anniversary of the Interior Minister, Horst Seehofer, renaming the German Ministry of the Interior as the “Heimatministerium” (Homeland Ministry) for short.

The introduction of the controversial term Heimat prompted the 14 essays that comprise Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum. In this collective work, the authors ask the reader to ask themselves: Do I want to live in a society oriented around völkisch, racist, antisemitic, sexist, heteronormative, and trans-antagonistic structures?

Our moderated panel will revisit this important question from the perspective of 2022 and also in the context of a new German coalition government (which coincidentally has chosen to retain the name of the Homeland Ministry.)

About the panelists:

Tiffany N. Florvil is an Associate Professor of 20th century European Women’s and Gender History at the University of New Mexico. She specializes in the histories of post-1945 Europe, the African/Black diaspora, and social movements, as well as Black internationalism. She has published pieces in the Journal of Civil and Human Rights and The German Quarterly.

Sharon Dodua Otoo is an author and a political activist. She writes prose and essays and is editor of the English-language book series “Witnessed” (edition assemblage). In 2017 her first novellas “the things i am thinking while smiling politely” and “Synchronicity” were republished in German translation by S. Fischer Verlag.

Jon Cho-Polizzi is an educator and freelance literary translator. He studied Literature, History, and Translation Studies in Santa Cruz and Heidelberg, before receiving his PhD in German and Medieval Studies at UC Berkeley. Jon was managing editor for Berkeley's TRANSIT Journal, and recently guest-edited the Homeland special volume of the journal containing English translations of the 2019 collection Eure Heimat is unser Albtraum.

Sasha Marianna Salzmann is a playwright, novelist, curator and director. They were the co-founder of the culture magazine freitext and the artistic director of STUDIO Я. Their theatric work is translated, shown and awarded in over 20 countries. 2017 Salzmann finished their first novel, Beside Myself, which is translated into 16 languages and won two major German awards for best debut novel.

Hengameh Yaghoobifarah, born in 1991 in Kiel, studied Media and Cultural Studies and Scandinavian Studies in Freiburg and Linköping. After a while living in Vienna, they moved to Berlin in 2014, where they has been working as an editor for Missy Magazine ever since. Hengameh Yaghoobifarah is also a freelance writer for German media outlets, for example the Habibitus column for the taz newspaper.

“Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum / Your Homeland is our Nightmare” is funded by the DAAD from funds of the German Federal Foreign Office (AA).

Location & Time

Virtual

Fri, February 11, 2022, 3:00 PM – 4:30 PM EST

Please rgister here.