The Diaspora Encounter

New Perspectives in Diasporic Experience

This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2014. Taking a transcultural and interdisciplinary approach to Diaspora studies, New Perspectives in Diasporic Experience offers a wide range of new and challenging perspectives on Diaspora and confirms the relevance of this field to the discussion of contemporary forms of identity construction, movement, settlement, membership and collective identification. This volume investigates constructions of diasporic identity from a variety of temporal and spatial contexts. They explore encounters between diasporic communities and host societies, and examine how diasporic experiences can contribute to perpetuating or challenging normalised perceptions of the Other. The authors discuss how visual and literary representations become an integral part of diasporic experiences and identities. Other themes examined include communities’ attempts to reverse the negative effects of Diaspora and maintain cultural continuity, as well as generational differences and dialogue within the Diaspora, and the power that individuals have to negotiate marginal identities in diasporic settings.

The African Diaspora Experience

Diasporic Encounters in German Social Drama: A Spatial Approach to Representations of the Turkish Diaspora in German Television Films

Contemporary television fictions allow the audience to experience the reality of everyday life in audio-visual spaces. Thus, controversial issues discussed in German society such as homosexuality, racism or ‘clashes of cultures’ are revisited in the social drama films produced for German television through a mixture of generic conventions such as tragedy, thriller and melodrama. Consequently, the audio-visual representations of the people, who are the focus of these discussions, represent an interesting area of research. The book deals with the audio-visual spatiality of the Turkish diaspora in Berlin in three contemporary TV films in this format; namely Wut (Range, dir. Zuli Aladağ, 2006), Die Neue (The Newcomer, dir. Buket Alakuş, 2015) and Nachspielzeit (Extra-Time, dir. Andreas Pieper, 2015). Therewith, it brings a spatial approach to the issue of ‘polemical belonging of the Turkish Diaspora to the German national space’ within the audio-visual context. The proposed spatial approach presents an alternative argument to the assumptions of German politicians, who celebrate ‘a common German history that bases on Christian-Jewish identity, democracy and enlightenment’.