Uploaded March 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, IES held a Rapid Response Event to discuss the immediate and long-term consequences of the invasion for NATO and the European Union. IES Director Jeroen Dewulf, IES Associate Director Akasemi Newsome, Sören Urbanksy, Head of Office of the German Historical Institute-Pacific Regional Office, and Zachary Shore, Professor of History at the Naval Postgraduate School and Senior Fellow at IES, analyzed the latest developments and took questions from the audience.
Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, IES held a Rapid Response Event to discuss the immediate and long-term consequences of the invasion for NATO and the European Union. IES Director Jeroen Dewulf, IES Associate Director Akasemi Newsome, Sören Urbanksy, Head of Office of the German Historical Institute-Pacific Regional Office, and Zachary Shore, Professor of History at the Naval Postgraduate School and Senior Fellow at IES, analyzed the latest developments and took questions from the audience.

![Layers of Untold Stories: Sharon Dodua Otoo in Conversation with Jon Cho-Polizzi and Deniz Göktürk
This event is the first in a series of workshop conversations with authors, “Archives of Migration: The Power of Fiction in Times of Fake News” organized by Deniz Göktürk (UC Berkeley, Department of German, Multicultural Germany Project and Transit Journal) and Elisabeth Krimmer (UC Davis, German Department, Migration and Aesthetics Project). The series engages in conversation with contemporary writers who bring diverse perspectives to questions of societal polarization and the power of poetic imagination. Their work in German resonates with readers around the globe. Multilingual archives of migration, both virtual and physical, feed into their processes of writing and translation. Conversations focus on the possibilities of crafting and reading border-crossing stories that are not contained in national history books. As nation-states around the globe are reinforcing their borders, how do writers and readers of fiction interface with governmental bureaucracy and violence? What can be the role of literature in our era of infotainment where fake news spreads like wildfire in the filter bubbles of social media? Has post-modern enlightenment skepticism laid the ground for the current suspension of reason in favor of belief? Can speculative fiction open up new, more hopeful horizons? Conversations in this series will address such questions based on readings.
Author and activist Sharon Dodua Otoo was born in London in 1972. She first moved to Germany in 1992. Otoo is engaged with the Initiative of Black People in Germany and Phoenix e.V. and edits the English-language literary series “Witnessed” with Edition Assemblage. After publishing her first two Berlin-based novellas in English, she began publishing in German, winning the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2016 with her short story Herr Gröttrup setzt sich hin [Herr Gröttrup Sits Down]. Her first novel Adas Raum [Ada’s Realm], which fleshes out a character from that story, will be published by S. Fischer Verlag in February 2021.
Jon Cho-Polizzi is an educator and freelance literary translator. With a background in Literature, History, and Translation Studies, he received his PhD in German and Medieval Studies from UC Berkeley in 2020.
Deniz Göktürk is Professor of German at the University of California, Berkeley
The “Archives of Migration” series is supported by the German Consulate in San Francisco and is co-sponsored by the Pacific Regional Office of the German Historical Institute Washington and the Institute of European Studies at UC Berkeley. Layers of Untold Stories: Sharon Dodua Otoo in Conversation with Jon Cho-Polizzi and Deniz Göktürk](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qhmmkRY42gw/mqdefault.jpg)




![Homeland as Nightmare
Published in early 2019, the intersectional essay collection Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum brought together fourteen contemporary German-language authors to present their individual perspectives on the concept of Heimat [homeland]. Critiquing the reappropriation of this word that carries deep-rooted associations with the language of National Socialism, and in particular, the renaming of the German Ministry of the Interior to include as Bundesministerium des Innern, für Bau und Heimat, the collection struck a nerve with scholars and the general reading public. But the interventions of these essays resonate far beyond the confines of the German-language, providing new viewpoints on global conversations around communal belonging and participation, integration and diversity.
Now, nearly three years after its initial publication, as national borders have been tightening, creating obstacles for refugees, labor migrants, and tourists, in the face of visceral polarization and rising rightwing violence, this collection’s interventions are more relevant than ever. On the occasion of the online publication of the English translation, Your Homeland is Our Nightmare (2021), co-editors Fatma Aydemir and Hengameh Yaghoobifarah will speak about the ongoing resonance of their project, as well as their own independent literary works.
Hengameh Yaghoobifarah is a journalist and author. They studied media culture and Scandinavian studies at the University of Freiburg and the University of Linköping. In 2021, they published their first novel entitled Ministerium der Träume, which was awarded the Franz-Tumler Literaturpreis. Yaghoobifarah is a prolific contributor to newspapers and magazines, including die tageszeitung and Missy Magazine.
Fatma Aydemir is a journalist and author. She studied German and American studies at the University of Frankfurt. Her first novel Ellbogen (2017) won the Franz Hessel Prize and the Klaus Michael Kühne Prize. Her second novel Dschinns is forthcoming from Hanser Verlag on February 14, 2022. As a columnist, she has worked for die tageszeitung and the music magazine Spex. She also created the bilingual web portal taz.gazete to combat the repression of the freedom of the press in Turkey.
Jon Cho-Polizzi is a freelance literary translator and educator. He received his PhD in German and Medieval Studies at UC Berkeley, as well as an MA in Translation Studies from the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. His English-language translations of Max Czollek’s Desintegriert Euch! (2018) and Sharon Dodua Otoo’s Adas Raum (2021) are forthcoming in 2022.
Deniz Göktürk is Professor of German at the University of California, Berkeley. Homeland as Nightmare](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/smBVIZGlRJE/mqdefault.jpg)



