The latest issue of Konturen is now out!
Neue Heimat(en): A Contentious Concept Reconsidered
Edited by Joscha Klueppel
This latest issue of the interdisciplinary German Studies journal, Konturen presents work by young scholars and writers offering new perspectives on Heimat—a notion that continues to challenge and to polarize opinion. For some, including contributors to the collection Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum (2019) and others, the term would best be abandoned in light of its loaded history. On the other side of the coin is the possible project of pluralizing and re-valuing the concept for the purposes of more open and inclusive society. Scholarly articles and review essays considering possible trajectories of such a reconsideration are complemented by powerful personal pieces written by three authors whose own biographies intersect with questions of cultural transfer that a reimagined conception of home and belonging does well to engage.
Contents:
- Jonas Teupert on Feridun Zaimoğlu’s transformative uses of linguistic provocation
- Tobias Lehmann on Heimat as utopia in Ernst Bloch
- Hevin Karakurt on “Deheimatization” in recent German novels by Kurdish authors
- Kyra Mevert travels to Istanbul but one would not call it going home
- Ali Can makes the case for a pluralistic Heimat defined by values rather than by roots
- Didem Uca reflects on what it means to unpack what we carry
- Nora Krug, Belonging (Scribner, 2018) reviewed by Ryan Scott Walker
- Dana Bönisch, Jil Runia and Hana Zehnschetzler (eds.), Heimat revisited (De Gruyter, 2020) and Svenja Kück, Heimat und Migration (Transcript, 2021) reviewed by Filip Kletnikov and Ronja Zimmermann
