Around the world, migration causes different religions and cultures to meet. Different narratives of past and present migration converge and diverge – as does the collective memory. Migration, today, made Islam visible in Germany, but how does this recent development relate to the Christian and Jewish frame of memory? Excursions, discussions, and workshops will help us to find some answers.
max. 18 participants
Participants will receive 6 ECTS credit points and a certificate if they attend regularly (at least 80% attendance) and participate actively. Additionally, six weeks after the end of the course a Transcript of Records is issued by Humboldt-Universität.
This course follows the complex trajectories linking interreligious and intercultural narratives in Germany today. How does the culture of memory in Germany, with its Christian frame and Jewish focus converge and diverge with more recent narratives of migration that have made Islam a visible presence in Germany? This is the main question this course seeks to address. Students will interrogate this topic through dedicated lectures, workshops, and site visits to museums and other venues.
This course is anthropologically inflected and treats the sites as field sites to be explored empirically and analyzed critically. It is well-suited to students who are interested in religious studies, history, the social sciences, and/or more specific fields such as urban studies, ethics or museum studies.
ScheduleThe courses are grouped into different time tracks.Your course will take place in Track C.
Cultural activitiesYou are welcome to join our cultural program with an excellent selection of excursions, sports activities, and social gatherings. It is the perfect setting for getting to know each other and for experiencing the varous facets of Berlin. There are no additional costs for participation in the activities.
Activities and tours we offer regularly: Federal Chancellery, German Parliament, House of Representatives, Topography of Terror, Political Archive, Museum Island, Kreuzberg Tour, Daytrip to Potsdam, Exhibitions…
Undergraduate students of all subjects with an interest in interreligious and intercultural issues.
This course is taught in English, including readings in English. For the understanding of the texts and the discussions in class a language level B2 (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) is required.
Participating students need to be at least 18 years old.
Dr. Victoria Bishop Kendzia’s teaching method, although anthropologically inflected, is interdisciplinary in nature and is, therefore, not limited to the social sciences.
It appeals to students from a wide variety of academic backgrounds from history to art, through to geography, theology, and politics. The focus of her work is on the urban landscape, especially, but not only, museums and memorials in and around Berlin.
In this context, locations are approached as field sites that can be read, explored, and critically analyzed as dynamic sites that project and reframe key aspects of history and culture. The urban laboratory that is Berlin is particularly well-suited to this endeavor, given the historical and cultural upheavals it has witnessed during the 20th century.
She defended her dissertation entitled: The Jewish Museum Berlin: Visitor Experience in the Context of Political Education in 2013 at the Institute for European Ethnology, Humboldt University Berlin under the supervision of Prof. Wolfgang Kaschuba and Prof. Sharon Macdonald. Her doctoral work was based on ethnography of young Berlin-based high school students in and around the Jewish Museum Berlin.
She has a background in Museum Studies, having completed her master’s degree in this field from the University of Toronto, Canada in 2001 and her Bachelor of Arts Honours at the same university in 1999. She has been publishing scholarly articles in her field since 2009 and teaching at the university level since 2008. Her most recent publication is the monograph, (December) 2017 Visitors to the House of Memory. Political Education and Identity at the Jewish Museum Berlin. London and New York: Berghahn Books. A paperback edition of this monograph was published in 2020.
