“Berlin Asian Diasporic Anthology Project”: A Conversation with Selma Siew Li Bidlingmaier

Presented by Deutsches Haus at NYU. Co-sponsored by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU.

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This lecture and conversation featuring Selma Siew Li Bidlingmaier, (DAAD Visiting Scholar and American Studies Department, Humboldt University Berlin) and Feng-Mei Heberer (NYU Department of Cinema Studies) will introduce the nascent “Berlin Asian Diasporic Anthology Project” and the project’s goals, methods, mediums, and challenges.

Contemporary public (his)stories of East, South, and South East Asians in Germany often tend to locate the community within disparate migratory “moments,” particularly during the Cold War and the postwar era. The Vietnamese being the largest “Asian” community in Germany are most visible in public discourses. The history of GDR guest workers (“Gastarbeiter”), and refugees who came during Vietnam War are well documented, often telling larger histories of Germany’s postwar geopolitical positionality and role. However, due to varying reasons, little attention is given to other diasporas such as the Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Pakistani, Thai, and Filipinx. The histories of interconnections between the various diasporas that began as early as the nineteenth century leaves a gap not only within the histories of Asians in Germany but also the historiography of Germany as a nation.

Image credit: Yoko Tawada, Three Streets, Storybook, New Directions, NY, 2022; Yoko Tawada, Talisman, Konkursbuch, Tübingen, 1996; Han Sen, Ein Chinese mit dem Kontrabass, List Taschenbuch, München 2001; Topçu, Özlem, Alice Bota, und Khuê Pham, Wir Neuen Deutschen, Rowohlt, Hamburg, 2012; Khuê Pham, Wo auch Immer Ihr Seid, btb/Penguin Random House, München, 2021.