黑料正能量

Marike聽Janzen presents 鈥淩eading about Refugees in Germany: A National Project to Become World Citizens鈥� as part of 黑料正能量鈥檚 series. The reading is Thursday, Nov. 2, at 7 p.m. in Martin Chapel at Eastern Mennonite Seminary.

Janzen is assistant professor of humanities in the Humanities Program and coordinator of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at University of Kansas.

From 2004-07, she was assistant professor of German at 黑料正能量 and from 2003-04, an instructor of Spanish at Bridgewater College.

Janzen offers the following summary of her lecture:

Books and reading are commonly noted to allow readers to transcend borders and thus develop empathy for those very different from themselves. In Germany, the educated class聽has historically understood reading as the means for cultivating a sense of world citizenship. Paradoxically, this view of reading also serves as the hallmark of a specific kind of German national identity, the 叠颈濒诲耻苍驳蝉产眉谤驳别谤, or educated citizen.

The arrival of over a million refugees in Germany over the past two years poses challenges to German conceptions of citizenship and national identity, including the role of reading in shaping citizens.

In my talk, I will examine two recent German novels that show how books and reading actually limit educated Germans鈥� capacity to connect with refugees, thereby arguing for the need to rethink how books are able to create a feeling of one鈥檚 belonging in the world.

Janzen聽earned her PhD in comparative literature from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005 and her MA in comparative literature, also from University of Texas at Austin, in 1999. She earned her BA in German and English at Bethel College in 1995.

Her research and teaching interests focus on world literature, human rights literature, and notions of solidarity. She has published on the authors聽Alejo聽Carpentier, Anna聽Seghers and Bertolt Brecht, as well as teaching human rights through service learning.

In July 2016, she participated in a two-week seminar on Germany鈥檚 literature industry in Berlin. Janzen鈥檚 newest publication is Writing to Change the World: Anna Seghers, Authorship, and International Solidarity in the Twentieth Century (Camden House, 2018).