During our studies, our interests in the areas of post-colonialism, critical whitness, diaspora studies, and transdisciplinary approaches were often under-represented. We believe this was especially conspicuous to us because of our shared fragmented experiences as children of migrants. In reviewing our personal trajectories, we found that an ahistorical anchorlessness and an awareness of intersectional conflicts were the common denominators in two otherwise very disparate biographies.
Puo-An Wu was born in Santiago de Chile from Taiwanese immigrants during the tail-end of General Augusto Pinochet’s reign. Having a father who studied German in university, she received primary education in a German Catholic school. She relocated to the United States at the age of 14, where she attended high school and obtained a Bachelor of the Arts degree in European Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. She completed her Master of the Arts program in European Literatures in November 2014, with concentrations in German, English, and Spanish speaking literatures. Her areas of interest are narratology, reader response, hermeneutics, texturology, spatial theory, Derridian deconstruction, queer theory, post/de-colonialism, East Asian diasporas, and entangled histories.
Nina Kamooei was born in Limburg, Germany to Iranian refugee parents who fled across the Zagros mountain range. When she was eleven, her parents decided to relocate to Baltimore, Maryland. There, she attended the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, earning Bachelor of Arts degrees in Psychology and Modern Languages and Linguistics with certificates in German and Spanish. At the age of twenty-two, she finally received American citizenship after twenty-two years of statelessness and a period of illegal residence. She moved to Berlin, Germany upon receiving her first-ever passport and began her Master’s of Arts studies in European Literatures at the Humboldt University of Berlin, concentrating on migrant literature, Iranian Diaspora studies, queer theory, post-colonialism and spatial theory.
We decided to join forces and create a space within our alma mater where students and researchers of different disciplines can pursue their interests in Other voices, histories, and cultures. We would like to see a permanent fixture - in the form of a department, center or institute - emerge out of our efforts, where students working in various fields can find resources, instructional courses, peers, etc.
We want to question the white male canon within cultural and literary studies and bring the voices and experiences of the subaltern to the fore.
We want to bring greater focus – both in research and in physical presence – on the experiences of people of color, on migrant and diasporic studies.
We want to investigate the cultural production of migrants, exiles, and displaced peoples across the globe, as well as their descendants.
This blog serves to document our progress and inform possible supporters of our project. As of now, we are applying to PhD programs and researching existing platforms to start a pilot project.
Questions, comments, suggestions, and funding are highly encouraged.
