CLCS 260T Berlin: Migration and Transformation of the Urban Landscape
Over the last 20 years migration has dramatically changed Berlin's urban landscape,
even as migrant groups have been changed by the peculiarities of Berlin's "Kieze," or
neighborhoods. This course will focus on three districts in particular--Kreuzberg, Mitte
and Friedrichshein--which have since the fall of the wall incorporated hundreds of
thousands of migrants and refugees whose languages, cultures, ethnicities and religions
have differed from those of more well-established German residents. In conversations
with a variety of groups--residents and non-residents alike--the class will investigate how
migrants and refugees from Turkey and, more recently Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, have
changed the city and how the city, in turn has changed them. The approach will be
interdisciplinary, tracing the nexus of urban fabric and migration in storytelling, film, oral
history, architecture, politics, graffitti and day-to-day streetlife, focussing in particular on
the evolution of concepts that range from the more traditional ideas of integration and
assimilation to the more recent notions of hospitality. (For students taking the class for GER credit, GER 301 is required.)