Presentation
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
T-MIGRANTS at the forum “PERFORMANCE – PRODUCTION – DATA. Modelling and Communicating Event-Related Information”, CnFdI
From 14 to 15 September 2023, the Institute for Theatre Studies at the University of Leipzig hosted the forum “PERFORMANCE - PRODUCTION - DATA. Modelling and Communicating Event-Related Information”, organised by the Task Areas “Cultural Research Data Academy” and “Standards, Data Quality and Curation”. The aim of the forum was to promote interdisciplinary exchange on the collection, aggregation and enrichment of event-related data and the development of appropriate data models. It also discussed issues of artistic research and data literacy, synergies between disciplines and their infrastructures for (meta-)data and research data. At this conference, Berenika Szymanski-Düll and Jorit Hopp introduced the concept of the database of our research project and presented its current state in their joint lecture “T-MIGRANTS: Theatermigrations and their Data”. For more information see:
https://nfdi4culture.de/events/performance-production-data-modeling-and-communicating-event-related-information.html
T-MIGRANTS at the IFTR Accra 2023 Conference
Vanesa Cotroneo
ERC T-MIGRANTS project at the IFTR conference
Our ERC T-MIGRANTS project was represented at this year’s IFTR conference by Vanesa Cotroneo and Lisa Skwirblies. The conference, entitled “The Stories We Tell – Myth, Myth Making & Performance”, took place in Accra, Ghana, from 24th-28th of July.
Lisa presented her contribution “Embodied Fabulations – Performing Theatre Historiography within and against the Archive in Amanda Piña’s EXOTICA” at the curated panel of the Working Group Historiography. Her paper highlighted methodological questions of theatre historiography in relation to questions of migration, diaspora, and decoloniality through a concept she coined ‘embodied fabulation’. Vanesa’s paper, entitled “European Migration and National Theatre in Argentina (1850-1918): From the Myth of the Promised Land to the Struggles for Legitimation”, was presented in a general panel on “Performative Explorations of Migration and Myths” and focused on two cases of European theatre migrants who, after arriving in the South American country, encountered difficulties in dealing with the Argentinian internal gap between the immigration law policy and its practice. This struggle is also reflected aesthetically in the theatrical productions of the time.
Organised by Prof. Awo Mana Asiedu and Dr. Ekua Ekumah from the School of Performing Arts at the University of Ghana, the 2023 IFTR´s Conference fostered fruitful discussions and productive dialogues, and offered three inspiring keynotes with a focus on the Global South (Ato Quayson, Jisha Menon, Sarah Dorgabadzi) addressing issues of multilingualism, eco cosmopolitanism, and storytelling as methodology. Of particular interest to the T-MIGRANTS project was the launch of The Palgrave Handbook of Theatre and Migration, edited by Yana Meerzon and S. E. Wilmer (forthcoming autumn 2023). Finally, the IFTR´s conference was an excellent opportunity to celebrate the annual gathering of the international community of theatre scholars from around the globe, who, in the setting of a vibrant city like Accra, also had the chance to join several cultural activities, including Ghanian theatre, storytelling events, concerts, an event about food and migration, and the IFTR´s farewell dinner.
Workshop
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Part II: Polish Theatre History from the Perspective of Migration
On 25-26 May 2023, the second part of our workshop "Polish Theatre History from the Perspective of Migration" took place in Warsaw, this time in cooperation with the Institute of Arts of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The aim of the workshop was to continue the work started in November and to prepare a joint publication. The first drafts of the articles were discussed intensively in a small group. Thanks to all participants for a productive and enriching time.
Participants: Dorota Fox, Dorota Jarząbek-Wasyl, Agata Łuksza, Ewa Partyga, Karolina Prykowska-Michalak, Mariola Szydłowska, Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Vanesa Cotroneo joins T-MIGRANTS
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Vanesa Cotroneo has become part of our team as of 1 February
We are delighted to announce that Vanesa Cotroneo has become part of our
team as of 1 February. She will be working on a PhD thesis in the
T-MIGRANTS project, which deals with theatre and migration between
Europe and Argentina focusing on the role of cultural policy.
Before joining us, Vanesa studied English & Comparative Literature,
Theatre and Media at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), and at the
National University of La Plata (UNLP), Argentina; later, she made the
Master of Arts The Americas/ Las Américas at the Friedrich Alexander
University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU). During the last years, she
worked in several projects about theatre, literature, culture and
digitization, and received Erasmus and DAAD Scholarships.
Workshop
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Polish Theatre History from the Perspective of Migration
Poland’s history is marked by partitions, uprisings, wars, conflicts, and occupations, and is thus closely intertwined with the history of migration. Foreign rules, political oppression, but also population growth and poverty caused thousands of Poles to leave their homeland, which disappeared from the map of Europe for many years (1772-1918). Due to the partitions, this already strongly multicultural and multireligious region was itself also marked by waves of immigration.
Among the emigrants and immigrants were also many theatre professionals. While names such as Adam Mickiewicz, or Helena Modrzejewska are firmly rooted in national memory, others have been forgotten or slipped through the cracks of national theatre historiographies. Considering this, the T-MIGRANTS project invited Polish theatre historians to rethink Polish theatre history – especially the period from 1830-1918 – from the perspective of migration.
In collaboration with Karolina Prykowska-Michalak (University of Lodz) and her research project "TEATRALNE DZIEDZICTWO POLSKICH MIGRANTÓW", which focuses on Polish migrants in theatre from a contemporary perspective, we held a workshop at the Museum in Rydlówka near Krakow from 24 to 26 November 2022. The contributions and the discussions of the workshop dealt, on the one hand, with various phenomena of theatre migration in the 19th century, stressing in particular the difficulty of a clear conceptual demarcation between migration and the practice of touring with regard to some biographies of Eastern European theatre practitioners. On the other hand, they also addressed the specifics of the Polish history elaborating the multiple identities and border crossings connected with it, and uncovered a number of unknown or forgotten names. Furthermore, through the close exchange with researchers on contemporary theatre, it was not only possible to identify thematic parallels and historical differences, but also to discuss crucial theoretical and methodological approaches. The workshop will be continued in May 2023 aiming to prepare a publication of the results.
Workshop
Lisa Skwirblies
“Thinking Migration and Postmigration in Europe through Colonialism, Empire, and Race”, November 7th and 8th 2022
In November, the T-Migrants project held a workshop on the topic of migration that focused on issues such as colonization, racialization, and imperialism. The premise of the workshop was that the long-standing histories of empire and colonialism have had a deep and to this day under-researched impact on how we perceive and talk about migration today. Instead of focusing on mobility and border-crossing in terms of nation-states, we extended the concept of the state and its associated political community to be congruent with imperial boundaries instead. This allowed us to research migration as part of the colonial project and as a “colonial tool of governing the population in racial, ethnic, national, religious, and cultural terms” (Gutierrez Rodriguez 2018). In other words, looking at migration through the framework of colonialism and empire rather than the nation-state, those labelled as “migrants” become an integral part of European history rather than its internal “other”. Participants: Swati Arora, Azadeh Sharifi, meLe Yamomo, Yael Koutouan, Anika Marschall, Lizzie Stewart, Priyanka Basu, Lisa Skwirblies, Berenika Szymanski-Düll, Jorit Hopp.
Beatriz Magno and Yan Lin join T-MIGRANTS
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
New research assistants at T-MIGRANTS
We are happy to welcome Beatriz Magno and Yan Lin to our team. Since
November, both have been helping us to feed our database T-MIGRANTS with
new data on theatre migrants.
GTW Congress 2022
Jorit Jens Hopp
T-MIGRANTS at the GTW Congress MATTERS OF URGENCY in Berlin, 28.09-01.10.2022
At this year's GTW Congress at the Freie Universität in Berlin, our research project was represented with a curated panel on 29 September. Under the title MIGRATION MATTERS, the T-MIGRANTS-team gave insights into their work: Berenika Szymanski-Düll introduced the project and its goals and discussed the concept and range of topics of mobility using different case studies, then Jorit Hopp argued in his presentation for the application of social and historical network analysis methods to research historical theatre migration
Visit
https://matters-of-urgency.de/ for more information.
New Publication
Lisa Skwirblies
Theaterwissenschaft postkolonial/dekolonial
The edited collection "Theaterwissenschaft postkolonial/dekolonial. Eine
kritische Bestandsaufnahme" by Azadeh Sharifi and Lisa Skwirblies poses
the question what the "decolonisation of the university" could mean for
the field of German theatre studies. The editors invited artists,
activist, and academics to respond to the issue and urgency of
postcolonial and decolonial questions, actions, and aesthetics in
relation to theatre studies and its teaching and research methods. The
contributions are in German and open access available under:
https://www.transcript-verlag.de/978-3-8376-5553-7/theaterwissenschaft-postkolonial/dekolonial/
Job Vacancy
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
PhD Positon in the ERC-project T-MIGRANTS (m/f/x)
We are offering a PhD position in our project. The candidate will be
expected to pursue research related to the themes of T-MIGRANTS focusing
on the objectives of the project and is required to develop a case study
on European theatre migrants in the area of South America.
IFTR 2022 Reykjavik
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
T-MIGRANTS at the IFTR World Congress in Reykjavik, 20.-24.6.2022
This year, the World Congress of the International Federation for
Theatre Research took place in Reykjavik, Iceland, from 20th to 24th of
June. Our research project was well represented at the congress: Jorit
Hopp presented the first research results on networks in the Habsburg
Empire in the New Scholars Forum with a focus on k.k. Theater nächst der
Burg, Lisa Skwirblies gave an insight into her sub-project on
Coloniality of Theatre Migration in a general panel, and Berenika
Szymanski-Düll presented the project's database as part of the working
group "Digital Humanities".
CALL FOR PAPERS
Lisa Skwirblies
Thinking Migration and Postmigration in Europe through Colonialism, Empire, and Race
Workshop on 7 th and 8 th of November 2022
Institute for Theatre Studies,
Ludwig-Maximilian-University Munich
Organized by the ERC-Project “T-Migrants”
Migration has been a highly popular topic within the discipline of theatre and performance studies
for years. The most recent events - the war in the Ukraine – brought migration once more into the
limelight of public concern and academic discussion. Moreover, with hundreds of Nigerian students
from the Ukraine stuck at the Polish border and refused entrance to the EU, public debates in
Europe about so called “deserving” and “undeserving” migrants and the racialization of the figure of
the migrant sparked off once more. Sociologist Gurminder K. Bhambra (2017) has pointed out, that
this distinction “renders invisible the long-standing histories of empire and colonialism that already
connect those migrants, or citizens, with Europe” (369). Extending the concept of the state and its
associated political community to be congruent with imperial boundaries instead, allows us to
research migration as part of the colonial project and as a “colonial tool of governing the population
in racial, ethnic, national, religious, and cultural terms” (Gutierrez Rodriguez 2018). In other words,
looking at migration through the framework of colonialism and empire rather than the nation-state,
those labelled as “migrants” become an integral part of European history rather than its external
“other”.
Little research in our field focused on migration and post-migration has so far studied these
phenomena through the lens of colonialism, empire, and race. The historiography of theatre
migration, for example, often ignores the fact that those European theatre makers who migrated in
the nineteenth century to Abya Yala, the land known to us as the US, migrated to a country that
came into being based on the dispossession and displacement of the indigenous population. In that
sense, theatre migrants from Europe would also need to be understood as (at least partly) complicit
in the settler colonial project of the US. Similarly, does most of the theatre scholarship on
contemporary post-migrant theatre and multicultural theatre in Europe depart from a national
framework ignoring the fact that “European states have been multicultural for as long as they have
been imperial” (Bhambra 2017:236). Subsequently, contemporary discourses and scholarly debates
on multicultural and post-migrant theatre would benefit from a critical engagement with the
question how these forms of theatre “affected discourses of colonial representation in (European)
theatre” (Sharifi 2018:54) today.
This workshop aims at introducing the analytical categories colonialism, empire, and race for theatre
studies’ research on migration and postmigration. The workshop addresses the following questions:
What changes in our understanding of migration and post-migration once we think these
phenomena through the concepts of colonialism, empire and race? What kind of new understanding
of theatre migration and post-migrant theatre emerges once the nation-state and the colonies are
positioned in the same analytical framework? What does a theatre history that is told through the
analytical framework of colonialism, empire, and race tell us about the postcolonial and multicultural
present of European theatre today?
We welcome historiographical contributions as well as papers on contemporary theatre
performances and discourses dealing with topics of migration and asylum. We strongly encourage
postgraduate students to apply.
Possible topics for this workshop are:
- The entanglement of the histories of colonialism and migration in theatre research
- Postcolonial and decolonial views on (post-)migrant theatre
- Critical readings of the concept race in theatre research on migration and theatre
- The impact of postcolonial and decolonial theory for the study of migration and theatre migration and vice versa
- Decolonizing theatre research and theatre discourses on migration/asylum/refuge
- Postcolonial readings of the concepts “migrants”, “citizen”, “theatre migration”, “post-migration theatre”
Instead of presentations, the two-day workshop will be based on a discussion of pre-circulated
papers. A publication of selected papers is planned. Travel cost will be reimbursed and
accommodation for the duration of the workshop provided.
If you are interested in participating, please send your abstract (300 words max.) and a short bio till
15th of July to:
l.skwirblies@lmu.de
You can download the pdf of this article
here
Workshop
Jorit Jens Hopp
Workshop on theatre almanac and theatre journal database of Paul Ulrich, 25 May 2022
The search for new data on European theatre migrants of the 19th century often leads us into the depths of archives and libraries, but the exchange of data and methods with colleagues is also essential for a systematic and comprehensive approach. So we were pleased to welcome Paul S. Ulrich, as well as Patrick Aprent and Magret Berger to a workshop in Munich on 25 May 2022. Paul S. Ulrich gave us an insight into the scope, functioning, and structure of his theatre almanac and theatre journal database and explained the historical context of the underlying sources. We are looking forward to being able to use his data for the research purposes of T-Migrants and to him making it available to us for our database. In the course of the workshop we were already able to see, through the presentations of Patrick Aprent and Magret Berger, whose work is based on theatre almanacs and theatre journal database of Paul Urlich, how the data can be used with regard to research on the mobility of the theatre entrepreneur Anna Blumlacher (1823-1907).
In the discussion that followed, questions about the interoperability and sustainability of database structures emerged as central problem areas.
We are looking forward to a further exchange of data and ideas with Paul S. Ulrich, Patrick Aprent, and Magret Berger in the future.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
For the workshop VIEWS ON POLISH THEATRE HISTORY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF
MIGRATION, 1830-1918
24-26 November 2022 Krakow,
Theatre Museum
The T-Migrants project is organising a two-part workshop in Poland on:
VIEWS ON POLISH THEATRE HISTORY FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF MIGRATION,
1830-1918.
The Call for Papers can be found
here
Presentation
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
As part of the lecture series "Forschung im Dialog" of the Dahlem
Humanities Center at Freie Universität Berlin, Berenika Szymanski-Düll
was invited to present and discuss her ERC research project T-MIGRANTS
on 4 May 2022.
For more information click
here.
Lecture
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Public lecture at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm
University
On 28 April 2022, Berenika Szymanski-Düll gave a guest lecture at the
Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University. In her
talk "T-MIGRANTS – Perspectives on Historical Theatre Migration
Research" she introduced the multifaceted concept of theatre migration.
The lecture took place in presence, but was simultaneously transmitted
via zoom.
For more information click
here.
Conference Report
Lisa Skwirblies
Conference Report: Theatre Migrants 1850-1918 – Motivations, Trajectories, Impacts
The conference Theatre Migrants 1850-1918 – Motivations, Trajectories, Impacts organised by Prof. Berenika Szymanski-Düll took place 29-31st of March 2022 online and brought together a great range of international scholars working on the topic of theatre migration in the 19th century. The papers of the conference addressed a large variety of theatre migration phenomena: From individual case studies of particular actors, actresses and theatre makers migrating from Europe to the US, South America, India, as well as between European countries to larger phenomena like the establishment of whole theatrical genres as a result of theatre migration. Ruthie Abeliovich’s keynote, which opened the conference, discussed the migration of the Jewish playwright Moyshe Hurwitz from Romania to the US and his impact on the expanding Yiddish theatre scene in New York at the end of the nineteenth century. On the consecutive day, Chris Balme and Anirban Ghosh both approached the question of theatre migration through the impact it had on so called local audiences in India. Balme discussed the role of British touring theatre for the phenomenon of theatre migration through the work of Maurice E. Bandmann while Ghosh’s paper focused on the constitution of the modern circus in India and a whole new visual and performative culture. The presentations of Sarit Cofman-Simhon and Susanne Korbel discussed the emigration routes of Jewish artists from Europe to the US and the impact their emigration has had on the growing popular theatre scene there. Samipendra Banerjee and Lisa Skwirblies addressed the history of theatre migration through a postcolonial approach while Kristen McCleary’s and Martina Groß’s presentation raised the question of a particular female theatre historiography focusing on specific experiences that female theatre makers have had in terms of theatre migration. The following conference day was opened by the presentations of Danijela Weber-Kapusta and Jorit Hopp, that both discussed the theatre migration routes, patterns and networks in the Habsburg Monarchy, followed by the paper of Karolina Prykowska-Michalak on the individual emigration routes of the director Ryszard Ordynski and the paper of Rikkard Hoogland on theatre migration between Sweden and Finland. The conference was concluded by a panel on digital humanities and data collection with presentations by Berenika Szymanski-Düll and Hanieh Arjomand-Fard on the data base of the T-MIGRANTS project and by Paul S. Ulrich and Patrick Aprent on theatre almanacs as data banks.
A recurrent topic in all the discussions was the issue of language that played a crucial role in theatre migration and the theatrical performance genres it inspired. Language determined the audience of the performances like in the Yiddish popular theatres of New York, the theatre migration routes in the Habsburg monarchy along German speaking theatre institutions or the migration patterns of actors and actresses on the border between Sweden and Finland. In some cases, migrants were accepted, when performing in their own language, in other cases they had to learn the language of their new home country and it was not always accepted when actors had an accent or spoke in their own language. This is little surprising if one takes into consideration that the constitution of the nation-state and its borders was very much based on the question of language. The presentations showed the extent to which this issue was also negotiated on the theatrical stage. Even there, where language did not play a role, like in the circus, one could argue that similar issues are at stake in that in avoiding the issue of language the circus could attract a larger audience.
Another common denominator of many papers was the querying of the term theatre migrant. What or who constitute a theatre migrant? Anirban Ghosh addressed the issue by pointing out that migration is always a transgression of local restrictive boundaries and reminded the conference participants that who is deemed a migrant, an expat or a refugee depends strongly on the historically and culturally specific discourse on migration, nation state borders and national identity. Because there are nation-states, there are borders, and often these borders are policed and controlled and embedded in a racialised discourse on migration and asylum.
What cristallised in the discussion is a common struggle in the archival research as migration similar to theatre is considered a fleeting phenomenon which leaves little material traces. This became even more evident in the panel on “female historiographies”, where the marginalization of migrant voices in theatre history was doubled by the experiences of female theatre migrants. However, the question of the archive also raised the issue of privilege and the danger of the theatre historian falling into the trap of only researching those theatre migrants who were already privileged enough to have or build an enterprise and consequently leave enough archival traces to be considered a case study.
The question of methodology also held a prominent role on the last day in the panel on data collection and theatre migration. Issues around the sources of the collected data where addressed as well questions around the establishment of a new data base and its scope. Here, disagreement arose about whether a project-specific data bank should be narrow in focus or as wide as possible, so that future researchers also would have a chance to approach the data bank with their own research question. While one could feel the great excitement about the new technological possibilities that Digital Humanities promises especially in regards to data collection and data visualization, the discussion also brought up critical questions regarding the methodological promises and pitfalls of quantitative research. What really are the new digital methodologies adding to our existing historiographical methods? What are they improving and where do they possibly fall behind the academic rigor that historiographical methodology has established over the years? To what extent might the quantitative aspect of data collection, its focus on metrics, even repeat some of the arresting gestures that nation-states have ever since their constitution performed through their border control and in their imperialist projects for ruling territories, people and knowledges? To what extent do digital humanities projects that collect data from the Global South for the knowledge production in the Global North repeat colonial practices of resource extraction and theft? The lively discussion on the pros and cons of digital humanities showed that it will take another conference to address these issues in more depth. As a concluding thought everyone agreed that data collection in a small discipline such as Theatre Studies only makes sense, if the data bases can be combined or connected so that a larger body of data can be accessed by theatre scholars around the world.
The Rise and Fall of Moyshe Hurwitz
Lisa Skwirblies
Keynote by Ruthie Abeliovich (The University of Haifa, Israel) at the
conference Theatre Migrants 1850-1918 – Motivations, Trajectories,
Impacts
In her keynote, Ruthie Abeliovich explores the emigration routes of
theatre impresario and playwright Moyshe Hurwitz’s (1844-1910). His
theatre had a pivotal role in the transnational scene of popular Yiddish
theatre, in eastern Europe and the US at the turn of the 20th century.
In the first years of the Yiddish theatre, Hurwitz dominated the New
York theatre scene, as resident dramatists of various theatre troupes.
The repertoire of Yiddish stages across Europe (mainly in Galicia and
the Pale of Settlement) and in the US heavily relied on the works of
Hurwitz. In an informed process of translation of familiar plots,
appropriation of earlier sources, imitation and adaptation of European
music and drama, Hurwitz created a distinctly Jewish body of work that
communicated with its surrounding cultures. His works brought biblical
stories and Jewish folklore to the popular stage, juxtaposing Jewish
themes with non-Jewish elements. The hybrid character of Hurwitz’s
theatre reflects acculturation processes that Jews experienced at the
turn of the 20th century. Abeliovich´s presentation highlights the
impact Hurwitz´s theatre has had on the New York popular theatre scene,
alongside the continuing presence of his plays in eastern-Europe.
Ruthie Abeliovich is an assistant professor at the University of Haifa
and principal investigator of the ERC project DYBUKK, which queries the
themes, forms and practices of the popular Yiddish theatre at the turn
of the century. Abeliovich is the author of Possessed Voices: Aural
Remains from Modernist Hebrew Theatre (SUNY 2019), finalist for the
Jordan Schnitzer Book Award (AJS, 2020), co-editor co-editor (with Linda
Ben-Zvi and Sharon Aronson Lehavi) of A Stage of Their Own: 7 American
Feminist Plays (Hebrew), co-editor (with Edwin Seroussi) of Borderlines:
Essays on Maps and The Logic of Place (Sciendo, 2019).
See video in fullscreen
here
Conference
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Theatre Migrants 1850-1918 – Motivations, Trajectories, Impacts
Conference organised by Berenika Szymanski-Düll
(CAS Young Center, ERC-Project T-MIGRANTS)
29 to 31 March 2022
With the advent of steamships and railways, the phenomenon of mobility,
and especially the phenomenon of emigration, took on a new dimension in
the nineteenth century. In Europe, intra-European migration and
emigration overseas proceeded side by side: millions of Europeans left
their homelands and moved to foreign countries and continents. Many
people from the theatre business were involved in this process. Their
emigration was usually difficult, involved deprivation and triggered
xenophobia, but at the same time it increased the potential for
creativity and led to major institutional and aesthetical
transformations.
In this conference we are looking for nuanced
investigations of the motivations and experiences of European theatre
migrants, we reconstruct their routes and connections across geographic
and cultural borders and ask for the impacts their emigrations had for
the theatre (business) of the time.
Registration:
info@cas.lmu.de
See the whole Conference Programme here
Presentation
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Of Mass Migrations, Touring and the Question of the Ensemble
“Of Mass Migrations, Touring and the Question of the Ensemble” Berenika Szymanski-Düll On 3rd of March this year, Berenika Szymanski-Düll was invited by the theatre studies department of the University Bern to present a paper as part of the ongoing lecture series “Ensemble”. Her presentation was titled “Von Massenmigrationen, Tourneen und der Frage nach Ensemble - Ein Blick auf das 19. Jahrhundert aus transnationaler Perspektive” (Of Mass Migrations, Touring and the Question of the Ensemble - A Glimpse of the 19th Century from a Transnational Perspective) and discussed the larger concept “ensemble” while also querying the specific ways in which ensembles work in times of transnational mobility in the 19th century.
Presentation
Lisa Skwirblies
At the Symposium "Undoing Mastery" earlier this year, Lisa Skwirblies held a presentation on questions regarding postcolonial theories and decolonial discourses in the field of theatre studies and theatre historiography together with Prof. Azadeh Sharifi. Part of the presentation was the question to what extent postcolonial theories can be a useful tool for the critical analysis of theatre migration and the so called postmigrant theatre.
Workshop
Jorit Jens Hopp
Migrations to and in East-Central Europe in the Long 19th Century – Backgrounds, Patterns and Outcomes
Workshop with Mathias Beer: „Migrationen nach und in Ostmitteleuropa im langen 19. Jahrhundert – Hintergründe, Formen und Ergebnisse.“ [Migrations to and in East-Central Europe in the Long 19th Century – Backgrounds, Patterns and Outcomes]
Conducting interdisciplinary research in different geographical and cultural contexts is one of the tasks of our research project. For this reason, it is important for us to enter into exchange and dialogue with different experts in order to learn from their knowledge and to put our ideas, concepts and results up for discussion. In this context, we invited Mathias Beer (Institut für donauschwäbische Geschichte und Landeskunde) to a workshop on 15 October 2021 to better understand the multi-layered processes of migration in East-Central Europe and their backgrounds. Beer thus contextualised the diverse migration movements in the context of the changing political map of the 19th century and explained the interplay of various push and pull factors. He also outlined the history of historical migration research as well as the variety of questions and approaches that historians have used and continue to use to track down the phenomenon of migration. As our research project also shows, this diversity is already reflected at the level of definitions of migration. In the subsequent discussion, in which we shared glimpses of our research, it became clear once again that migration as an overall phenomenon that permeates all areas of life, society and culture can only be understood more deeply through the interplay of different research traditions. From the perspective of migration research, it is therefore – as Beer stressed – very welcome that disciplines such as theatre studies contribute their specific questions, theoretical concepts, methods and specific source material to the discourse.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
Theatre Migrants 1850-1918 – Motivations, Trajectories, Impacts
Conference organized by: Berenika Szymanski-Düll, LMU Munich, ERC-Project T-MIGRANTS
29 – 31 March 2022, Munich
Migration has always been part of human history, but with the advent of steamships and railways, the phenomenon of mobility, and especially the phenomenon of emigration, took on a new dimension in the nineteenth century. In Europe, intra-European migration and emigration overseas proceeded side by side: millions of Europeans left their homelands and moved – for economic, political or religious reasons – to foreign countries and continents, resulting in increasing crossing of borders and the entanglement of cultures in a time of strong nation-building processes. The theatre – one of the mass media of the day – was profoundly affected by this phenomenon. Many people from the theatre business, such as actors, dancers, opera singers, stage directors, playwrights, theatre managers and impresarios, were involved in this process. In the following, they are referred to as theatre migrants. Their emigration, which has been the subject of little research so far, was – like that of all other migrants – usually difficult, involved deprivation and triggered xenophobia, but at the same time it increased the potential for creativity and brought about major institutional and aesthetical transformations within the booming theatre business of the time.
This first conference of the ERC research project T-MIGRANTS (www.t-migrants.com) aims to bring together international researchers working on the topic of migration within theatre. We are looking for nuanced investigations of the motivations, circumstances, experiences and actions of European theatre migrants – who spread all over the world – and the consequences of their emigrations in the period from 1850 to 1918. Within the conference, we want to discover forgotten actors and learn from their biographies. We will contextualise and discuss the problems, negotiations and tensions their migrations raised, reconstruct routes and connections across geographic, cultural and political borders and consider their crucial influence and impact on the theatre of the time. Regarding migration as an open-ended and dynamic process and identifying theatre migrants as important decision makers, we welcome papers that address these issues and, as far as possible, focus on a case study of specific theatre migrants. Topics covered may include:
- Individual decisions and motivations of emigration.
- Individual memories, reflexions and experiences on the emigration process, taking into account questions of gender, cultural identity, assimilation, integration, language, racism and nationalism.
- The (e)migration routes of individual theatre migrants.
- The role theatre migrants played within the societies of their new places of residence as well as their homelands.
- Interactions of theatre migrants with local artists and local institutions, and the consequences of these interactions.
- The formation of new institutions and the establishment as well as the significance of multi-site networks by theatre migrants.
We ask for proposals for conference contributions (20 minutes) in the form of an abstract of no more than 300 words explaining the relation to the conference topic and outlining the research from which the contribution is derived, and a brief academic biography.
Please send your submissions to Berenika Szymanski-Düll (
Berenika.Szymanski@lrz.uni-muenchen.de) by 14 November 2021. Successful applicants will be notified in early December 2021.
The conference will take place at the Center for Advanced Studies in Munich, Germany.
Travel and accommodation costs will be covered for participants who present a paper.
Publication of selected papers is planned.
Workshop
Workshop on “Urheberrecht” and “Copyright” with Marc Ulrich
Since we work a lot with historical sources and visual material in our project and are developing a database on theatre migrants in a period from 1850-1918, we are always facing the question of publishing documents, photos and data. For this reason, we had a workshop with Marc Ulrich on 28 April 2021, who introduced us to the basics of “Urheberrecht” and “Copyright”.
Presentation
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
“Mobility, Migration and Transnational Theatre History(s).”
On 26 March 2021, at the invitation of Hasibe Kalkan, Berenika Szymanski-Düll gave a lecture entitled “Mobility, Migration and Transnational Theatre History(s).” via Zoom at the University of Istanbul, thus providing insight into our ERC project T-MIGRANTS.
Workshop
Berenika Szymanski-Düll
“Migration in Research, Mobility in the Archive – Of Searching and Finding”
Together with Dorothea Volz from the Theatre Collection of the University of Cologne (Theaterwissenschaftliche Sammlung der Universität zu Köln), Berenika Szymanski-Düll held a workshop entitled “Migration in Research, Mobility in the Archive - On Searching and Finding” as part of the digital session “Collection meets Research” of the working group Archiv (gtw) on 20 November 2020.
Each collection has its own system – and each researcher a different interest, which is rarely reflected in the archive structures that have evolved over decades and which repeatedly emerges as a problem in practice. For example, when researchers deal with questions of mobility of theatre artists, dramas or aesthetics, scholars and archives are faced with special challenges. How to search for the non-settled? How to catalogue migrations? This workshop was dedicated to the problems of researching and preserving mobilities using the example of theatre studies research practice (T-MIGRANTS, LMU) and the archival practice of the Theatre Studies Collection (UzK). The aim was to stimulate a rethinking of the existing structures – both on the archival and the academic side – and to formulate possible solutions.
Research Workshop
Research Workshop with the Bavarian State Library
On 17 December 2020, we had a research workshop with Milena Fein from the Bavarian State Library. In this online workshop we learned how to improve and expand our research on migration on a digital level by using different databases in their own special way.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:South_America_(1909).jpg 
https://wissenschaftliche-sammlungen.de/de/termine/sammlung-trifft-forschung 
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayerische_Staatsbibliothek 
