The concept of Heimat helped nation-building efforts put down roots in everyday practice, though not without contestation and frictions. Belonging and senses of home are being made and remade under conditions of globality. This module explores how practices of making homes, moving homes and "rooting" are experienced in different places, and how the dis/connections between places are transformed. This module will especially address social, cultural and literary practices of “rooting” in a mobile and interconnected world. We will relate bottom-up emotional and mnemonic investments in places to different scales of hegemonic politics of belonging that (re)produce domination and exclusion.

Coordinators:

Sabine Koller (UR, Slavic-Jewish Studies)

Volker Depkat (UR, American Studies)

Ulf Brunnbauer (IOS, Southeast and East European History)

Past activities:

International Workshop: Migration, Mediality, Liminality – 28/29 January 2021