Cologne Crossroads Conversations #2

In the organizer's words:

2nd Cologne Crossroads Conversation

Common remembrance - polyphonic remembrance?
On solidarity and belonging in the post-migrant present

The reappraisal of the German past and the German culture of remembrance are regarded internationally as unique. But critical questions are on the rise. In post-migrant society, diverse, interwoven and parallel memories and histories exist. Can different memories coexist? Whose memory counts in a pluralizing society? How is it possible to remember in solidarity? What contributions can museums and universities make to combat exclusion and promote coexistence? Esra Özyürek (Cambridge) and Michael Rothberg (Los Angeles) are among the most important voices in the debate on the dynamics of remembrance in Germany. They report from their research on the possibility of multidirectional memory in Germany's post-migrant society and discuss how memory can be polyphonic, remembrance preserved and understanding promoted.

Esra Özyürek is the Sultan Qaboos Professor of Abrahamic Faiths and Shared Values at the University of Cambridge. After graduating in Political Science and Sociology from Bogazici University in Istanbul, she completed her PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is the author of "Deutsche Muslime - muslimische Deutsche: Begegnungen mit Konvertiten zum Islam" (Springer 2018), as well as "Stellvertreter der Schuld: Erinnerungskultur und muslimische Zugehörigkeit in Deutschland" (Klett-Cotta, March 2025).

Michael Rothberg holds the 1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies and is Professor of English and Literary Studies in Los Angeles. After studying at Swarthmore College and Duke University, he received his doctorate in Comparative Literature from the City University of New York. He is the author of "Multidirectional Memory. Holocaust Remembrance in the Age of Decolonization" (Metropol 2024) and "The implicated subject: Beyond victims and perpetrators" (Stanford University Press 2019).

The 'Cologne Crossroads Conversations'

In today's post-migrant societies, different forms of knowledge, cultures of remembrance and claims to participation collide. The sometimes polarizing debates at museums and universities simultaneously negotiate central questions about the foundations of social coexistence. The 'Cologne Crossroads Conversations' are intended to create spaces for discussion and encounters in which elementary forms of listening and differentiation are tested and plurality and contradiction are welcome. They offer a forum for sharing and making transparent debates that are often negotiated in closed seminar rooms and behind the scenes of the museum. The focus is on the possibilities for new forms of cooperation: between museum and university, but also between social actors from the global South and the global North.

https://ethnologie.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/content.php?kid=501