ACADEMIC REFLECTIONS

In my Mangold Lecture I introduced another layer of complication to this categorization by highlighting scenes of translational Eurasian language contact that cuts across the East/West, European/Non-European divide. I framed my lecture by talking about my beginnings in translation from Turkish in 1990s Berlin in the context of the cultural politics of representation, publication, and circulation. I also showed some work that my students at UC Berkeley have been doing in the context of our open-access electronic journal Transit. I then took the audience to Turkey in the 1930s and 1940s where exiled academics from Nazi Germany were employed in a big scale educational reform. This site of inception of comparative literature and cross-fertilization in Weltliteratur – from Goethe to Erich Auerbach to Edward Said – continues to be inspirational for present-day authors based in Germany, writing in German or Turkish, who invent translator figures situated in this time and site of exile and refuge, conflicting nationalisms, and shifting alliances. The interplay of unreadable fragments from traveling archives spark the literary imagination; translation of different conventions and language registers inspires moments of ironic distancing beyond any simple equivalence or fidelity. This discussion resonated with work that colleagues in Australia have done on the cultural contributions of exiles in literature, theatre, and the arts as well as internment of Germans during the two world wars. Clearly, immigrant communities were not homogenous in terms of political orientation, wealth, hierarchy. There were always moments of friction, misunderstanding, and negotiation both in encounters with host culture bureaucracy and amongst themselves.

I was delighted to be included in the German Studies Association (GSAA)’s biannual conference, which was held 18-21 November 2025 at the universities of Melbourne and Monash. I gave the keynote lecture at the conference in the Old Arts Building at Melbourne University on 18 November 2025 (see abstract below). Over the subsequent two days, I joined the conference sessions and participated in discussions. This was an international conference of approx. 50 participants, and I thoroughly enjoyed the congenial atmosphere. I reconnected with a colleague whom I knew from my graduate student days in Berlin who is now teaching in Tokyo as well as colleagues from the US. Meeting colleagues who work at Australian universities and discussing shared interests together was a great pleasure. I feel inspired by learning about the projects of colleagues and graduate students. Among other unexpected resonances, I was able to put a colleague who works on a media archaeology of sound at Lutheran missions in Australia in touch with a graduate student at Berkeley who pursues very similar interests regarding Lutheran missions in South India.

I had an opportunity to hear about honors, dissertation and post-doc projects – from various field such as German, European Studies, Art History, Urban Planning, Gender Studies, Creative Writing – during a well-attended and lively workshop at the end of the conference on Friday, 21 November 2025.

On Monday, 24 November 2025, I attended a working lunch with colleagues from the German program in University House, discussing curriculum structures in comparative perspective. On Tuesday, 25 November 2025, I gave another workshop at the University of Melbourne (see abstract below). One international student who attended this workshop, a Mexican citizen, came to the Mangold Lecture to show me her VR video project that she was doing with a group of Mexican performers in Melbourne.

These were busy days at the end of the semester before the summer holiday for colleagues and students, so I appreciated the time everyone took to be in conversation. I was also pleased to meet Claudia Sandberg, my co-editor on the second edition of The German Cinema Book, whom I had only ever met virtually, never in person.

My partner Aleks Göllü was able to join me for the second week of my stay, which coincided with Thanksgiving Week in the US. Since he teaches entrepreneurship, he met with the Program Director at the Wade Institute Andrew Middleton for a conversation. For both of us it was our first visit to Australia. Based on my exploratory walks in Melbourne, I was really impressed with the diversity of the city, its multifaceted fabric, the architectural and culinary traces of many waves of immigration. It is a great experience to hear so many languages on the tram or at Queen Victoria Market – feeling simultaneaously close to Asia and close to London. Cultural institutions such as the Immigration Museum and NGV Australia include both migrant and indigenous cultural expressions in their narratives, bringing them into productive constellations and conversation. Coming from the US where the rhetoric of being a “nation of immigrants” has taken a hostile turn toward deportation, I appreciate the support for more inclusive models of diversity. We learned to say: “Wominjeka!” The visit was a rich cultural experience and inspired us to visit other cities in Australia. I hope to continue the conversations with my colleagues at Melbourne.

Firstly, I express my sincere gratitude to the CASS Foundation and the Walter Mangold Trust Fund for extending the invitation and to the colleagues who facilitated my visits. I am especially thankful to Professor Birgit Lang from the German Studies Program, whose unwavering support before and during my visit, made this stay a success. Furthermore, I would like to extend my appreciation to the School of Languages and Linguistics and the Faculty of Arts at The University of Melbourne for hosting me, as well as the administrative staff for their tireless efforts and exceptional support throughout my stay.

As an Austrian historian whose research interests include transnational history and the history of translation, I was a guest of the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne in September 2024. My visit, which was funded by a Walter Mangold Visiting Fellowship, was a very rewarding experience and offered me many opportunities for interdisciplinary and transnational exchange. During my stay in Melbourne, I took part in several courses in German and English as a guest lecturer and was thus able to contribute to the knowledge of European political and social movements around 1900. Through this teaching experience and through internal meetings on didactic issues to which I was invited, I gained valuable insights into problems and inspiring solutions in transnational learning. Furthermore, I was able to establish a productive academic collaboration and exchange with colleagues from German Studies and History.

Walter Mangold Lecture at Melbourne University at the University of Melbourne: (Un)Worldly Translators: On Ironic Poetics in Transit (27 November 2025)

In an age of rising walls and deepening divides, language education and translation are more vital than ever. As smartphones and earbuds increasingly take over the interpreter’s task, our role as educators is to puncture myths of total transparency and effortless equivalence. We must foreground nuance, multiple meanings, and the productive limits of understanding. Against fantasies of seamless communication, this lecture proposes an “ironic poetics of translation” that privileges resonance over one-to-one accuracy. Translators move in two directions at once: immersing themselves in another way of being in the world while keeping the distance needed to make it legible for others. This double movement complicates fixed ideas of identity, nation, and belonging. Fictional translators—often cast as deviant or even devious—show how gaps and unreadable archives can ignite poetic imagination. German Turkish literature offers vivid examples. Zafer Şenocak’s novels weave illegible notebooks and fragmented voices into narratives that resist closure. His Alman Terbiyesi (Deutsche Schule) (German Education) enters into dialogue with Sait Faik and Sabahattin Ali—especially Ali’s Kürk Mantolu Madonna (1943; Madonna in a Fur Coat, 2016), set between 1920s Berlin and 1940s Istanbul, a city teeming with unreliable translators, spies, and refugees. These works portray translators as (un-)worldly counter-figures to monolingual modernization, echoing arguments elaborated by exiled scholars such as Erich Auerbach and Leo Spitzer, and, later, Edward Said.

Translation, then, is more than craft: it is an ethical practice of living with incompleteness. It resists the flattening force of global English, embraces distance, and treats friction as a creative spark across divides. Far from closing gaps, working with languages shows that it is precisely through gaps that we remain connected.