Of Contact Zones and Liminal Spaces : Mapping the Everyday Life of Cultural Translation, Diversity/Diversité/Diversität 1, Diversity / Diversité / Diversität 1

Of ‘Contact Zones’ and ‘Liminal Spaces’ introduces the publication series “Diversity / Diversité / Diversität” of the International Research Training Group (IRTG) Diversity (Trier/Montreal/Saarbrücken).

The contributions to this volume address core concepts and research perspectives of our interdisciplinary research group. The IRTG Diversity focuses on a comparative and historically situated analysis of discourses and representations of diversity and cultural pluralism in North America and Europe. The empirical research published in this volume demonstrates how these discourses and representations of diversity create overlapping zones of geographical and chronological reach. These overlapping and highly dynamic zones bear the characteristics of ‘contact zones’ and ‘liminal spaces’. However, they receive their social and cultural dynamism from everyday practices of cultural translation.

Contributors: Ursula Lehmkuhl (Trier), Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink (Saarbrücken), Laurence McFalls (Montreal), Ludger Pries (Bochum), Régine Robin (Montreal/Paris), Philipp Rousseau (Montreal), Werner Schiffauer (Frankfurt/O.), Bertrand Westphal (Limoges).

Ursula Lehmkuhl is Professor of International History at the University of Trier and director of the International Research Training Group Diversity: Mediating Difference in Transcultural Spaces. Her research interests include migration history, colonial history, environmental history, and the history of international relations. She has published several books, among them Pax Anglo-Americana: Machtstrukturelle Grundlagen anglo-amerikanischer Asien- und Fernostpolitik in den 1950er Jahren (1999), From Enmity to Friendship: Anglo-American Relations in the 19th and 20th Century (2005) (co-edited with Gustav Schmidt), Historians and Nature: Comparative Approaches to Environmental History (co-edited with Hermann Wellenreuther) (2007), Regieren ohne Staat? Governance in Räumen begrenzter Staatlichkeit (2007) (co-edited with Thomas Risse), and Provincializing the United States (2014) (coedited with Norbert Finzsch and Eva Bischoff). She is currently working on a book entitled Das Dilemma der Gleichheit: Die Konstruktion und Repräsentation von ‘Vielfalt’ und ‘Differenz’ im euro-atlantischen Raum des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts.

Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink is Professor of Romance Cultural Studies and Intercultural Communication at Saarland University. He holds a PhD in Romance Philology (Bayreuth, Germany) and in History (EHESS, France) and is co-director of the International Research Training Group Diversity: Mediating Difference in Transcultural Spaces. His research fields concern cultural transfers between France and Germany and between Europe and non-European societies, conceptual history, francophone literatures and medias (Québec, Sub-Saharan Africa), and the theory of intercultural communication. Recent books: (co-edited with Christoph Vatter): Multiculturalisme et diversité culturelle dans les médias au Canada et au Québec (2013); (co-edited with Aurélien Boivin and Jacques Walter): Régionalismes littéraires et artistiques comparés. Québec/Canada – Europe (2014); Le livre aimé du peuple. Les almanachs québécois de 1777 à nos jours (2014); (co-edited with Marc-André and Clorinda Donato): Jesuit Accounts on the Colonial Americas. Intercultural Transfers, intellectual Disputes, and Textualities (2014); (co-edited with Sylvère Mbondobari): Villes coloniales/métropoles postcoloniales. Représentations littéraires, images médiatiques et regards croisés (2015); (co-edited with Michel Espagne): Transferts de savoirs sur l’Afrique (2015).

Laurence McFalls is Professor of Political Science at Université de Montréal as well as director of the Centre canadien d’études allemandes et européennes and of the International Research Training Group Diversity: Mediating Difference in Transcultural Spaces. His research interests include social theory, German politics and culture since re-unification, GDR history and memory politics, Max Weber, Michel Foucault, and the emergence of new modes of therapeutic domination. His recent books are Construire le politique: causalité, contingence et connaissance (2006) and Max Weber’s ‘Objectivity’ Reconsidered (2007). Together with Mariella Pandolfi, he has published numerous articles and book chapters offering a critical analysis of contemporary humanitarian and neoliberal politics.

Ludger Pries is Professor of Sociology at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He taught and did research in Brazil, Mexico, Spain and the USA. Main fields of research are Sociology of Organisations, Work and Labour Regulation, migration in international comparison, transnationalisation, transnational migration and processes of social incorporation. He was/is member of editorial boards of five scientific journals and is Deputy President of the Expert Council of German Foundations on Integration and Migration (SVR). Recent books include Cross-border Staff Mobility. German and Mexican Profit- and Non-Profit-Organisations between Centre-Periphery and Transnationalization (2014, Houndmills: Palgrave), Shifting Boundaries of Belonging and New Migration Dynamics in Europe and China (2013, New York: Palgrave), Cross-Border Migrant Organisations in Comparative Perspective (2012, Houndmills: Palgrave).

Regine Robin is a historian, novelist, translator and professor of sociology. Starting her university career in France, she moved to the Université du Québec à Montréal in 1978 where she was professor of sociology until 2004. Her research interests include, among others, questions of identity, Yiddish culture, questions on collective memory, and culture(s) during the interwar period between World War I and World War II. She received different prizes, like the Prix du Gouverneur général au Canada for her book Le Réalisme socialiste : une esthétique impossible (1986) and le Prix Jacques Rousseau de l’Association canadienne-française pour l’avancement des sciences for her whole work. She has published numerous books, among them Histoire et linguistique (1973), Le Discours social et ses usages (1983), Le Roman mémoriel: de l’histoire à l’écriture du hors-lieu (1989), Berlin Chantiers. Essai sur les passés fragiles (2001), for which she was awarded the Grand prix du livre de Montréal; La mémoire saturée (2003) and Nous autres les autres. Difficile pluralisme (2011). Her work also includes prose fiction, such as the novel La Québécoite (1983) and L’immense fatigue des pierres. Biofictions (1998).