Critically Now: Esra Akcan and Iftikhar Dadi: Migration and Discrimination

Critically Now: A Pop-Up and Growing Event Series

The Migration and Discrimination seminar, cotaught by Associate Professor Esra Akcan and Associate Professor of History of Art Iftikhar Dadi, triangulates three cities from three different countries to understand the connections between migration and discrimination in Istanbul, Lahore, and Berlin, through the perspective of urban humanities fields such as architecture, visual arts, urbanism, and literature. This triangulation allows for the de-essentialization of "Muslim countries" as homogenous and fixed places by observing the differences between Turkey and Pakistan. It also enables critical examination of established perceptions of these places as being fundamentally different from the "West," by observing diasporas in Germany, and hybrid formations and translations taking place. Discrimination is discussed both as a cause and a result of migration — as internal problems that compel citizens to emigrate out of their countries and analyzed in conjunction with ideological constructs that subject them to persistent discrimination in their countries of arrival. Immigration from and through these three cities is discussed as emblematic of the wider problem of increased contemporary displacement from South and West Asia, and North Africa. This seminar is held in conjunction with the option studio, Berlin – City Between Immigration and Gentrification, taught by Professor Werner Goehner.

This event is part of Critically Now: A Pop-Up and Growing Event Series and the Mellon Collaborative Studies in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities Expanded Practice Seminar series.