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Translating Heimat In Multilingual Dortmund, Kristin Dickinson

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Named for the people of 132 different nationalities photojournalist Peyman Azhari encountered in northern Dortmund over the course of a year, the photo collection Heimat 132 (2014) stands as testament to the many ethnicities, religions, and languages this neighborhood is home to. In my paper, I read Azhari’s photographs as sites of translation capable of reclaiming a critical understanding of Heimat (home or homeland) that is fundamentally multilingual. I do so by first exploring the link between racially and ethnically exclusionary definitions of Heimat and the all-too-common assertion that Heimat is an untranslatable word. Each approach, I argue, rests on …