2019 || Potsdam to Delhi
Joanna Louise Mackenthun
Joanna Louise Mackenthun is a student in the University of Potsdam’s Anglophone Modernities in Literature and Culture MA program. For Joanna's research paper based on her field work in Delhi, please click here.
Paul Carlisle
Paul is a student in the University of Potsdam’s Anglophone Modernities in Literature and Culture.
Komal Chopra
Kolmal Chopra is a student in the University of Potsdam’s Anglophone Modernities in Literature abd Culture. During her exchange semster at the University of Delhi she has conducted research for her upcoming MA thesis. In her report of her exchange semester at Delhi University she compares food cultures in India and Germany; for a taste, click here.
Dr. Harald Pittel
Harald Pittel is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Potsdam’s Institute of English and American Studies. For Harald's current research project please click here.
2019 || Delhi to Potsdam
Saumya Garima Jaipuriar
Saumya is a PhD scholar at the English Department.
Ruma Dutt
Ruma is a PhD scholar at the Department of Germanic and Romance Studies at the University of Delhi.
Abiral Kumar
Abiral is a PhD scholar at the English Department at the University of Delhi.
Sunil Kumar Pal
Sunil is an MPhil student at the Department of Germanic and Romance Studies at the University of Delhi.
Bidyut Sagar Boruah
Bidyut is a PhD researcher at the English Department at the University of Delhi. In his research project for the 'Exploring the City' field trip he analysed instances of memorializing the GDR in present-day Berlin.
Manila Kohli
Manila is a PhD researcher in the English Department at the University of Delhi. As part of the field trip "Exploring the City" she conducted on-site research on Holocaust memorials in Berlin. Her project description can be found here.
Samarth Singhal
Samarth is a PhD researcher in the English Department at Delhi University. During the field trip "Exploring the City" he conducted reseaech on caricatures from concentration camps. His project description cna be found here.
Vartika Maurya
Vartika is an MA student in the German section at the University of Delhi. Her research projectfor the "Explorinhg the City" field trip was on Berlin as an eco-friendly metropolis. Her project description can be found here.
Pawanjot Kaur
Pawanjot is an MA student in the German section at the University of Delhi. She was part of the field trip, "Exploring the City", where she pursued a researchproject on cultural memory. You can find the summary of her project here.
2018 || Potsdam to Delhi
Lena Amberge
"When I first decided to come to India with the, my interest was very general. As part of my modernity-related study program, I wanted to experience this phenomenon in a non-Western country, and was especially interested in the concrete ways in which modernity manifested not only in Indian everyday life but also in modern Indian literature.Out of this developed a more specific research project during my stay: I started to look into postcolonial gothic, its characteristics as a genre, and its examples in Indian literature. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, in particular, struck me as appealing in this regard. As a consequence, I am currently in the process of writing about the gothic and the societal abject in Roy’s first novel."
Lena Amberge is a student in the University of Potsdam’s Anglophone Modernities in Literature and Culture MA program.
Juan Camilo Brigard Torres
"During my stay in Delhi developed two projects: One studying the disputed tradition of magical realism in a journey from Colombia, through the US and Europe, to reach India and back. The core of my work is analyzing the symbolic national and transnational reappropriation and reception of the literary work and intellectual discourse of two postcolonial cosmopolitan writers: Gabriel García Márquez and Salman Rushdie, as of the US-American acquisition of the former's archive. My second project, which became my MA thesis, analysed M.K. Gandhi’s “fastings unto death” from an aesthetic perspective. Applying the theater scholar Erika Fischer-Lichte’s “aesthetics of the performative” and superimposing the frame of Gandhi’s political philosophy, different visual, cinematic and textual sources, my work aimed to bring under a new light “the last weapon of nonviolence”. In other words, an intent to answer the question: how did the “father of the nation” manage to stage hunger in its most dramatic fashion, in the country where — with the words of the journalist Martín Caparrós — “malnutrition does not have a way how to stage itself”?"
Juan did his MA in Comparative Literature and Art at the University of Potsdam and is doctoral candidate of GCSC at the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen. His Master's thesis on the political aesthetics of Gandhi's hunger strikes benefitted immensely form his exchange semester at Delhi University.
Sandra Hesse
"As part of the DAAD exchange program 'Writing the Cosmopolitan Imagination' with Delhi University, I am in India to conduct research for my Master’s thesis for three months. Before coming to India, I was already aware of the issue of gendered spaces. These are generally speaking spaces such as living quarters, i.e. women's hostels, parts of the metro etc. that are reserved for women only. However, more than just offering a safe space for women, these gendered spaces often impose rules on women and, therefore, work to reinforce power structures and ultimately gender hierarchies.
When I arrived in Delhi, I was also noticing a great amount of street art and graffiti throughout the city, which is often sending particularly activist messages. Among things like environmental awareness and countering racism, many murals are directly or indirectly addressing women’s issues such as domestic violence, rape, harassment, reproductive rights, and female foeticide etc. Bearing this in mind, my research focus has now shifted towards investigating how feminist street art in Delhi reclaims public/male space. Therefore, I am actively observing and analyzing street art in Delhi as well as conducting interviews with both artists of such artworks and pedestrians who pass by them."
Sandra Hesse is a student in the University of Potsdam’s M.Ed. teacher training program specializing in English and Geography. Her Master's thesis on gendered spacesand feminist steet artin Delhi is based on her field work during her exchnage semester at Delhi University.
Marie-Christin Hoffman
Marie-Christin is a student in the University of Potsdam’s M.Ed. teacher training program specializing in English and Geography. Her Master's thesis on the politics of informal housing is based on her field work during her research stay at Delhi University.
Lea Sophie Nüske
Lea is a student in the University of Potsdam's teacher training program specializing in English and French. In her master's thesis on Indian stand-up comedy she drew intensely on the findings she could make as a participant in the Masala Modernities field trip.
Alexandra Krug
Alexandra is a student in the University of Potsdam's teacher training program specializing in arts education. She conducted the on-site research for her master's thesis on "#artforall", a street art project in Delhi's Lodhi Estate neighbourhood, in the framework of the Masala Modernities field trip.
Dr Gigi Adair
Gigi Adair was a senior lecturer at the University of Potsdam’s Institute of English and American Studies; in 2019, she joined the University of Bielefeld as a Junior Professor of Cultural Studies.
2018 || Delhi to Potsdam
Himani Kapoor
"The idea of a homogeneous public sphere with a bounded political community and that which excluded religion from its contours has been reworked to include many kinds of public wherein the relevance of the political role of religion is also widely recognized. My doctoral research titled “Understanding the Religious Public Sphere(s) in India: a study of Satsangs, Religious Sermons and Sacred Gatherings” is to understand the multiple religious public spheres through a study of public lectures, sacred gatherings and religious sermons.One of the important developments to emerge in the study of religion especially Hinduism over the last few decades has been the rise of transnational devotionalist organizations led by charismatic leaders or gurus. Many of these movements cut across national and cultural boundaries, predominantly promoting meditation and particular forms of yoga.
At present, my focus is to explore prominent guru led faith movements originated in India, that have spread out to various other parts of the world including Germany. Also, at the outset of my research I would like to explore the resonances of Ulrich Beck’s ideas about the de-territorialization of religion with the Indian religious public sphere. I would be therefore studying transnational organizations promoting meditation and yoga as shaping the religious public sphere of today."
Himani is an Ph.D. scholar at the department of English, University of Delhi.
Nitika Jain
"The topic of my M.Phil. dissertation is “Contemporary young-adult fiction as Bildungsroman” based on the comparative study of the novels Wolfgang Herrndorf’s Tschick und Bov Bjerk’s Auerhaus. The aim of this research is to investigate why is it that these two novels, written in today’s times, both seem to have used in a sense the form of the Bildungsroman. Both are aimed at young people, represent young protagonists and describe their “maturation process” through different events. The themes in both these novels are typical for a coming-of-age novel i.e. Family, Love, Relationship, Journey, FriTming-of-age novel i.e. Family, Love, Relationship, Journey, Friends and most importantly the search for the meaning of life. Both the novels tell about the past of a character in a way that suggests an adult perspective that has developed over time.
The focus is also to analyse the above mentioned contemporary novels in order to explore the way in which Bildungsroman, a genre generally defined as a novel of development of the protagonist from childhood up to maturation, is articulated in contemporary times. Through close readings of the two modern versions of the genre — this dissertation will seek to demonstrate the change, that the form of the Genre of the Bildungsroman has undergone."
Nitika is an M.Phil scholar at the department of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Delhi
Radhika Basin
Radhika is an M.Phil scholar at the department of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Delhi.
Anugya Soni
Anugya is an M.Phil scholar at the department of English, University of Delhi.
2017 || Potsdam to Delhi
Cindy Voeltz
Cindy Voeltz is a student in the University of Potsdam’s M.Ed teacher training program specializing in German, mathematics and inclusionary pedagogics.
Seratul Mustakim Alam
Seratul is a student in the University of Potsdam’s Anglophone Modernities in Literature and Culture MA program.
Anna Finzel
Anna Finzel is a PhD student at the University of Potsdam’s Institute of English and American Studies.
Praveen Sewgobind
Praveen Sewgobind is a doctoral fellow with the University of Potsdam’s research training group “Minor Cosmopolitanisms”.
Helen Thein-Peitsch
Helen Thein-Peitsch is a member of staff at the University of Potsdam’s Center for Contemporary History.
Prof. Dr. Helmut Peitsch
Helmut Peitsch is professor emeritus of German Studies at the University of Potsdam.
2017 || Delhi to Potsdam
A. P. Payal
"My doctoral project seeks to study the way tarot cards were consciously repurposed within a feminist discourse in America between 1970 and 1990, while also analysing the ways the tarot negotiates with the demands of mass culture. I am drawn to the ways in which the tarot transcends genre (visual/textual/spiritual) and national affiliations. My work primarily focuses on delineating the politics of visuality to which I am drawn both as an academic and as an artist."
Payal is a Ph.D. scholar at the department of English, University of Delhi.
Musab Abdul Salam
"My interest is in looking at how Literature as a mode of being closely intertwined with colonial philology, with its own ways of imagining, producing and consuming texts, presupposed and initiated (in partially failed ways) a particular grammar of subject in the colonies often disappearing and disfiguring other forms of being in the process."
Musab is an M.Phil scholar at the department of English, University of Delhi.
Neha Aggarwal
Neha is an M.Phil scholar at the department of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Delhi.
Gawri Verma
Gawri is a Ph.D. scholar at the department of Germanic and Romance Studies, University of Delhi.
2016 || Potsdam to Delhi
Florian Schybilski
"My exchange semester in Delhi gave me the chance to study cosmopolitanisms and Dalit literature outside of a European academic framework. My interest in these topics deepened, which set me up with a line of research for my MA thesis, Dalit Cosmopolitanisms: Global Roots in Color and Human Rights. In addition to this, the Delhi experience and academic engagement have proven formative in that they helped inspire my ongoing dissertation project Modernity as Salvation".
Florian was a student in the University of Potsdam’s Anglophone Modernities in Literature and Culture MA program and now is a PhD student at Potsdam’s Institute of English and American Studies.
Tatiana Bogacheva
Tatiana Bogacheva is a student in the University of Potsdam’s Anglophone Modernities in Literature and Culture MA program.
Dr. Tania Meyer
Up to the winter semester 2018/19, Tania was a senior lecturer at the University of Potsdam’s Department of Educational Science. In summer 2019 she became a full professor of Theatre Education at the University of Flensburg.