Research project: Multiple Cultural Competencies

Multiple Cultural Competencies in the Interweaving Histories of Central and Eastern Europe: Neighbourhood, Migration and 'Jewish Experiences'

Prof. Dr. Annette Werberger / Prof. Dr. Kerstin Schoor

Seed Money-Projekt, Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION
(EUV/MWFK-Förderung)

The project focuses on a competency of European Jews that has grown and lived over many centuries: the ability to maintain autonomy and agency in a socially, ethnically and religiously diversified vicinity through border negotiations.

The cultural-historical and literary methodological approaches that have been bundled for this purpose come from empire and network research, border studies as well as global and interconnected history. In the project, Jewish competency developed through multiple affiliations is first demonstrated as a cultural phenomenon of Central and Eastern Europe through the study of a literary, visual, ethnographic and historical corpus, and then the use of this ability after migration or in exile in Western Europe or overseas is traced.

The focus on these East-Central European Jewish experiential resources helps to Europeanise transculturalism in terms of postcolonial studies on the one hand, and to understand Jewish culture as an example of European cultural interweaving history on the other.