Migration’s Alienations: Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage

Authors

  • Dorothee Ostmeier University of Oregon
  • Michael Malek Najjar University of Oregon

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/konturen.11.0.4801

Abstract

Brecht’s so-called anti-war drama Mother Courage and her Children (1939) will be read as a migration drama that demystifies rhetorical cynicism as a coping device for the traumatic torments of migration. By placing Brecht’s work in the context of Peter Sloterdijk’s theory of cynicism, our reading demonstrates how this work adds further perspectives to Thomas Nail’s recent theory of migration and to the discussion of the play’s theatrical production.

Author Biographies

Dorothee Ostmeier, University of Oregon

Dorothee Ostmeier is Professor of German, Folklore and Public Culture, and Head of Theater Arts at the University of Oregon. She serves as participating faculty of Comparative Literature and Women and Gender Studies. Ostmeier is the author of Sprache des Dramas - Drama der Sprache: Nelly Sachs' Poetik (1997); Poetische Dialoge zu Liebe, Gender und Sex im frühen zwanzigsten Jahrhundert (2014), and co-edited Brecht, Marxism, Ethics (Brecht Yearbook 2017), and Poetic Materialities: Semiotics of Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s Wanderer’s Nachtlied” and “Ein Gleiches” in COLLATERAL 2017. Her current research focusses on Portals and Shapeshifters in Gothic Fantasies to Postmodern Digital Culture.

Michael Malek Najjar, University of Oregon

Michael Malek Najjar is an associate professor of Theatre Arts with the University of Oregon. He holds a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies (UCLA) and an M.F.A. in Directing (York University). He is an associate member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society (SDC), and an alumnus of the British/American Drama Academy (BADA), Lincoln Center Directors Lab, Directors Lab West, and RAWI Screenwriters’ Lab (Jordan). He authored Middle Eastern American Theatre: Communities, Cultures and Creators and Arab American Drama, Film and Performance: A Critical Study, 1908 to the Present. He has edited Heather Raffo’s Iraq Plays: The Things That Can’t Be Said, The Selected Works of Yussef El Guindi, and Four Arab American Plays: Works by Leila Buck, Jamil Khoury, Yussef El Guindi, and Lameece Issaq & Jacob Kader. He is also co-editor of Six Plays of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflictwith Jamil Khoury and Corey Pond. Malek serves on the advisory board for New Arab American Theatre Works, Silk Road Rising, and Arab Stages. He has directed mainstage productions with Golden Thread Productions, New Arab American Theatre Works, and Silk Road Rising. Malek is also on the steering committee of the Middle East North Africa Theatre Makers Alliance (MENATMA).

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Published

2020-12-09

How to Cite

Ostmeier, D., & Najjar, M. M. (2020). Migration’s Alienations: Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage. Konturen, 11, 29–51. https://doi.org/10.5399/uo/konturen.11.0.4801

Issue

Vol. 11 (2020): Writing Migration

Section

Articles