“Actually, the military is investing a lot of money into programs for women’s equality,” said one of the participants in a workshop during the “Bridging Backgrounds” conference for Macedonian high schoolers about tolerance, interethnic understanding and human rights that was organised with funding from the Davis Foundation. I couldn’t help but let out a laugh.
CategoryBlog
Alumni Speak: Tuvshinzaya Gantulga on Liberal Arts
On the BCB campus, it’s not uncommon to find students who switch seamlessly between their three mother tongues. Someone might hesitate before answering the question “Where are you from?” or “Where will you be next year?” Last month, I sat down in front of my computer to chat with Tuvshinzaya Gantulga, a BCB alumnus who
No Is Not Enough: Trump, Climate Change, and Resisting Shock
The eve of the 2016 election in November, while still on exchange in Paris and away from Berlin, I decide not to go to the viewing party that was set up by Sciences Po. Rather, I will stay in my roomy eleven square meter studio and wait for Hillary Clinton’s inevitable win with my Swedish
Pride Month 2017: Activism, Rainbow Capitalism and Right-Wing Queer Tokenism
The first time I attended a Macedonian Pride related event was in June 2016 when I saw African-American intersex-born, genderqueer performer, artist, and generally wonderful human being Vaginal Davis. She projected some of her experimental films and gave one of the most entertaining Q&As I’ve witnessed. Anders Stefanovski — one of my best and queerest
Shave Ice
For two summers straight I sold shave ice to sunscreen-slathered Northerners who arrived in droves to the beaches of Florida with the seagulls that circled like vultures overhead. It was good business for me and the seagulls. When the sky was clear and the temperature broke one hundred degrees, the tourists sweating white bullets would
Survivor Scapes: Urban Geographies of Tenderness
I came to Berlin as a person with a complicated love relationship with cities. New York City often grips my heart so close it hurts. The relationship between the city and the survivor of sexual violence–or the survivor of any kind of violence or trauma–is a very particular one. Many stories and cultural narratives refer
Privileged Exile
You read the words of Mahmoud Darwish, his nostalgia, revolution and melancholia swirl the desert dust over times and places to reach your eye. Yes, I swear. This is how the tear settled on my dry cheek. And Nizar Qabbani whose eroticism, love and poetic (but also political) fight for social justice make you tingle
The Liberal Education Conference in Freiburg
Hello all you BCBers, In case someone has been wondering about my absence from BCB in the past semester, let me reassure you of my return in Fall 2017: I am currently not in Berlin but studying abroad at AUC in Amsterdam. The first question one might ask is probably: Why would I study abroad