German Studies 200-A: ST: Reading the Room: Sharon Dodua Otoo's Ada's Realm

Sharon Dodua Otoo, born in England to Ghanaian parents, lives and works as an author and activist in Germany. After winning the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for the first short story she wrote in German, she published Ada's Realm (Adas Raum), a critical and popular hit in Germany. Spanning six hundred years of history and global cultures and historical moments from Germany to England to Ghana, this novel invites readers to examine global networks of power and injustice through the figure of a single - or perhaps multiple? - woman. Ada takes the form of a contemporary woman in Berlin navigating issues around race and motherhood, a woman imprisoned in a concentration camp, and the famed mathematician Ada Lovelace. More than just narrating these stories, however, Otoo's text invites readers to engage with non-human narrators as a way of looking in at human life from the outside. This course will be of interest to those seeking to understand the place of language in a global society, questioning their own places in unfamiliar cultures, or negotiating shifting understandings of home, race, and gender, as well as those studying German, English, and other literatures. German-speaking students at all levels will conduct some readings and writing assignments in German. May be taken for credit toward the Gender Studies major or minor. May be taken for credit toward the Indigeneity, Race, and Ethnicity major or minor. Distribution area: Cultural Pluralism.