The essays collected in this volume address a wide spectrum of issues connected to traumatic events and experiences, be they of personal, collective, national or global scale. They are complemented by poetic contemplations on trauma, which Set the tone for the following scholarly investigations. The thematic scope of the collection encompasses psychological, sociological and political approaches to trauma, examples of ethnic and indigenous traumatizations, literary, cultural and visual manifestations of trauma or the medialization of trauma in the museum. As a result of the comparative, and in some cases cross-hermeneutic, design of the volume with German scholars looking at Canadian and Canadian scholars looking at German/European examples of traumatization, transatlantic perspectives on the problems at stake are opened.

This volume invites the reader to participate in a discussion about how to conceptualize the mediation of difference in localities of diversity and transcultural spaces via the analytical lenses of ‘translation’ as a social practice. The contributions to the volume explore, discuss, and theorize ‘translation’ as a pre-institutionalized strategy of conflict resolution and conflict transformation as well as a driving force of cultural and social change and as a means of knowledge Production. In addition to mistranslations and untranslatabilities, the authors analyze the politics of literary translation and translation as research-creation.

Spaces of Difference discusses the construction of transcultural spaces and the representation and negotiation of diversity through the analytical lenses of narratives, practices and politics of diversity. The multi-disciplinary contributions to this volume address four broader research fields: (1) the entangled and contested (hi)stories of diversity; (2) migration and the creation of transcultural spaces; (3) practices and politics of belonging; and (4) the dynamics of confrontation and cohabitation in spaces of difference. The research presented in this volume combines approaches from history, political science, sociology, migration studies and literature.

The contributions to this volume address core concepts and research perspectives of our interdisciplinary research group. The IRTG Diversity focuses on a comparative and historically situated analysis of discourses and representations of diversity and cultural pluralism in North America and Europe. The empirical research published in this volume demonstrates how these discourses and representations of diversity create overlapping zones of geographical and chronological reach.