Works In Progress -Natasza Gawlick- CDG Graduate Student

This talk explores the way non-familial notions of kinship are mobilized in the 2015 German TV-comedy Frau Roggenschaubs Reise to facilitate transcultural notions of belonging. Frau Roggenschaubs Reise centers the experience of Sinti and Roma communities vis a vis majority German culture by featuring "culture clashes" between a white German woman and a German Sinti family. I argue that the film grapples with uneasy questions of belonging, allegiance and community, while also (re)examining the meaning of German-ness and challenging the idea of “colorblindness." In drawing from scholarship that repositions kinship as not biologically-founded but rather as a "mutuality of being," I propose that the film’s narrative and characters’ relationships present the development of non-familial kinship between dominant and marginalized populations. These relationships suggest the possibility of establishing a transcultural community that is not merely confined to national or ethnic identification, but rather based in shared memories, experiences and dialogue.