For this talk, Prof. Robert Gould (Carleton University, Ottawa) will analyze some of the most prominent legal and political discourses which have surrounded the Head Scarf debate in Germany. In the German context, this issue achieved prominence with the September 2003 decision of the Federal Constitutional Court in the case of Fereshta Ludin, a German of Afghan origin, who appealed the administrative decision in Baden-Württemberg to deny her a permanent teaching position because of her insistence on wearing a headscarf while in the classroom. Using significant representative examples of overlapping discourses arising from the case, Prof. Gould will argue that these discourses demonstrate the nature of the struggle among those charged by society with defining the nation and the state in a time of change: on the one hand a liberal constitution interpreted by the majority justices as neutral and inclusive of all religions; but on the other hand an exclusionary discourse employed by the dissenting justices, based on the mutually exclusive and hostile categories of “Native” and “Alien”, which have become more potent in the post 9/11 world.

This talk is part of “Germany in the World: The Nation Transcended in the Age of Globalization”, a CCGES lecture series which gives North American and European scholars from a variety of academic fields a platform to contribute to the ongoing discussions regarding trans-nationalism and globalization by presenting their current research, most of which, but not all, will be related to Germany. Financial support for the series has been generously provided by the Standing Committee for German as a Foreign Language (StADaF).

Robert Gould is the Associate Director of the Centre for European Studies and an Adjunct Research Professor in the Institute of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa. His current investigations of the discourses of immigration and identity in election manifestos, parties’ official position papers, and statements to legislatures emerged from teaching on the language of politics and nationalism in the German-speaking area of Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Time: 1:30 to 3:00 pm
Location: 230 York Lanes