Aesthetics of the Roma: Literature, Comic and Film of Roma in Latin Europe

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Marina Ortrud Hertrampf
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2017 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 359840883

The Roma (understood here as heteronym that includes all subgroups such as Sinti, Roma, Calé, Kalderash, Manouche, etc.) form with almost twelve million people the largest ethnic minority in Europe. While the living conditions of the Roma are primarily precarious in South Eastern Europe, a large proportion of Roma living in South Western Europe has integrated into the respective majority societies, lives mostly sedentary and speaks the local languages. Nevertheless, Roma also there continue to face massive prejudices and racist resentments.Literary Studies usually work on the subject Roma and literature by analysing the motif or topic of "Gypsies", their ways of life, customs and traditions in literary texts by authors of the majority society. The perspective of the proposed scientific network is focused differently and is providing new scientific ground in Romance Literary Studies: The aim of the research group will be to present the first comprehensive study of the different aesthetics of Roma in Latin Europe. To achieve this, the effects of heterostereotypes on the aesthetic self-representation of Roma in literature, comic and film need to be explored. The focus is on works by Roma from Latin Europe, which were written in the Romance majority languages and therefore are in an aesthetically highly interesting contrast with works by artists from the majority society. This contrastive comparative approach means balancing similarities and differences, acquisitions, influences and separations between self and other on the one hand and aesthetic techniques and procedures on the other. Since Romani societies are quite heterogeneous, there are a variety of Romani cultures; in the same way we have to speak of many, partly very different aesthetics. This diversity and heterogeneity is reinforced by focusing on Latin Europe, with its multitude of languages and literary and cinematic traditions, so that the network group is basically working comparatively. Romani art is characterized by the excess of cultural, linguistic and medial borders. Therefore the aspects intermediality and interculturality will be of great importance as well as the areas of minorities, diasporas, exclusion, peripherals and migration. With the objective to work out the aesthetic characteristics and peculiarities of Romani literature, comic and film, the disciplinary orientation of the research work will be a decidedly literary one despite the proximity to Media and Cultural Studies.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks