News & Events
Events
The Department of German hosts and co-sponsors a range of events throughout the year, including conferences, lecture series, and weekly/biweekly colloquia and social activities.
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Historical Turns: Weimar Cinema and the Crisis of Historicism (Berkeley Book Chats)
Time: - 1:00 PMDate: Location: Geballe Room, 220 Stephens Hall
Speaker: Nicholas Baer
Registration Requested In Historical Turns (UC Press, 2024), Nicholas Baer (German) reassesses Weimar cinema in light of the “crisis of historicism” widely diagnosed by German philosophers in the early twentieth century. Through bold new analyses of five legendary works of German silent cinema — The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Destiny, Rhythm 21, The Holy Mountain, and Metropolis — Baer argues that films of the Weimar Republic lent vivid expression to the crisis of historical thinking. With their experiments in cinematic form and style, these modernist films revealed the capacity of the medium to engage with fundamental questions about…
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Workshop “Archives of Nature”
Time: - 6:00 PMDate: - 09/14/2024 Location: 370 Dwinelle Hall
Speaker: TBA
TBA
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Workshop “Archives of Nature”
Time: - 4:00 PMDate: Location: 370 Dwinelle Hall
Speaker: TBA
TBA
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COMMENCEMENT-SPRING 2024
Time: - 11:00 AMDate: Location: Zellerbach Playhouse
COMMENCEMENT Spring 2024 Commencement for German Bachelor’s (majors), Master’s, and Ph.D. students: TUESDAY MAY 14, 2024 9-11AM ZELLERBACH PLAYHOUSE Master of Ceremonies: TBD Featured Speaker: TBD Reception immediately following the ceremony, Ishi Court. PARTICIPATING DEPARTMENTS Celtic Studies, Comparative Literature, Dutch Studies, French, German, Italian Studies, Scandinavian, Slavic Languages & Literatures, and Spanish & Portuguese
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Lecture by Dr. Friederike Schäfer-“Un-/Making the Anthropocene. Exhibitions as Discursive Spaces”
Time: - 1:30 PMDate: Location: 5303 Dwinelle Hall- German Conference Room
Speaker: Dr. Friederike Schäfer, visiting scholar, Freie Universität Berlin
In her research project “Earth(ly) Matters. How Exhibition Spaces Capture Natural Environments,” Friederike Schäfer discusses how large-scale exhibitions have engaged in the discourse around the Anthropocene within the past decade. She examines how these exhibitions function as discursive spaces that conflate aesthetic experience and knowledge production, through the lens of the controversial debate on this proposition for a paradigm change in the history of Earth. This talk focuses on “Das Anthropozän am HKW“ (2013–2022, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin) and “Critical Zones. Horizonte einer neuen Erdpolitik“ at ZKM (2020–2022, Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe). https://www.temporal-communities.de/research/travelling-matters/projects/schaefer-earthly-matters/index.html In collaboration…
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“The Archives of Critical Theory”
Time: - 1:00 PMDate: - 04/06/2024 Location: Zoom
Speaker: Isabelle Aubert (University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Messages in a Bottle: Recent Studies on the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory An Online Book Talk Series 100 years ago, on June 22, 1924, the legendary Institute for Social Research was opened in Frankfurt, Germany. Since then, names such as Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Leo Löwenthal and Herbert Marcuse have been associated with this institute. To mark this centenary, the book launch series looks at the latest trends and approaches in research on the history, culture and philosophy of the so-called “Frankfurt School” of Critical Theory. Three authors present their new books and discuss them…
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Lecture: Francesco Casetti- “Media, Fears, Protection”
Time: - 5:00 PMDate: Location: 142 Dwinelle Hall
Speaker: Francesco Casetti (Sterling Professor of Humanities and Film and Media Studies at Yale University)
Many contemporary media function as filters that protect us against the dangers from the exterior, rather than as tools that help appropriate the world. Consequently, mediation becomes a process in which contact with the world relies on some kind of distancing, and in which grasping reality also means recognizing the threats it may pose – threats that are, more often than not, the result of human action on the world. This lecture explores the widespread presence of protective media in our contemporary media landscape, with a particular focus on the ways they reshape our environment and elicit new forms of governmentality. …
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Workshop: Francesco Casetti- “Rhizomatic Media Archaeology”
Time: - 12:00 PMDate: Location: 188 Dwinelle Hall
Speaker: Francesco Casetti (Sterling Professor of Humanities and Film and Media Studies at Yale University)
Open to graduate students and faculty. Space is limited. RSVP to Linus Mao ([email protected]) ASAP to receive two texts, which will serve as a basis for interactive discussion. Lunch will be provided at noon in the German Dept. library. In your RSVP, please indicate if you would like to stay for lunch and if you have any dietary restrictions. Francesco Casetti is Sterling Professor of Humanities and Film and Media Studies at Yale University. He is the author of Inside the Gaze: The Fiction Film and Its Spectator (1999), Theories of Cinema, 1945–1995 (1999), Eye of the Century: Film, Experience, Modernity (2008), The Lumière Galaxy: Seven Key…
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Felix A. Jiménez Botta | The Central American insurgencies and the Human Rights Culture War in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1979 –1990
Time: - 6:30 PMDate: Location: 201 Philosophy Hall
Speaker: Felix A. Jiménez Botta, Associate Professor of History, Miyazaki International College
Sponsor(s): Institute of European Studies, Center for German and European Studies, German Historical Institute Washington | Pacific Office Berkeley Did the human rights movement shun social justice and ignore the rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s–1980s? Using the example of human rights advocacy towards Central America in West Germany, this talk will explore conflicting visions of human rights in the 1980s, and explain why a market-conforming human rights movement emerged victorious by the end of the decade. Left-wing activists mobilized human rights rhetoric to support the Salvadoran guerrilla movement and the Sandinista state because they promised liberation and social justice.…
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“In the Twilight: Studies on the Pre- and Early History of Critical Theory”
Time: - 1:00 PMDate: Location: Zoom
Speaker: Christian Voller (Leuphana University, Lüneburg)
Messages in a Bottle: Recent Studies on the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory An Online Book Talk Series 100 years ago, on June 22, 1924, the legendary Institute for Social Research was opened in Frankfurt, Germany. Since then, names such as Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Leo Löwenthal and Herbert Marcuse have been associated with this institute. To mark this centenary, the book launch series looks at the latest trends and approaches in research on the history, culture and philosophy of the so-called “Frankfurt School” of Critical Theory. Three authors present their new books and discuss them…