September 1, 2006

Professor Wilhelm Vosskamp (Univ. of Cologne) will lecture on "Schillers Utopie der aesthetischen Bildung." The basis of my talk will be Schiller's "Letters on the Aesthetical Education of Man," published in 1795. In the context of German discussions on "Bildung" (education, selfformation, selfperfection), I want to outline that the preconditions of Schiller's aesthetics are his anthropology (this was first conceptualized in the dissertation on the "Connection between the Animal and Spiritual Man") and a critique of modern societal differentiation. My main purpose is to elaborate the specific characteristics of "aesthetical education" and the role of a "state of beauty" in…

September 1, 2006

DaF in den USA: Grundzüge und Perspektiven UC Berkeley / DAAD Workshop 2006 September 22-23, 2006 **Registration has ended, we can not accommodate additional participants at this time.** Workshop Schedule Friday, September 22 (282 Dwinelle Hall) (Participants arrive at Hotel Shattuck Plaza) 13:00 - Welcome; Overview of Workshop Components 13:15 - Language Learning Autobiographies 13:30 - Video Presentation and Discussion: “Good” vs. “Bad” Teaching 14:45 - Coffee Break 370 Dwinelle Hall 15:00 - BLC Lecture by Prof. Janet Swaffar, UT Austin, title to be announced 17:00 - Reception / Distribution of Microteaching Assignments TBA 19:00 - Dinner Saturday, September 23…

August 1, 2006

Dr. Erwin Tschirner (University of Leipzig) will give a lecture titled "Häufigkeitsverteilungen im Deutschen und ihr Einfluss auf das Lehren und Lernen des DaF." Erwin Tschirner is Dean, Professor of German, and Director of the Herder Institute at the Universiy of Leipzig. He received his PhD in Germanic Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of numerous books and articles on the Acquisition and Teaching of German as a Foreign Language (DaF), most recently the Frequency Dictionary of German: Core Vocabulary for Learners ( with R. Jones, London: Routledge, 2005). He is co-author of the most…

May 1, 2006

The 2006 Kenneth Weisinger Memorial Lecture will be given by Professor Ulrich Baer (NYU). His lecture is titled "Rainer Maria Rilke’s 'Beyond': On sublimation and desire in modern poetry."

April 1, 2006

German Kabarett: im Tor, dahinter und davor

7:30 p.m. both nights, all are welcome to attend.

April 1, 2006

The Bonwit-Heine Lecture Series presents Meike Werner (Vanderbilt University), who will lecture on "Translating the Orient. Eugen Diederichs and the Literatures of the World."

April 1, 2006

Kurt Mueller-Vollmer (Stanford) will lecture on "How the German BROCKHAUS became the ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA: A Case Study in German-American Cultural Transfer" from 1:00-3:00 p.m. in Dwinelle 219. The presentation is aimed at expanding the traditional horizon of German-American Studies beyond immigrants’ lore or influence studies to include the important domain of the historical interaction between the two cultures that occurred within the mainstream of American intellectual andc ultural history. As case in point the making of the ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA by the German-American Francis Lieber between 1828 and 1832 will be closely examined, its contents and structure as instrument of transcultural communication…

April 1, 2006

This year's Germanic Lingustics Roundtable will take place at The Faculty Club, University of California, Berkeley. Friday, April 7 Morning Session: Eugene Green (Boston Univ.) 8:30 a.m. Alexander Onysko (Univ. of  Innsbruck/Macalester College): "Gender Assignment of Anglicisms in German" 8:55 a.m. Donald Steinmetz (Augsburg College): "Nouns with the Prefix ge-: A Cross-linguistic Study in Gender Assignment" 9:20 a.m. Ilona Vandergriff (San Francisco State Univ.): "Content and Speech Act Conditionality: A Closer Look at Evidence from German" 9:45 a.m. Enrique Mallen (Texas A & M Univ.): "Jackendoff’s Parallel Architecture, Picasso’s Cubism and Stein’s Language Poetry" 10:10 a.m. Ann-Marie Swensson & Jurgen Hering (Univ. of Gotebörg):…

April 1, 2006

The Bonwit-Heine Lecture Series presents Susanne Kord (University College London), who will give a lecture titled "From Evil Eye to Poetic Eye: Witch Beliefs and Physiognomy in the Age of Enlightenment."

March 1, 2006

The BTWH (Berkeley-Tübingen-Wien-Harvard) Working Group announces its conference on Media and Mobility What is the relationship between media and mobility? Can media create virtual mobility? Can we travel through media? Is it actual mobility or a sense of mobility conveyed through the media that creates a "global citizen"? How have various types of media changed the way we view and negotiate space? And how has increased mobility changed our relationship to media? Has it increased individuality and communities based on common interests spread throughout the world in which geographical location no longer plays a role? Or is geographical location just…