Departmental News
Events
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Will Germany Remain the Safe Harbor in Europe?, Oct 28
October 28, 2016
The refugee crisis has been portrayed as a possible breaking point for Angela Merkel's chancellorship. With rising support for the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) and big wins at recent regional elections, it seems Germany is falling prey to the political instability seen in other European states. However, the ...read more
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And the Book Was Not Consumed: The Forty Days of Musa Dagh and the Nazi Holocaust, Oct 27
October 27, 2016
What did Hitler (may his name and memory be blotted out!) mean when he said, on the eve of invading Poland and starting World War II, “Who remembers the Armenians?” Just five years earlier a Czech Jew named Franz Werfel had published in German the novel Forty Days of Musa ...read more
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The foundation of Dutch Studies and Belgian Studies in the Anglophone world: The struggle for British public opinion of the Low Countries, 1919—1935, Oct 23
October 23, 2016
In 1919 Pieter Geyl became the first Chair for Dutch Studies at the University of London (and the Anglophone world in general) and quickly gained a reputation in scholarly and political circles. While being widely recognized as a brilliant historian, Geyl's political views let him become suspicious enough to the ...read more
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The Absent Presence of Race in Postwar Germany, Oct 20
October 20, 2016
This talk considers why it has been so difficult to apprehend certain kinds of "difference" in postwar Germany. Specifically, it asks why the category of "race" has been missing from postwar German public discourse. The talk probes the meanings of the terms "Rasse" and "race” as a starting point for ...read more
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Poetics of the Wound: Re-Reading Goethe and the Romantics, Oct 13
October 13, 2016
Nicole Sütterlin argues that notions of physical injury, Christian-catholic stigmata and particularly psychological trauma are a defining element in German literature around 1800. Thus Goethe's classical manifesto Über Laokoon (1798) strikingly emphasizes Lakoon's wound as a source of artistic harmony. While Goethe's high classicism stops just short of introducing an ...read more
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Hitler’s Compromises, Oct 4
October 4, 2016
Under Hitler's rule the Gestapo brutally repressed political resistance. Yet Hitler also made tactical compromises in order to maintain his authority and consolidate power within the Reich. Brutality against the Jews typically escalated in a pattern of what has become known as ‘cumulative radicalization'. At the same time, Hitler intervened ...read more
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What were they Fighting For?, Sep 27
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Tactility and Community, Sep 22-23, 2016
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Populism, Immigration and Discrimination, Sep 22
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Tactility and Community, Sep 22-23