News

Departmental News

News

  • BIG GIVE: NOVEMBER 19

    November 9, 2015

    Big Give, Berkeley’s 24-hour fundraising blitz, is back – and bigger than ever! Just as the Cal community consistently reaches higher, aims farther, and imagines a better world beyond our own needs, the second annual Big Give is thinking even bigger: your gift of any amount this year makes an even bigger impact on students.

    Mark your calendar! Visit the Give to German link on the department homepage to contribute any amount. Together we will continue to dream bigger and do better – keeping Berkeley the No. 1 public university in the world.

  • Semiotic Circle of California, CFP

    September 27, 2015

    Semiotic Circle of California
    Saturday, January 23, 2016

    Call for Papers

    The Thirty-First Meeting of the Semiotic Circle of California will be held in the Faculty Club of the University of California, Berkeley on Saturday, January 23, 2016. Please submit this form together with a one paragraph abstract (attachment or CD) by December 15, 2015 for participation in the meeting. As customary, the meeting will be an open topic research paper meeting. Reservations for housing may be made directly to the Faculty Club at (510) 642-1993/540-5678 or to the Hotel Durant at (510) 845-8981.

  • Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor: Professor Helmuth Lethen

    September 11, 2015

    The German Department at Berkeley welcomes this year’s Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor, Professor Helmuth Lethen (IFK, Vienna). Professor Lethen is offering a compact seminar entitled “Brecht’s Hauspostille.” He will also participate in Prof. Kaes’ seminar on the Avant-garde throughout September. Professor Lethen will give a public lecture on “Der Schatten des Fotografen” on September 18, 4-6 pm.

  • Revisiting Freud and Moses: Heroism, History, and Religion

    September 2, 2015

    The upcoming conference sponsored by the German Department aims to explore Freud’s place in current debates on secularism and post-secularism, featuring new research on the intersections of theology, Judaism and history in Freud’s psychoanalytic theories. Freud’s own attempts to suggest a new paradigm for thinking the religious, beginning with the place of monotheism and Judaism in his theories, will be brought into more general debates on the place of the secular in Jewish thought and in psychoanalysis. The conference will bring together established scholars not only in psychology, religion and Jewish studies but also philosophy, history and literary studies. The…

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  • Berkeley Germanic Linguistics Roundtable, CFP

    August 17, 2015

    Call for Papers: Berkeley Germanic Linguistics Roundtable Friday/Saturday, April 1-2, 2016 The Faculty Club University of California, Berkeley Invited Speakers: David Bamman, University of California, Berkeley Frans Plank, University of Konstanz Henning Reetz, University of Frankfurt Theo Vennemann, University of Munich Joseph Voyles, University of Washington Scholars (faculty and students) interested in Germanic Linguistics, its near and/or distant related languages, diverse approaches, synchrony and/or diachrony, historical and/or contemporary language are invited to submit a one-page abstract of a twenty minute paper by January 31, 2016 to the conference organizer: Irmengard Rauch, Department of German Univ. of California, Berkeley; Berkeley, CA…

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  • Jeroen Dewulf receives Clague and Carol Van Slyke Article Prize for 2014

    August 4, 2015

    Professor Jeroen Dewulf has received the Clague and Carol Van Slyke Article Prize for 2014, awarded by the New Netherland Institute, for his article entitled “Emulating a Portuguese Model: The Slave Policy of the West India Company and the Dutch Reformed Church in Dutch Brazil (1630-1654) and New Netherland (1614-1664) in Comparative Perspective”, which appeared in the Journal of Early American History.

  • ORF interview with Erik Born

    May 26, 2015

    Doctoral candidate Erik Born was interviewed by the Österreichischer Rundfunk about his dissertation research on wireless technology. The interview can be found here.

  • Kyungtae Na wins the Berkeley Prize for Undergraduate Essays in German Studies

    May 14, 2015

    The departmental awards committee selected the essay “Subjectivity and Greece in Hölderlin’s ‘Hälfte des Lebens'” as the winner of this year’s Berkeley Prize for Undergraduate Essays in German Studies.

    We congratulate the author Kyungtae Na from New York University on this wonderful success! The winning essay will be considered for publication in our electronic journal TRANSIT, and the winner will be awarded $500. The essay submissions provided us with a good cross-section of undergraduate research in the field.

  • Claire Fest

    May 1, 2015

    On April 17, 2015, nearly 100 scholars from all over the world gathered on the Berkeley campus to celebrate the illustrious career of German Department Professor Claire Kramsch, who is retiring at the end of this year. The event, Claire Fest, marked Kramsch’s 25 years at Berkeley as a Professor of German and affiliated faculty of the Graduate School of Education. Kramsch’s distinguished and extraordinary service to the University was recognized at the end of the event, when she was awarded the prestigious Berkeley Citation Award. The award, presented by Catherine Koshland, Vice Provost of Undergraduate Education, was a surprise…

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  • Michael Fragomeni passes QEs

    April 20, 2015

    Michael Fragomeni has passed his QEs and advanced to candidacy. Congratulations, Michael!