News & Events
German
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Of Pathogens and Humans. A Cultural History of the Policies on Epidemics in the Nineteenth Century
Time: - 1:00 PMDate: Location: 201 Moses Hall
In the nineteenth century, epidemics reached, for the first time in history, all inhabited continents. Globally spreading pathogens were an unintended side effect of a growing flow of people, animals and goods across state borders, imperial spaces and continents. “Of pathogens and humans” is an ongoing research project that analyzes reactions to increasingly mobile diseases in the American and British Empires from the 1850s to the end of the First World War. It studies practices as well as ideas guiding the policies on epidemics, thereby exploring a hybrid area at the intersection of various political fields, such as colonial, foreign…
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DAAD Workshop "DaF in den USA": Language Teaching Methodology for Graduate Students and Junior Faculty
Time: - 6:30 PMDate: - 12/08/2018 every day Location: B-4 Dwinelle Hall
Speaker: Mark Kaiser, Kimberly Vinall
This workshop is intended to provide participants with a look at the current professional discourse regarding the teaching and learning of German, and insights into the most recent findings in the fields of Second Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics. The special focus will be on teaching with texts for language learning, and workshops participants will gain the practical experience of developing and presenting a teaching unit as well as reflecting and discussing this. By invitation only, for application forms please contact euba@berkeley.edu
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Memory and Democracy: Civil and 'Uncivil' Activism for Remembrance in Germany and Beyond
Time: - 12:00 AMDate: Location: 170 Wurster Hall
Speaker: Jenny Wüstenberg
Across the country, civic activism is toppling statues in the name of historical justice. The debate over how to confront our racist, colonial, or genocidal past and the ways history challenges contemporary democratic governance has recently made headlines. Examining the relationship between memory and democracy, Jenny Wüstenbergs work focuses on how grassroots actors engage with institutions in order to shape public mnemonic space in Germany. In particular, she asks how to assess the role of civil society when it is not always an advocate for progressive modes of remembering violent histories. Jenny Wüstenberg is the DAAD Visiting Assistant…
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GUH Lecture: A BERLINER IN JAZZ-AGE MANHATTAN
Time: - 2:30 PMDate: Location: 170 Wurster Hall
Erich Mendelsohn vs. the Skyscraper Primitives: A Berliner in Jazz-Age Manhattan Greg Castillo, Associate Professor of Architecture Tuesday, November 20, 1-2:30pm | Wurster 170 Presented by the Global Urban Humanities Initiative Upon first sight of the Manhattan skyline in 1924, Erich Mendelsohn proclaimed it an object lesson in the tragedy of madness, deranged power, the intoxication of limitless victory. Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Architekten (America: An Architects Picture Book), his bestselling travelogue, portrayed a culturally primitive society degraded by jungle capitalism, but advanced in building technology. Maintaining that American architecture had unexpectedly little to offer a prophetic observer, Mendelsohn returned to…
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GUH Lecture: Erich Mendelsohn vs. the Skyscraper Primitives: A Berliner in Jazz-Age Manhattan
Time: - 2:30 PMDate: Location: 172 Wurster Hall
Erich Mendelsohn vs. the Skyscraper Primitives: A Berliner in Jazz-Age Manhattan Greg Castillo, Associate Professor of Architecture Tuesday, November 20, 1-2:30pm | Wurster 172 (please note the updated room and time) Presented by the Global Urban Humanities Initiative Upon first sight of the Manhattan skyline in 1924, Erich Mendelsohn proclaimed it an object lesson in the tragedy of madness, deranged power, the intoxication of limitless victory. Amerika: Bilderbuch eines Architekten (America: An Architects Picture Book), his bestselling travelogue, portrayed a culturally primitive society degraded by jungle capitalism, but advanced in building technology. Maintaining that American architecture had unexpectedly little to…
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Helke Sander's dffb Cinema, 1968 and West Germany's Feminist Movement
Time: - 1:00 PMDate: Location: 201 Moses Hall
Helke Sander was a key figure of the early dffb, where she studied between 1966 and 1969. Returning her political organizing and her films of the era revises three crucial narratives: 1. it expands narratives about 1968 to include the establishment of feminism as part of it (The Tomatenwurf), which is often read as a 1970s phenomenon; 2. it expands narratives of cinemas of the late sixties to include feminist filmmaking; and 3. it shows how the seeds for her much better known filmmaking of the seventies were already visible thematically and formally in her little known earlier work. Christina…
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Celebrating Poland: 100 Years of Independence
Time: - 7:00 PMDate: Location: Dinner Board Room Graduate Theological Union
Speaker: John Connelly
This talk will consider the meanings and consequences of the reemergence of a Polish state in 1918 in new boundaries, after 125 years of rule by foreign powers. The event is celebrated as liberation, but what did it mean for ethnic minorities like Jews and Ukrainians? What did it mean for women? That Poland lasted barely twenty years before being overwhelmed by its totalitarian neighbors. Could its leaders have done more to protect their state and European peace? These questions are considered in the shadow of today’s Poland and a right wing government that rejects critical approaches to the past.…
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Poland at 100: The Continuing Challenges of Nationhood
Time: - 7:00 PMDate: Location: Dinner Board Room Graduate Theological Union
Speaker: John Connelly
This talk will consider the meanings and consequences of the reemergence of a Polish state in 1918 in new boundaries, after 125 years of rule by foreign powers. The event is celebrated as liberation, but what did it mean for ethnic minorities like Jews and Ukrainians? What did it mean for women? That Poland lasted barely twenty years before being overwhelmed by its totalitarian neighbors. Could its leaders have done more to protect their state and European peace? These questions are considered in the shadow of today’s Poland and a right wing government that rejects critical approaches to the past.…
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Twentieth-Century Anti-Utopianism and its West German Antidote
Time: - 12:00 AMDate: Location: 201 Moses Hall
This talk picks up a melancholic thread in assessments of the end of the Cold War, when the triumph of liberal democracy and capitalism over really existing socialism led academics and public intellectuals to pronounce the end of utopian ambitions. Margaret Thatcher captured this idea in her claim that there is no alternative. Some West Germans, however, resisted this logic. Facing the ostensible dissipation of radical social and political alternatives, they refused to abandon hope for a superlative existence. But they also recognized that old paradigms of utopian thought had lost their currency. They jettisoned the conviction that society marched…
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Historiography and Migration: Explaining the Present through the Lens of History
Time: - 1:00 PMDate: Location: 201 Moses Hall
Discussions about migration have dominated the public discourse in Germany since the refugee crisis of 2015. There is a growing acceptance of empiric data on migration, collected by research institutions like the IMIS at Osnabrück University. On the other hand, the public discourse including from the government is getting more emotional and often denies proven facts and figures. After a short introduction of recent German history, Paul Voerkel will analyze several statements made by German Government´s representatives about migration and refugees. He will show to what extend those statements contain arbitrary affirmations, and he will contrasted those with…