Moderator:  Kristin Dickinson, Associate Professor of German Studies, University of Michigan Sponsors:  Institute of European Studies, Department of German, German Historical Institute Washington | Pacific Office Berkeley Peyman Azhari is an Iranian-German visual artist specializing in photojournalism. While often place-based, his work explores questions of home and belonging in the aftermath of migration, revealing the interlaced nature of the local and transnational. His book length projects include Heimat 132 (2015)—which offers a glimpse into the radical diversity of northern Dortmund through both photographs and interviews—and 1440 Minutes New York City (2011). With a specialization in reportage photography, Azhari’s additional projects have focused on everyday people in transit on…

Organizers: Ambika Athreya, Elise Volkmann, Verena Wolf    Berkeley 2023 German Studies Conference:   Fictions of Reproduction (Online)   Join the conference meeting room on Zoom by clicking here or scanning the QR Code. (Meeting ID: 998 4212 1224; Passcode: 333132) Day 1: Friday, February 24, 2023   9:00-9:15 PST / 18:00-18:15 MEZ Introductory Remarks by Ambika Athreya (UC Berkeley)   9:15-10:40 PST / 18:15-19:40 MEZ   Panel 1 – Taming, Staging and Rhapsodizing the Maternal Body Moderator: Verena Wolf (UC Berkeley)   Commentator:  Dr. Patrick Hohlweck (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin/UC Berkeley) Marcella Fassio (Freie Universität Berlin) – Zwischen Verstummen und Anklagen: Repräsentationen…

Moderator:  Philipp Lenhard, DAAD Associate Professor of History and German, UC Berkeley Sponsors:  Institute of European Studies, Center for German and European Studies, German Historical Institute Washington | Pacific Office Berkeley, Department of History, Department of German Zoom Link Available This talk takes up the challenge of analyzing German experimentations with genetics in the wake of Nazism. After the Second World War, Mendel’s peas once again became the order of the day, as researchers in both East and West Germany increasingly regarded the genetic management and manipulation of crop plants as a key solution to planetary woes, from food insecurity to war. Their work was prolific…

Kaffeeklatsch is hosted this semester by Ambika and Verena and meets in the library of the German Department  (Dwinelle 5401) with coffee, cookies, light refreshments and casual conversation in German from 12:30 pm – 2:00pm!    The event is open to all levels of language proficiency, faculty, current, former, and future students, and anyone interested in German. Wir freuen uns auf euch!   NOTE: Subsequent Kaffeeklatsch sessions will alternate between Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The dates and times are the following:   Tuesday, February 21, 12:30-2:00 PM Wednesday, March 8, 12:30-2:00 PM Tuesday, March 21, 12:30-2:00 PM Wednesday, April 5, 12:30-2:00 PM Tuesday, February 18,…

“Die vierfache Wurzel des romantischen Symbols. Versuch einer begriffsgeschichtlichen Genealogie”

In my current media-theoretical project I study the continuation of literary formats and theoretical problematizations with visual means in the film and text works of Harun Farocki, Laura Mulvey/Peter Wollen, Trinh Minh-ha, Hito Steyerl, Philipp Scheffner, and others. Up to now, these filmmakers have primarily been perceived as artists, which ignores their extensive textual work with and on literary and theoretical texts. The project attempts to identify systematically the text-based practices of reading and writing in their visual works, and their transposition into media specific procedures of inquiry, which have remained largely implicit in their globally received films. Through this…

Moderator:  Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, Associate Professor of History, UC Berkeley Sponsors:  Institute of European Studies, German Historical Institute Washington | Pacific Office Berkeley, Department of History, Department of German, Center for German and European Studies A slim book published in 1920, entitled “Permission to Annihilate Life Unworthy of Life,” is often invoked when scholars try to explain the prehistory of the Nazi “euthanasia” murder program which is estimated to have claimed nearly 300,000 victims. Far less well studied are the various counter-positions proposed by Christian authors – theologians, pastors, charity institution directors – who, during the years of the Weimar Republic, strove to argue that the killing…

How are the years 1938–45 represented in fiction from the immediate postwar era? Was it even possible to tell a “true” war story in German, when catastrophic nationalism had tainted the very fundamentals of the language? This presentation looks to Austrian writers who retooled the Zeitroman, a socially and politically engaged genre, by destabilizing the boundaries between historical documentary, fiction, and autobiography. At a time when literary representation was little match for lived experience, largely neglected female authors—including Ilse Aichinger, Marie Frischauf-Pappenheim, and Mela Hartwig—refused silence and escapism, instead bearing witness to the ruinous bequest of World War II. In…

For as long as the concept of utopia has existed, it has been a site of contradiction: both a good place and a non-place, a call to action and an escapist fantasy, the promise of liberation and the threat of totalitarianism. Within the history of socialism, the utopian concern with gender and sexuality is typically construed as a premature phase surpassed by the science of Marxism. This talk draws out the utopian currents that persisted alongside scientific socialism, arguing that utopianism has provided the means for thinking queerness and revolution together since the nineteenth century. Building on the renewed interest…

This talk examines the concept of perfection against the backdrop of today’s digital mediascape, where the latest screen technologies promise sharp, pristine images with lossless compression. While, in Hito Steyerl’s account, the circulation of “poor” or “imperfect” images can disrupt hegemonic media logics, I demonstrate that the very ideal of perfection is an engine of semantic instability in German modernity. Intervening in contemporary debates about “rich” and “poor” images, and “high” and “low” definition, my lecture offers a differentiated and historically dynamic understanding of perfection as a limit concept in German film and media theory. I argue that moving images…