Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia Ulrike Ottinger FEATURING: Delphine Seyrig, Irm Hermann, Peter Kern, Gillian Scalici,   “A rare and remarkable film. . . . Sumptuously stylized yet ardently observational” (Richard Brody, New Yorker). A central work in Ulrike Ottinger’s career, Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia is an epic adventure tracing a fantastic encounter between two different worlds. Seven Western women travelers meet aboard the sumptuous, meticulously reconstructed Trans-Siberian Express, a rolling museum of European culture. On board are Lady Windermere (Delphine Seyrig in her last screen role), a prim tourist (Irm Hermann), a brash Broadway chanteuse, and an all-girl klezmer trio. Ambushed by a…

The Eurozone, Ukraine, refugees and Brexit – the European Union has had to confront and manage several major crises during the last decade. However, the outcomes of these crises in respect of political integration have been divergent. The Eurozone has become politically more closely integrated. The Ukraine crisis has not produced any significant effect one way or the other. In contrast, the refugee crisis has provoked some, albeit limited, political disintegration and, with Brexit, the EU is losing one of its three largest and most powerful member states. This divergent pattern of crisis outcomes is not easily explicable in terms…

The Eurozone, Ukraine, refugees and Brexit – the European Union has had to confront and manage several major crises during the last decade. However, the outcomes of these crises in respect of political integration have been divergent. The Eurozone has become politically more closely integrated. The Ukraine crisis has not produced any significant effect one way or the other. In contrast, the refugee crisis has provoked some, albeit limited, political disintegration and, with Brexit, the EU is losing one of its three largest and most powerful member states. This divergent pattern of crisis outcomes is not easily explicable in terms…

In a nameless town. At an unknown time. A community is on edge as arsonists wreak havoc in the night, going door to door, setting homes ablaze. When the self-assured businessman Biedermann finds himself with the arsonists on his doorstep, will he be prepared for their cunning and coercive tactics? As timeless as it is timely, Max Frisch’s cautionary comic parable on greed, apathy, and the power of persuasion has the urgency of a ticking time bomb.   Directed by Patrick Russell. Sponsored by the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies   Performances Thursday, March 12, 2020 — 8 p.m.…

A series of recent controversies has raised many questions about Europe’s treatment of its religious minorities. Why do societies that claim to respect religious freedom and tolerance so routinely discriminate against Muslims, Jews, and others? Udi Greenberg will explore the origins of Europe’s contemporary thinking about religious pluralism to the recent peace between Catholics and Protestants and will show how this development, which unfolded between the rise of Nazism in the 1930s and the era of decolonization in the 1960s, helped shape both the scope and rigid limits of the continent’s religious landscape   Udi Greenberg is an associate professor…

Exile Shanghai (Exil Shanghai)   Ulrike Ottinger Germany, 1997 Digital Restoration   Fascinating and rich with wry humor, Exile Shanghai is an extraordinary cultural odyssey that affectionately conjures up the lost Jewish world of Shanghai. In the dark days of the 1930s, the Chinese metropolis was the last refuge for Europe’s persecuted Jews—a place that did not demand a visa. Those who managed to find refuge there brought with them the social and gastronomic delights of Vienna and Berlin. Ottinger’s four-and-a-half-hour mosaic features interviews with former members of the Shanghai expatriate Jewish community (many of whom relocated to Northern California), and her…

Policymakers across the world have embraced higher education to generate the human capital believed to be essential for sustaining economic development and social welfare in the 21st century’s “global knowledge economy.” Attempts to disrupt universities and redesign inherited modes of education delivery have accompanied commitments to expanding access. This talk explores the regulatory strategies deployed by state authorities in Germany and the US, home to world-leading university systems, to sponsor the reorganization of higher education amidst growth during the past three decades. Its analysis shows how policymakers across borders have leveraged structurally equivalent competition-sustaining provisions to steer universities’ expansion. Beyond…

Schul(d)en: Guilt, Debt, Education Stretching across 200,000 square feet in the heart of Berlin, The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated in 2005, sixty years after the European conclusion of World War II. The monument, funded by the German federal government at a cost of approximately €27 million, is a site of both remembrance and education for many, including students who receive tours and participate in workshops.   This year’s conference finds inspiration in the German word Schuld and its connotations of both ‘guilt’ and ‘debt’ in English, and further seeks to connect Schuld to education, and…

This is a multi-day conference (February 21-22, 10 am-4:30 pm)   Speakers include: Banu Bargu, Eleanor Kaufman, A. Kiarina Kordela, Warren Montag, Vittorio Morfino, Ted Stolze, and Massimiliano Tomba.   This two-day conference seeks to generate and examine the conceptual problems, questions and returns of the relationships (and non-relationships) of Marx and philosophy. What philosophical debts does Marx inherit or incur? How does Marx think and intervene in philosophy? What transformations occur in philosophy as a result of Marx’s interventions and how do these transformations, in turn, inflect the current philosophical conjuncture? We aim to determine the positions animating their…

This is a multi-day conference (February 21-22, 10 am-4:30 pm)   Speakers include: Banu Bargu, Eleanor Kaufman, A. Kiarina Kordela, Warren Montag, Vittorio Morfino, Ted Stolze, and Massimiliano Tomba.   This two-day conference seeks to generate and examine the conceptual problems, questions and returns of the relationships (and non-relationships) of Marx and philosophy. What philosophical debts does Marx inherit or incur? How does Marx think and intervene in philosophy? What transformations occur in philosophy as a result of Marx’s interventions and how do these transformations, in turn, inflect the current philosophical conjuncture? We aim to determine the positions animating their…