News

In Historical Turns (UC Press, 2024), Nicholas Baer (German Department, UC Berkeley) reassesses Weimar cinema in light of the "crisis of historicism" widely diagnosed by German philosophers in the early 20th century. Through bold new analyses of five legendary works of German silent cinema — The Cabinet of Dr.

Niklaus Largier is Chair in the department of Comparative Literature, is a professor in the departments of German and Comparative Literature, and is affiliated with the Programs in Medieval Studies, Religious Studies, and the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory.

Qingyang Freya Zhou, a graduate student in the Department of German, has been awarded a one-year dissertation fellowship by the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, co-hosted by the Freie Universität Berlin and the German Studies Association.

Professor Hannes Bajohr's essay, “On Artificial and Post-Artificial Texts: Machine Learning and the Reading Expectations of Literary and Non-Literary Writing,” has been awarded the prestigious N. Katherine Hayles Award for Criticism of Electronic Literature.

With our planet in peril, forces of separation have been growing virulent. Amidst uncontainable disasters and embattled resources, calls resound to erect higher walls to fend off unwanted invaders and grant security to those who assume the right to the land. Fantasies of stability aside, extinction and renewal might be the only recurring pattern of life on our planet. What could be the role of visual arts, academic analysis, and archival work in current states of emergency?

Am 7. und 8. Juni feiern wir den erfolgreichen Abschluss unseres zwölfjährigen Forschungsprojekts mit einer großen Tagung im silent green Kulturquartier in Berlin-Wedding.

Fifty years after the appearance of The Dialectical Imagination, his pioneering history of the Frankfurt School, Martin Jay (History Department, UC Berkeley) reflects on what may be living and dead in its legacy. Rather than treating the Frankfurt School with filial piety as a fortress to be defended, he takes seriously its anti-systematic impulse and sensitivity to changing historical circumstances. Honoring the Frankfurt School's practice of immanent critique, Jay puts critical pressure on a number of its own ideas by probing their contradictory impulses.

On February 28, the Berkeley Language Center and the Language and AI working group at the Townsend Center for the Humanities will be hosting a half-day conference Language and AI: Generating Interdisciplinary Connections and Possibilities(link is external).

This work addresses the issue of magical communication found in the Elder Futhark runic inscriptions. It examines the Kragehul Spear Shaft (DR 196), Björketorp runestone (DR 360), the Horn(s) of Gallehus (DR 12), Gummarp runestone (DR 358), Lindholm amulet (DR 261), Straum whetstone (KJ 50), Ribe skull fragment (DR EM85; 151B), the Noleby runestone (KJ 67), and the Eggja runestone (N KJ 101).