News & Events
Events
The Department of German hosts and co-sponsors a range of events throughout the year, including conferences, lecture series, and weekly/biweekly colloquia and social activities.
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Catholics, Protestants, and the Origins of Europe’s Harsh Religious Pluralism
Time: - 6:30 PMDate: Location: 201 Moses Hall
Speaker: Udi Greenberg, Dartmouth College
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…
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Exile Shanghai
Time: Date: Location: BAMPFA
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…
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Disruption through Regulation: Reshaping Higher Education in Germany and the United States
Time: - 1:00 PMDate: Location: 201 Moses Hall
Speaker: Tobias Schulze-Cleven, Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations
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…
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28th Annual Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference
Time: - 5:00 PMDate: Location: Dwinelle 370
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…
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Marx and Philosophy (Day 2)
Time: - 4:30 PMDate: Location: Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall
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…
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Marx and Philosophy (Day 1)
Time: - 4:30 PMDate: Location: Maude Fife Room, 315 Wheeler Hall
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…
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Revisiting the Economics of German Overseas Imperialism, 1884-1918
Time: - 6:30 PMDate: Location: 201 Moses Hall
Speaker: Steven Press, Stanford University
In the early 1900s, Germans discovered the richest diamond fields in history in the Protectorate of German Southwest Africa. Namibian diamonds quickly proved more than baubles. These tiny stones made an overlooked impact on the German colonial economy and even on German domestic politics. In addition, Namibian diamonds intersected with what has become a major topic of study: Germany’s genocidal campaign against the Nama and Herero peoples. Steven Press is an Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University. He received his B.A. from Vanderbilt University and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. Recently, Steven has worked on two book projects:…
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Notes on Literature, Film, and Jazz
Time: - 7:00 PMDate: Location: 3335 Dwinelle Hall
Speaker: Howard Eiland, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Program in Critical Theory & City Lights Books, SF, Present a Seminar/Discussion with Howard Eiland on his recently published book: Notes on Literature, Film, and Jazz (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019). Howard Eiland’s Notes on Literature, Film, and Jazz (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019) is a highly erudite and courageous inquiry into the arts. Weaving through a host of “classic” texts—literary, cinematic, and musical—these notes of a virtouso close reader set up echoes and reflections across signature moments. These “notes” address a dissident force in art while discussing an impressively diverse range of works and ideas in literature, film, and jazz. For instance: Shakespeare, Cervantes, and…
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If You Can’t Pay You Should Go! Solidarity and Crisis Politics in the EU
Time: - 1:00 PMDate: Location: 223 Moses Hall
Speaker: Philipp Trein, University of Lausanne
The Eurocrisis after 2010 and the migration crisis of 2015 posed important policy challenges for the European Union and its member states. Both crisis events impacted on EU countries in an asymmetrical manner. The process of taming these problems through policies resulted in political conflicts between voters and governments supporting solidarity with negatively affected countries on the one hand, and those opposing it on the other. Philipp Trein will analyze the political process of making anti-crisis policies in the EU and compare it with the process in federal states and will conclude with a discussion of the implications of EU…
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From Vengeance to Virtue: The Problem of Postwar Germany
Time: - 1:00 PMDate: Location: 201 Moses Hall
Speaker: Zachary Shore, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey
While Americans have been deeply divided over many issues since the country’s creation, no issue has proved more divisive or revealed more about the nation’s character than the way it treats its enemies. One impulse has been to punish perceived enemies as harshly as possible. The other impulse has been to exhibit benevolence through mercy. The conflicts over which path to pursue have caused hundreds of thousands to suffer, and other times uplifted millions from disaster. At no point were these clashes more impactful than during and immediately after the Second World War. Most of Franklin Roosevelt’s chief advisors…