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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Outrageous Comparisons in Modern History and Contemporary Politics
Time: - 6:30 PMDate: Location: 223 Moses Hall
Speaker: Willibald Steinmetz, Bielefeld University
Outrageous Comparisons in Modern History and Contemporary Politics Lecture | March 14 | 5-6:30 p.m. | 223 Moses Hall Speaker: Willibald Steinmetz, Bielefeld University Moderator: Akasemi Newsome, Institute of European Studies, UC Berkeley Sponsors: Institute of European Studies, German Historica Insitute Washington (Pacific Office, Berkeley), Department of History Professor Willibald Steinmetz will give a work-in-progress report on a book he is currently writing about ‘outrageous comparisons’, i.e. comparisons that create public outrage or other strong emotional outbursts such as hatred, disgust, or long-lasting resentment. Polemical equations of someone with Hitler or the Nazis, or analogies to the Holocaust, are the most salient cases in point, but by…
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Noon Colloquium
Time: - 1:00 PMDate: Location: 282 Dwinelle Hall
Speaker: Qingyang Freya Zhou
“An Affect of Non-Belonging: Precarious Kinship and Conflicting Memories in Cho Sung-hyung’s Korean-German Documentary Trilogy”
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Unequal Re-education Schooling and Democracy in West Germany, 1945-1955
Time: - 12:00 PMDate: Location: 201 Moses Hall
Speaker: Phillip Wagner, University of Halle
Unequal Re-education Schooling and Democracy in West Germany, 1945-1955 Lecture | March 6 | 11 a.m.-12 p.m. | 201 Moses Hall Speaker: Phillip Wagner, University of Halle Moderator: Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, UC Berkeley Sponsors: Institute of European Studies, German Historical Institute Washington | Pacific Office Berkeley Zoom Link Available It is not only since the global rise of populism that the German public debates whether democracy needs to be more inclusive. Whereas some policy-makers and intellectuals argue for more programs to empower long marginalized communities, others argue that liberal democracies have to accept social injustice. Going back to the attempts of Allied and German policy-makers and educators…
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Framing Heimat in Translation: Peyman Azhari in Conversation with Kristin Dickinson
Time: - 1:30 PMDate: Location: Zoom registration link: https://berkeley.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYrfuGuqzIrHNKDaqO27KnXgnEm99CwfXS6
Speaker: Peyman Azhari, Visual Artist and Photojournalist
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…
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31st Annual Berkeley Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference: “Fictions of Reproduction”
Time: - 5:00 PMDate: - 02/25/2023 Location: Zoom- (https://berkeley.zoom.us/j/99842121224?pwd=M2JOUUxhVHRiaEM0UzJRSm8zV0paUT09)
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…
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“Noah’s Ark for Future Generations” or Genetic Imperialism?: The Dilemma of the Seed Bank in Postwar German History
Time: - 6:30 PMDate: Location: 201 Moses Hall & Zoom
Speaker: Jennifer Allen, Associate Professor of Modern European History, Yale University
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…
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Kaffeeklatsch
Time: - 2:00 PMDate: Location: 5401 Dwinelle Hall (German Library)
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,…
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Noon Colloquium
Time: - 1:00 PMDate: Location: 282 Dwinelle Hall
Speaker: Lorenzo Capitanio
“Die vierfache Wurzel des romantischen Symbols. Versuch einer begriffsgeschichtlichen Genealogie”
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Seminar: “What are Theory Films? On the Visual Afterlife of Textual Procedures”
Time: - 6:00 PMDate: Location: 3335 Dwinelle Hall (History Room)
Speaker: Florian Fuchs Freie Universität
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…
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Theology of Disability: Germany, 1900-1945
Time: - 6:30 PMDate: Location: 223 Moses Hall & Zoom
Speaker: Dagmar Herzog, Distinguished Professor of History and Daniel Rose Faculty Scholar at the CUNY Graduate Center
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…