Archive

End of the Year Concert with Peter Bernhardt

Klaviernachmittag and Reception
May 4, 4:00 pm- 6:00 pm
Colonnade Club (Pavilion VII)

The Center for German Studies is pleased to announce a piano concert, followed by a reception. Peter Bernhardt, a graduate of the Law School, member of the Colonnade Club, enthusiast for classic cars and vintage grand pianos, will offer a program that includes excerpts from Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto in D Major, Mozart’s Piano concert No. 23, and Mendelsohn’s “Songs without Words.” Hadyn’s Variations on the Hymn “Gott Erhalte” will bring further Austrian balance to the program.

The concert is free and open to the University and Charlottesville communities.

For more information, please contact Mr. Gordon Stewart ()

Approaching Revolutions Conference (March 25-27, 2010)

Hosted by the Center for German Studies, the conference traced the concept of revolution in different disciplines, focusing on the Russian Revolutions, Jewish Revolutions, Revolutions in Intellectual History, Theater and Revolution, and Revolutions Derailed an Betrayed. The conference opened with a keynote lecture on “The Poetics of Revolution: Marx and Engels as Poets” by Manfred Schneider (Bochum). The second keynote, delivered by Eric Weitz (Minnesota) on the following day, explored the nexus between “History and Revolution.” Panelists came from across the US, Europe and Israel. The event was sponsored by the Center for German Studies, Department of German Languages and Literatures, Corcoran Department of History, Department of Religious Studies, the Jewish Studies Program, and the Center for Russian and East European Studies, Page-Barbour Fund, DAAD.

U.Va. Student Wins Berlin Wall Art Competition

The Center for German Studies is pleased to announce that UVA student Andrew Salmon's entry in the German Embassy's Freedom Without Walls Art Contest has taken first place! First prize is a round-trip ticket to Berlin for two plus 4 nights of hotel accommodation.

The embassy letter notifying Salmon of the award said, "The competition was very stiff, the jury found your sculpture uniquely impressive in both its conception and execution. You managed to communicate the emotional and physical brutality of the wall without resorting to the easy iconography of the cold war. the jury was also impressed with the fine details you included in this relatively large scale work."

Organized by the Department of German Studies in cooperation with the Center for German Studies and various other departments and programs, the Freedom Without Walls Campus Week featured a series of events, lectures and round tables on various topics, as well as film screenings and a photography exhibit of Germany's UNESCO World Heritage sites sponsored by the German Information Center. The German Embassy in Washington, DC, having selected UVa froma nationwide pool of applicants, provided funding and organizational support. Read a report by the event organizers or an article on our prize winner.

For more information, please visit UVa Without Walls.

Germany and the Environment Lecture Series (Fall 2009)

Sustainability is currently emerging as one of the most vital issues in the United States and the world. Germany is a global front runner in environmental awareness, policy and technology. How did the country come to play this pioneering role? And what can we learn from the German example? This fall the Center for German Studies launches a lecture series on Germany’s initiatives in the field of environmental sustainability. The invited talks were linked to “Generation Green,” a new undergrad course cross-listed in the Department of German; and Science, Technology, and Society (STS). The environmental ersearch, the relationship between technology and culture, as well as environmentally friendly business strategies. A final team project allowed students to relate their new insights to the UVa environment. The invited talks were open to guests upon request. Student responses were extremely positive. See the list of guest lectures , or read a student's learning portfolio (.pdf, 155KB) .

Germany and the Environment – Lecture Series, Fall 2009

Sept. 1: Germany’s Environmental Policies, Arne Jungjohann, Heinrich Böll Foundation

Sept. 22: Romantic Ecologies, Prof. Chad Wellmon, Germanic Languages and Literatures, UVa

Sept. 29: Technology and Culture, Prof. Dana Elzey, Materials Science and Engineering, UVa

Oct. 1st: German Climate Policy: Ambitions and Reality, Brian Marrs, Energy Consultant

Oct. 13: Putting a Price on the Planet, Prof. Mark White, McIntire School of Commerce, UVa

Oct. 15: Onshore and Offshore Wind Energy, J. Benjamin Goodman, Darden MBA Class of 2010; Jim Madden, Business Developer, BP Wind Energy

Oct. 27: Green Urbanism, Prof. Timothy Beatley, Urban and Environmental Planning, UVa

Oct. 29: Discrete Green vs. Deep Ecology, Prof. Joerg Sieweke, Landscape Architecture, UVa

Nov. 3rd: Transfer of Environmental Lessons from Germany to the U.S., Dale Medearis (Senior Environmental Planner at the Northern Virginia Regional Commission)

Nov. 5: Regenerative Design for a Bank and a School, Eugene Ryang, Landscape Architect

Nov. 12: Business Ethics and the Environment, Prof. Ed Freeman, Darden School of Business

Nov. 17: Climate Change in Germany and Abatement Strategies, Prof. Jose Fuentes, Environmental Sciences, UVa

Nov. 24: Germany's Ecological Tax Reform: Perspectives from a Think Tank, Dr. Michael Mehrling, President of the Ecologic Institute, Washington, DC

Dec. 1st: The Transatlantic Climate Bridge, Anja Kueppers, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany; Preston Bryant, Secretary of Natural Resources of the Commonwealth of Virginia

Max Kade Lecture and Workshop (Fall 2009)

Christina von Braun (Humboldt University)
Lecture: “The Symbol of the Cross: From Religion to Politics”
Friday, November 13, 2:30-4:00 Newcomb Hall 481
Workshop: "Denazification in the Divided Germany"
Saturday, November 14, 10:00-12:30, Newcomb Hall Boardroom

Christina von Baun is a cultural theorist, author and filmmaker. She holds the Chair for Cultural History and Gender at Humboldt University Berlin, and has published widely on gender, media theory and religious history. Read the lecture announcement (.pdf, 198KB) or a brief report (.pdf, 108KB).

The German Unification from an Economic Perspective

To mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Center for German Studies welcomed Dr. Helmut Kaiser, managing director and global chief investment strategist of Private Wealth Management at Deutsche Bank. Mr. Kaiser gave a public talk on "The Economics of German Unification after 20 Years – Experiences, Implications and Perspectives." His visit was part of the Freedom Without Walls Program that commemorated the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. His lecture was also part of the Darden Business School Leadership Speaker Series. Watch Dr. Kaiser's presentation or read an article on his lecture.

German Ambassador on Grounds, April 16, 2009

His Excellency Klaus Scharioth, Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany to the United States of America, visited the University of Virginia on Thursday, April 16th, 2009. Scharioth's visit was at the invitation of President John T. Casteen III and the recently founded U.Va. Center for German Studies. In addition to giving a public lecture on "The Transatlantic Agenda" in the Rotunda Dome Room, Scharioth attended a private luncheon with a group of faculty and top U.Va. administrators, followed by a tour of the Grounds. He also met with students and invited guests at a reception and discuss, "Warum Deutsch(land) heute?" ("Why German(y) today?"

The events were sponsored by the Center for German Studies, the Ambassadors Forum of the Office of the Vice Provost for International Programs, the College of Arts & Sciences and others.

The Transatlantic Agenda: A German Perspective, with Ambassador Klaus Scharioth

CGS Workshop – Roundtable, November 22, 2008

Weimar and Beyond – Radicalism, Contingency and Desire

Manuela Achilles
Political Passion and the Law: Constitutional Patriotism in the Weimar Republic

Laura Julia Heins
Physiognomic Utopias: Béla Balázs's Weimar Film Theory

Gabriele Dietze
Sexual Modernism and Madness: The Figure of the Crazy Woman in Weimar Urban Bohème

This workshop explored emergent discourses and practices in the political, habitual and aesthetic fields that were cut off by National Socialism and reemerged in the postwar Germanies in different contexts and forms. Each paper tackled phenomena being radical at their appearance and being concerned with national community, international socialism, or sexual fulfillment.

Manuela Achilles (German and History, UVa) excavated and reclaimed sites of democratic desire and fantasy that emerged and developed with the fledgling Weimar Republic. Taking the ideal-typical distinction between civic and ethnic nationalism as her vantage point, Achilles argued that Weimar republicans promoted a constitutional patriotism of the middle-ground that prefigured the Grundgesetz-patriotism of the Federal Republic. Laura Heins (German and Media Studies, UVa) investigated the concept of cinematic realism of the Hungarian-born script writer and film critic Béla Balázs. Relating Balázs' intense concern with facial expression to his collaboration with Leni Riefenstahl on The Blue Light in 1932, Heins interrogated the distinctions between Balázs's focus on the legibility of the face and that of the Nazis, while also comparing the utopian function of cinema in Balázs's thought to parallel concerns in the film theory of Walter Be njamin. Gabriele Dietze (German and American Studies, Humboldt University Berlin, and Max Kade Visiting Professor, UVa), explored the figure of the crazy woman in the textual and social practices of writers, artists, sexual reformers and radical feminists, who experimented with a "New Sexual Ethic" and were therefore being taunted as "crazy." Seeking to delineate a special kind of German "Sexual Modernism" that has remained unacknowledged to date, Dietze explored "crazy sexuality" as a script or signature that allowed women to criticize and undermine masculine norm production.

Cultural Studies and the German Tradition, March 27, 2009

This conference considered various permutations and forms of sciences of culture from Herder's incipient anthropology to Stephen Greenblatt's cultural poetics. Some of our primary questions and themes were: What are some of the paradigmatic provocations for the emergence of "cultural" knowledge? What role have historical contingencies and exigencies played in the formation of these disciplinary programs? How does "culture" become an organizing concept for entire disciplines? To what extent are these "cultural" disciplines co-emergent with modernity? To what extent is interdisciplinarity an epi-phenomenon of these "cultural" sciences? What are the discursive relations and differences between an Anglo-American "cultural studies" and a German Kulturwissenschaft?

Workshop Papers:

Robert C. Holub (Chancellor, UMass Amherst)
Cultural Studies and the German Tradition

Rita Felski (English Department, UVA)
Bristish Cultural Studies and Germany Theory

Graduate Student Conference 2009

he graduate students of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University of Virginia hosted their sixteenth annual graduate student conference in February 2009. This year's topic was "Eat, Drink and be Merry", a biblical citation from the books of Ecclesiastes and Isaiah invoking the transience of all life. Seeking to engage their subject from different angles, the conference organizers Kerstin Steitz, Irina Kuznetsova, and Matthew Lockaby welcomed student participants from various U.S. universities. The keynote lecture was delivered by Professor Stanley Corngold (Princeton University), one of the most renowned scholars in Germanic literatures and intellectual history as well as an expert on Franz Kafka.

Professor Corngold opened the conference on Friday evening with an analysis of figures of consumption in Nietzsche and Kafka. Opposing Nietzsche's 'bulimic' style to Kafka's 'anorexic' writing, he related their treatment of intellectual intoxication to the field of bodily nutrition. The student presentations of the following Saturday ranged from an analysis of the Baroque literature, opposing a pious lifestyle to the excesses of food/drink and carnal love, to a critical reading of individual autonomy and the market economy in contemporary film. Altogether, the papers demonstrated the close proximity of the feast, luxury and pleasure to the threat of scarcity and social unrest. Another important and recurring conference theme was the relationship between intellectual and embodied forms of consuming or consumption. The lively discussions between presenters and audience (also including faculty members) revolved around the relationship between lack, excess and celebration.

The conference was co-sponsored by Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, the Center for German Studies, the Max Kade Foundation, and the Graduate Student Council of Arts and sciences at UVa.

A Successful Launch of UVA's Center for German Studies, October 2008

The Center for German Studies at UVa (CGS) was launched on October 24-25th, 2008. Showcasing the Center's interdisciplinary ambitions, the launching was a real success, with good attendance and powerful endorsements by Dr. Josef Joffe, editor-in-chief of Germany's leading weekly Die Zeit, and Prof. Meredith Jung-En Woo, the Dean of UVa's College of Arts and Sciences. Dr. Joffe gave a public lecture on transatlantic relations and participated in two roundtables as well as in two receptions and dinners. These activities brought together deans, professors, students, representatives from the embassies of German-speaking countries, and the broader UVa community.

The launching event opened with a formal address by Prof. Volker Kaiser, the Center's current Director, followed by a Roundtable on Religion and Politics. Dr. Joffe discussed the contrasting roles of faith in American vs. European society, emphasizing the supply side. According to his analysis, low entry barriers for churches in the U.S. stimulate a differentiated type of religiosity, as opposed to the centralized and far less dynamic religious landscape in Europe. Colleagues from Political Science, Religious Studies and Sociology then responded to Joffe, pointing to the potential divisiveness of religion and the increasing religious diversity in Europe. A rich debate ensued. The roundtable illustrated forcefully the strength of the CGS' multi-disciplinary approach. On Saturday we had a more intimate discussion about the Future of German Studies, in which a fair number of UVa's students participated. During this session, we saw another side of Dr. Joffe, namely that of cultural ambassador. Dr. Joffe emphasized the importance of an open approach to German Studies with an eye for the many aspects of the German-speaking and European societies. The very-well prepared UVa students offered their own perspective. They emphasized that while German-speaking ancestry can be an inspiration, their interest in German Studies goes far beyond these personal connections. The highpoint of the launching was, of course, Dr. Joffe's public lecture on Transatlantic Relations. In the heat of the pre-election debate, Joffe, an expert in international relations, chose to analyze the favorable perception of Barack Obama in Europe. While he predicted that Obama would win the election, Joffe also delivered some provocative thoughts. Yes, Joffe argued, Europe sees Candidate Obama as at least potentially "one of us". According to Joffe, Europe was likely to be disappointed by President Obama, however. The underlying U.S. interests would ultimately determine the course of an Obama administration. This position triggered an engaging debate that Dr. Joffe led himself. The discussion confirmed one of the Center's major premises: that transatlantic relations should remain open and inspiring.