Events

2024-2025

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Fall 2024 Lecture Series

Justifying Democracy: Between Celan’s Nichts and Arguedas’s kachkaniraqkun

Vanessa Gubbins
Romance Studies, Cornell University
September 23, 2024
Monday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
205 East Pyne
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Campus building with student walking away in a Fall setting
Graduate Student Workshop

Vanessa Gubbins, Cornell University

September 24, 2024
Tuesday
12:00 – 1:30 pm
Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building - 102
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Wall with grafitti in German language with 3 chairs infront, and several flower boxes on the wall.
Fall 2024 Lecture Series

Politics Beyond Citizenship: Blackness and Jewishness (in Contemporary Germany) Now

Damani Partridge
Dept. of Anthropology & Dept. of Afroamerican and African Studies University of Michigan
October 21, 2024
Monday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
205 East Pyne
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Limestone deposits along river's edge
Fall 2024 Lecture Series

“What can I hope?”: Race, Abyssal Aesthetics, and the Failure of Beauty

Jessica Ruffin
Literature Section, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
November 11, 2024
Monday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
205 East Pyne
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German department Graduate Students standing under East Pyne Archway
Graduate Event

Zoom Open House: Doctoral Fellowships in German Studies at Princeton University

German Dept Faculty and Graduate students
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Complex grouping of devices, instruments and machinery
Fall 2024 Lecture Series

Ghosts and Guests in the Machine: Animism and Technology

Gertrud Koch
Professor Emerita for Cinema Studies at Freie Universität Berlin
November 21, 2024
Thursday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
010 East Pyne

2023-2024

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Copy of Erich von Hornbostel’s wax cylinder recording of a Wendish folk song
Fall 2023 Lecture Series

Sounds in Wax: Musicology, Linguistics, and the World as a Resource

Viktoria Tkaczyk
Whitney J. Oates Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Council and the Department of German, Princeton University
September 18, 2023
Monday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
205 East Pyne
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students walking through East Pyne Arch
Graduate Student Workshop

Viktoria Tkaczyk

Whitney J. Oates Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Council and the Department of German, Princeton University
Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
September 20, 2023
Wednesday
12:00 pm
PCLS East Pyne 011
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Medieval  Artwork of a man holding shields with insignias
Colloquium

North American Medieval and Early Modern German Studies Graduate Colloquium 2023

Keynote: Aleksandra Prica - The Time of the Lily: Vigilance, Speculation, and the Dawn of a New World in Jakob Böhme’s Aurora (1612)
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
November 2–4, 2023
Thursday – Saturday
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Man sitting in chair with cigar in his fingers, looking at you curiously
Exhibition

Thomas Mann: Democracy Will Win!

German Dept. Hosts Exhibit: “Thomas Mann: Democracy Will Win!”
November 6–28, 2023
East Pyne Lower Hyphen
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Man wearing top hat leaning against wall with water reflecting in background
Fall 2023 Lecture Series

Ideologies of Economy. Narrative Subversion in German Poetic Realism

Sebastian Meixner
Universität Zürich
November 6, 2023
Monday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
205 East Pyne
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Three people standing in opening of aircraft stairway
Lecture

Thomas Mann’s Princeton Exile

Stanley Corngold
Princeton University
November 14, 2023
Tuesday
5:00 pm
Chancellor Green Café
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Reading Group
Reading Group

Arriving in the Present:

Transcultural Perspectives in Contemporary German-Speaking Contexts—A Reading Group

Hybrid
November 29, 2023
Wednesday
12:00 pm
East Pyne 207
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Brick stuctures of old buildings
Wintersession

Visit the Tenement Museum to be part of the enduring stories of the immigrant and migrant experience in 19th and early 20th century New York City!

January 16, 2024
Tuesday
8:00 am – 8:00 pm
NYC
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Large group of musicians and performers posed in photo from Berlin in the 1920s
Spring 2024 Lecture Series

“Blackness and the Civilizing of Interwar Germany.”

Prof. Paul J. Edwards
NYU - Arts & Sciences
February 12, 2024
Monday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
205 East Pyne
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Reading Group

Arriving in the Present: Transcultural Perspectives in Contemporary German-Speaking Contexts—A Reading Group

Hybrid
February 20 – April 2, 2024
TBD
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Department Presentation

The Glass is Half-Full: An Optimistic Academic Career Outlook for German Studies PhDs in U.S. Higher Education

Professor Per Urlaub
Director of Global Languages at MIT
February 22, 2024
Thursday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
205 East Pyne
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Back of student looking on to the Bradenburg Gate
Consortium

Berlin Consortium for German Studies Virtual Info Session

February 27, 2024
Tuesday
10:00 – 11:00 am
Online
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Four square images in variations of portrait Goethe
Spring 2024 Lecture Series

Goethe’s Philosophical Lexicon

John H. Smith, Professor Emeritus
Dept of European Languages and Studies, Univ. of California-Irvine
March 19, 2024
Tuesday
4:30 pm
205 East Pyne
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Graduate Student Workshop

Goethe’s Letters

2024 Goethe Workshop: Epistolary Poetics and Practice
April 5–6, 2024
Friday – Saturday
Harvard University
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Departmental Event

Sophomore Open House - April 10, 2024

The concentration declaration period for Spring 2024 is March 28-April 15, 2024

Thomas Y. Levin, Director of Undergraduate Studies
April 10, 2024
Wednesday
4:30 – 5:30 pm
207 East Pyne
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Drawing and notes on parchment
Spring 2024 Lecture Series

Aby Warburg’s Ninfa: Leitmotif, Transformation, Afterlife, Reception

Dr Claudia Wedepohl
The Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London
April 15, 2024
Monday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
205 East Pyne
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Artwork of two images by the artist
Conference

Arriving in the Present: A Critical Lexicon for Multilingualism and (Post-)Migration in Contemporary German Studies

Keynote Speakers: Alexander Ghedi Weheliye and Jessica Glause
May 2–4, 2024
Thursday – Saturday
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Congratulations to Class of 2024 with ink illustration of the Princeton Gates
Departmental Event

Class Day 2024

May 27, 2024
Monday
1:30 pm
Chancellor Green - Upper Hyphen
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Summer School for Media Studies

Media Subjects: How Does Media Address the Individual?

June 17–21, 2024
Monday – Friday
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Color Illustration of people listening to a phonograph
Summer School for Media Studies - Keynote

“Future Auditions: Gramophonic Voice Letters and the Inscription of the Absent Other”

Professor Thomas Y. Levin
Princeton University
June 17, 2024
Monday
5:30 – 7:00 pm
010 East Pyne

2022-2023

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Wandering Jew
Lecture

Ahasver, the Wandering Jew:
Between History and Literature

Yair Mintzker
Princeton University, Department of History
October 3, 2022
Monday
4:30 pm
205 East Pyne
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Graduate Student Workshop

“A Short Story about a Jew Named Ahasverus”: Re-reading the 1602 Pamphlet that Gave Birth to the Legend of the Wandering Jew

Yair Mintzker
Princeton University, Department of History
October 4, 2022
Tuesday
12:00 pm
Princeton Center for Language Study - 011 East Pyne
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Lecture

Cancelled - “Untying Things Together”

Eric L. Santner
The University of Chicago
October 11, 2022
Tuesday
5:00 pm
School of Architecture N107
Add to Calendar +
Cancelled
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Lecture

The Epidemic Sublime: Reflections on the Representation of Collective Suffering

Johannes Türk
Indiana University, Associate Professor, Germanic Studies
October 24, 2022
Monday
4:30 pm
205 East Pyne
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Turk Image
Graduate Student Workshop

The image of the roi thaumaturge in Kleist and Gros

 

Johannes Türk
Indiana University, Associate Professor, Germanic Studies
October 25, 2022
Tuesday
12:00 pm
301 Julis Romo Rabinowitz
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Images of Analog code medieval art and text pages
Lecture

Getting to the Point. Genealogies of the Analog Code

Wolfgang Schäffner
Director of the Hermann von Helmholtz Center for Cultural Techniques
November 1, 2022
Tuesday
5:00 pm
School of Architecture N107
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panel of images with ironwork, circuitry and nature
Workshop

Hardware, Everywhere.

An Invitation to a New Field of Media Materialism

Wolfgang Schäffner
Director of the Hermann von Helmholtz Center for Cultural Techniques
November 2, 2022
Wednesday
12:00 – 1:30 pm
Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building - 102 Conference Room C
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Papercut by Luise Duttenhofer, in the collections of the DLA in Marbach.
Lecture

Romanticism and the Material Fragment

Catriona MacLeod
University of Chicago, Department of Art History
November 7, 2022
Monday
4:30 pm
205 East Pyne
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White Magic -The Age of Paper - Lothar Muller
Graduate Student Workshop

“Paper, Speaking for Itself. Helmina von Chézy’s Belated It-Narrative.” 

Catriona MacLeod
University of Chicago, Department of Art History
November 8, 2022
Tuesday
12:00 pm
Princeton Center for Language Study - 011 East Pyne
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Panel of three women
Lecture

The Kid’s Aren’t Alright: Afro-German
Afrofuturism and the Fight for Futurity

Priscilla Layne
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Associate Professor of German
December 5, 2022
Monday
4:30 pm
205 East Pyne
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Graduate Student Workshop

What is the Future of (Black) German Studies?

Priscilla Layne
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Associate Professor of German
December 6, 2022
Tuesday
12:00 – 1:30 pm
Princeton Center for Language Study - 011 East Pyne
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A person lighting a candle with a child
Lecture

Transistors. Mediating Migration

Regina Karl
Rutgers University, Assistant Professor German Language and Literature
February 6, 2023
Monday
4:30 pm
205 East Pyne
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Individuals walking towards a cafe
Graduate Student Workshop

Marseille – A kaleidoscope of global diaspora then and now

Regina Karl
Rutgers German Language and Literature
February 7, 2023
Tuesday
12:00 – 1:30 pm
Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building - 102
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Berndt Image lecture 02_15-23
Lecture

“Europe raped your mother:” The De/Colonialization of Medea (Grillparzer – Jahnn – Jones)

Frauke Berndt
Visiting Professor, Universität Zurich
February 15, 2023
Wednesday
4:30 pm
205 East Pyne
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Black and white portrait image of Eric Auerbach in jacket and tie
Symposium

Auerbach’s Vico in Translation. A Symposium with Jane O. Newman (UC Irvine) and Ron Sadan (Princeton University)

Jane O. Newman and Ron Sadan
UC Irvine and Princeton University
February 24, 2023
Friday
9:30 – 11:45 am
EPYNE 011 & EPYNE 012
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Lecture

Toward a History of Waiting: Social Hierarchy and Architecture

Helmut Puff
University of Michigan, Professor of History and Germanic Languages
February 27, 2023
Monday
4:30 pm
205 East Pyne
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Puff Image Grad WS
Graduate Student Workshop

History’s Futures, History’s Pasts: Thinking with Reinhart Koselleck

Helmut Puff
University of Michigan, Professor of History and Germanic Languages
February 28, 2023
Tuesday
12:00 – 1:30 pm
Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building - 301
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Open book with building and person's arm that is reading it.
Film Screening

HARUN FAROCKI - Rare Early Films on Architecture - A Free Public Screening

Harun Farocki
March 6, 2023
Monday
7:00 pm
205 East Pyne
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Patenburg Image
Lecture

Spatial Operations. Harun Farocki and Architecture

Volker Pantenburg
Universität Zürich
March 20, 2023
Monday
4:30 pm
205 East Pyne
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Image provided by Volker Pantenburg
Graduate Student Workshop

Assembling and Disassembling. Working with the Farocki Institut’s Archive

Volker Pantenburg
Universität Zürich
March 21, 2023
Tuesday
12:00 – 1:30 pm
301 Julis Romo Rabinowitz
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Departmental Event

Sophomore Open House 

The concentration declaration period for Spring 2023 is March 30-April 17, 2023.

Tom Levin, Director of Undergraduate Studies
March 23, 2023
Thursday
4:30 – 5:00 pm
207 East Pyne
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Graduate Admissions

Admitted Student Visit

March 30–31, 2023
Thursday – Friday
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Page with writing
Workshop

Nexus/Zusammenhang: Rethinking Interconnectivity

April 14, 2023
Friday
9:00 am – 6:00 pm
205 East Pyne
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Opera performance
Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center

Der Rosenkavalier 

Richard Strauss
April 15, 2023
Saturday
8:30 am
Metropolitan Opera House - Lincoln Center Plaza - New York City
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Lecture

Epistemological Reconfigurations in Queer German Cinema

Leila Mukhida
University of Cambridge
April 17, 2023
Monday
4:30 pm
205 East Pyne
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Graduate Student Workshop

Queer Orientations: Auf der Anderen Seite and Große Freiheit

Leila Mukhida
University of Cambridge
April 18, 2023
Tuesday
12:00 pm
PCLS East Pyne 011
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Program Cover
Symposium

Psychoanalysis and its Discontents: Reality, Media, and the Subject

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Co-Sponsored

Negative Anthropology: Shakespeare, Sophocles, Freud 

Eric Santner
University of Chicago
April 24, 2023
Monday
5:00 – 7:00 pm
A71 Louis A. Simpson International Building
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Three books with jackets facing viewer
Reading Group

Arriving in the Present:

Transcultural Perspectives in Contemporary German-Speaking Contexts—A Reading Group

April 25, 2023
Tuesday
12:00 pm
205 East Pyne
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Congratulations Class of 2023 with Princeton Gateway
Departmental Event

Class Day 2023

May 29, 2023
Monday
1:30 pm
Chancellor Green - Upper Hyphen

2021-2022

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Illustration of plantlife with old page edges torn
Lecture

“Composition!”: On Parts and Wholes in Poetics (ca. 1800)

 

Carlos Spoerhase
Class of 1932 Visiting Fellow in the Council of the Humanities and the Department of German -Fall 2021
September 13, 2021
Monday
4:30 pm
Livestream Zoom
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Deineka Weite
Conference

Idyll and Utopia 

 

October 8–9, 2021
Friday – Saturday
VIRTUAL Zoom
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Blumenberg photo
Lecture

Realität ist schlichtweg das Unverdächtige: On Blumenberg and Critical Affect

Karen Feldman, Professor and Chair
Department of German, University of California, Berkeley
November 1, 2021
Monday
4:30 pm
VIRTUAL Zoom
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Karen Feldman
Workshop

Critical affects: Suspicion and its others in the ‘Post-critical turn’ 

Karen Feldman Professor of German, Department Chair
University of California, Berkeley
November 2, 2021
Tuesday
4:30 pm
VIRTUAL Zoom
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math formula on parchment
Lecture

Apprenticeships as Experiments of Form. Configurations of Possibility in the Novel around 1800

Anja Lemke
Professor of Modern German Literature, University of Cologne
November 29, 2021
Monday
4:30 pm
VIRTUAL Zoom
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PIM 12/8 Flyer
Princeton in Munich

Information Session 

December 8, 2021
Wednesday
4:30 pm
VIRTUAL Zoom
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Paul Babinski
Lecture

Near Eastern Studies Lecture 

From Compilation to Indexing: Tracing the Practice of Early Modern Orientalist Scholarship

Paul Babinski
University of Copenhagen
February 16, 2022
Wednesday
12:00 pm
Webinar
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Departmental Event

Sophomore Open House 

Tom Levin, Director of Undergraduate Studies
March 15, 2022
Tuesday
4:30 pm
207 East Pyne
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Balint Image
Lecture

After 1989, or a Modernist Poetics of History?

Lilla Balint
Assistant Professor of German, University of California, Berkeley
April 18, 2022
Monday
4:30 pm
EP 012
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Generative Image by Aarati Akkapeddi
Graduate Student Conference

The Automated Condition. Manifestations and Narratives in Art, Literature and Culture

May 11–13, 2022
Wednesday – Friday
EP 012
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Princeton gateway drawing
Departmental Event

Class Day 2022 

 

May 23, 2022
Monday
2:00 pm
East Pyne - Upper Hyphen

2020-2021

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Lecture

Reading Benjamin Politically. The Historical Materialist

Massimiliano Tomba
Professor in the History of Consciousness Department
October 5, 2020
Monday
12:00 – 1:30 pm
Livestream Zoom
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Lecture

Blumenberg’s Moment 

With presentations by:
Paul Fleming (Cornell University) and
October 16, 2020
Friday
12:00 – 1:30 pm
Livestream Zoom
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Info Session

Summer Work Program Information Session

November 10, 2020
Tuesday
4:30 – 5:30 pm
Livestream Zoom
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Lecture

Threshold-Language: Paul Celan, Parmenides

Kristina Mendicino
Brown University
November 16, 2020
Monday
12:00 – 1:30 pm
Save the date details to follow.
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Book cover of Critique on the Couch
Lecture

A System of Scars:

Adorno and Klein on Ego Integration 

Amy Allen
Penn State University
February 17, 2021
Wednesday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
Livestream Zoom
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Book cover of Ornamentalism
Conversation

Conversation with Anne Anlin Cheng on Ornamentalism

Princeton University
Professor of English and American Studies, and affiliated faculty in the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies and the Committee on Film Studies
March 2, 2021
Tuesday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
Livestream Zoom
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Open House

German Department Sophomore Open House

Johannes Wankhammer
Director of Undergraduate Studies
March 17, 2021
Wednesday
4:30 pm
Livestream Zoom

2019-2020

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Academic Expo

2019 Academic Expo

September 9, 2019
Monday
10:00 am – 2:00 pm
Frick Chemistry Lab
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Department Breakfast

September 11, 2019
Wednesday
8:00 – 9:30 am
207 East Pyne
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East Pyne Hall arch
Reception

Welcome Back Reception

September 17, 2019
Tuesday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
TBA
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Army surrounding an individual
2019 Fall Lecture Series

“A monster in its breadth and length”: Schiller’s Wallenstein and the Poetics of Scale, 1798–2007

Carlos Spoerhase
Bielefeld University
September 26, 2019
Thursday
4:30 pm
205 East Pyne
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Graduate Student Workshop

Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, and the Nobel Prize: Examining the Archival Record

Carlos Spoerhase
Bielefeld University
September 27, 2019
Friday
12:00 – 1:30 pm
205 East Pyne
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Lecture in room 205
2019 Fall Lecture Series

Writing Prose: Narrative Forms and Social Communication in Goethe’s Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten

Professor em. Inka Mülder-Bach
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich
October 10, 2019
Thursday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
205 East Pyne
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SWP Flyer
Summer Work Program

SWP 2020 Information Session

October 10, 2019
Thursday
6:00 pm
011 East Pyne
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Engraving of August Brockmann painting depicting Beethoven
Performance

An Evening of Beethoven’s Chamber Music

October 10–13, 2019
Thursday – Sunday
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old chart of exports and imports
Workshop

A Historiography of the Trend

T’ai Smith
University of British Columbia
October 22, 2019
Tuesday
12:00 – 1:20 pm
399 Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building
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Sign post with sign of 1942 verbage in German along with image of a cat
2019 Fall Lecture Series

Places of Remembrance

Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock
November 5, 2019
Tuesday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
East Pyne Upper Walkway
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Anthony Caro Sculpture Two from 1962 featuring place metal I-Beams in green on museum floor
2019 Fall Lecture Series

Adorno, Aesthetic Negativity, and the Problem of Idealism

Professor Robert B. Pippin
Univeristy Of Chicago
November 6, 2019
Wednesday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
205 East Pyne
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Sketch from Holocaust survivor of a makeshift performance area
Fall 2019 Concert Series

Music from Theresienstadt [Terezín]

November 9, 2019
Saturday
7:00 – 10:00 pm
Chancellor Green Rotunda
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East Pyne Hall arch
Keynote Lecture

Storyworlds: Open-ended Story Universes Across Time, Cultures, and Media

Ann Marie Rasmussen
November 15, 2019
Friday
5:00 – 5:30 pm
012 East Pyne
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Artwork depicting an Earth-like plance with etheral wisps emitting from an open book
Workshop

Storyworlds: Open-ended Story Universes Across Time, Cultures, and Media

November 16, 2019
Saturday
9:00 am – 5:00 pm
399 Julis Romo Rabinowitz Building
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Painting of stormy ocean with solitary person standing on beach
2019 Fall Lecture Series

“1809: A Genealogy of the Present”

Benjamin Morgan
Worcester College - University of Oxford
December 3, 2019
Tuesday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
205 East Pyne
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Student typing into online course information.
Roundtable Discussion

Online Teaching at Universities: Challenges, Opportunities, Strategies

February 28, 2020
Friday
1:30 – 3:00 pm
330 Frist Campus Center
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2020 Spring Lecture Series

“The Nineteenth-Century German Recitation Anthology and the Fortunes of Weltliteratur”

Mary Helen Dupree
Georgetown University Associate Professor German
March 5, 2020
Thursday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
205 East Pyne
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Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center

Der Fliegende Holländer

The Flying Dutchman
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) 2hrs 25mins
March 27, 2020
Friday
7:30 pm
Metropolitan Opera House - Lincoln Center Plaza - New York City
Add to Calendar +
Cancelled
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2020 Spring Lecture Series

“King Arthur in the Middle Ages: A Storyworlds Approach”

 

Ann Marie Rasmussen
Rt. Hon. John G. Diefenbaker Memorial Chair in German Literary Studies Germanic & Slavic Studies University of Waterloo Ontario, Canada
April 21, 2020
Tuesday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
205 East Pyne
Add to Calendar +
Cancelled

2018-2019

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Academic Expo

2018 Academic Expo

September 10, 2018
Monday
10:00 am – 2:00 pm
Frick Chemistry Lab
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Reception

Welcome Back Reception

September 25, 2018
Tuesday
5:00 – 8:00 pm
Princeton Center for Language Study – 011 East Pyne
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Film still from “Goodbye Lenin”
Berlin in Film Series

Good Bye Lenin! (2003)

Wolfgang Becker; 121 minutes
September 27, 2018
Thursday
7:30 – 9:30 pm
010 East Pyne
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image of Hannah Arendt on TV
Fall 2018 Lecture Series

Speaking With Arendt: TV and the Theatricality of Interviewing on “Zur Person”

Stefanie Diekmann
Institut für Medien, Theater und Populäre Kultur, Universität Hildesheim
October 1, 2018
Monday
4:30 pm
205 East Pyne
Add to Calendar
Cancelled
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artwork by Ran Ortner
Conference

Domestic Violence: The Limits and Possibilities of a Concept

Organized by Barbara Nagel
October 4–5, 2018
Thursday – Friday
Betts Auditorium
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Lecture

Concept and Object: Adorno’s Critique of Kant

Jay Bernstein
Distinguished Professor Philosophy, The New School for Social Research
October 11, 2018
Thursday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
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Graduate Student Workshop

Principles of Lesson Plans and Classroom Dynamics

October 16, 2018
Tuesday
4:30 – 6:00 pm
205 East Pyne