2005-6 News and Events

Niklaus Largier will visit the Department of German at UC Davis on November 9, 2005.

Largier, Professor of German at UC Berkeley, will take part in two events:

1) He will join Professor Gerhard Richter's seminar on Walter Benjamin's Trauerspiel-book in 412B Sproul (1:10-4:00 p.m.).

2) He will deliver a lecture entitled Against Nature: The History of Sensation and the Phenomenology of Temptations in 53A Olson at 5:00 p.m.

A light reception will follow. Free and open to the public. Contact Gerhard Richter at grichter @ucadavis.edu with questions.

Rodolphe Gasché will visit the Department of German at UC Davis on February 9th, 2006.

Rodolphe Gasché the Eugenio Donato Chair of Comparative Literature at SUNY Buffalo, is one of today's leading philosophers and critics. He is the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida(1994), The Wild Card of Reading: On Paul de Man (1998), Of Minimal Things: Studies on the Notion of Relation (1999), and The Idea of Form: Rethinking Kant's Aesthetics(2003).

There will be two events on Thursday, February 9th:

1) Lecture: Europe, or the Form of the Concept (12:00 noon, Davis Humanities Institute, Voorhies 126)

2) Seminar for UC Davis faculty and students: 3:00-5:00 pm (Davis Humanities Institute, Voorhies Hall). Our discussion will focus on Martin Heidegger's analysis of Sophocles's Antigone in: Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 156-176. Readings are available in the Department of German, 622 Sproul Hall.

Heidegger film "The Ister" on February 22, 2006.

The film will be shown on Wednesday, February 22, 2006, at 6:00 pm in ART 217.

The University of California, Davis will host a campus screening of "The Ister" (Australia, 2004), the award-winning cinematic essay on Martin Heidegger's controversial war-time lecture course on the poet Friedrich Hoelderlin. The film is 189 minutes long and features philosophers Jean-Luc Nancy, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Bernard Stiegler, as well as German film maker Hans-Juergen Syberberg. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Karen Feldman (Rhetoric, UC Berkeley), Jaimey Fisher (German, UC Davis), Gerhard Richter (German, UC Davis), Scott Shershow (English, UC Davis), Eric Smoodin (Film Studies, UC Davis), and Georges Van Den Abbeele (Humanities Institute, UC Davis).

Information on the film can be found at http://www.theister.com.

For futher information contact Professor Gerhard Richter (grichter @ucdavis.edu).

David Farrell Krell will visit the Department of German at UC Davis on March 1, 2006.

David Krell, whose visit is co-sponsored by the Department of German, the Davis Humanities Institute, and the Program in Comparative Literature, is Professor of Philosophy and Founding Director of the Humanities Institute at DePaul University in Chicago. One of the most distinguished scholars of European thought working today, Krell also is an acclaimed translator (primarily of Heidegger), a novelist, and writer of screen plays.

Professor Krell will participate in two events:

1) A lecture on March 1 at 12:00 noon in 126 Voorhies: "One, Two, Four - Yet Where Is the Third? Derrida's Geschlecht Series"

2) A seminar for UC Davis students and faculty on March 1 from 3:00-5:00 pm in the Humanities Institute (Voorhies 228) on aspects of Heidegger's war-time lecture course "The Ister." Readings are available free of charge in the German Department, Sproul 622.

Contact Gerhard Richter at grichter @ucdavis.edu for further information.

Brad Prager will visit the Department of German at UC Davis on March 7, 2006.

Brad Prager, University of Missouri, Columbia

Lecture: "The Victim's Escape: On the Liberation of Perpetrator Photographs in Holocaust Narratives" March 7, 4:30 in Olson 53A

Abstract:
This essay examines the inclusion of photographs taken by Nazi perpetrators and collaborators in Holocaust narrative fiction. It considers the difficult implications of looking at such photos and aims to differentiate between the pitfalls of nostalgic reverie and the worthwhile aspirations of critical analysis. It considers this question with special attention to the ontological status of the photograph (the questions of motion and stasis, and that of the fantasies that viewers or readers project onto such photos) with the goal of arriving at a critique of theories that contend that such works retroactively "liberate" the pictured victims. In its detailed readings, this essay gives special consideration to the writings of W.G. Sebald and Roland Barthes, as well as to those of critics such as Marianne Hirsch and Ulrich Baer.

Brad Prager is currently an Assistant Professor of German in the Department of German and Russian Studies at the University of Missouri, Columbia. He also teaches in the program in film studies. He has been awarded fellowships and grants from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the DAAD, and the Research Board of the University of Missouri. He is the author of the forthcoming books Writing Images: Aesthetic Vision and German Romanticism and The Films of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth. He has published articles on German literature and culture in New German Critique, Seminar, Art History, Modern Language Review, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Film Criticism, The Stanford Literature Review and elsewhere.

Susanne Kord will visit the Department of German at UC Davis on April 4, 2006.

Mein Titel: 'From Evil Eye to Poetic Eye: Witch Beliefs and Physiognomy in the Age of Enlightenment'

Tuesday, April 4, 2006
Sproul 912
4:30-5:30 pm

Susanne Kord has written books on 18th-century women peasant poets, 18th- and 19th-century women playwrights in Germany, women's anonymity and pseudonyms, and images of femininity in Hollywood, as well as articles on many aspects of women's literary history and reception. In the interest of making some of the unknown literature by pre-twentieth-century women available to modern readers, she has edited two collections of plays by women and translated three dramas into English. She has also published poetry in several anthologies and journals, and read her poetry in many venues, including at the German Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Susanne Kord has received numerous awards for her writing, among them two book awards, one Honourable Mention, an award for her poetry, and the Brentano-Preis awarded by the Freie Universität Berlin in 1997 for "outstanding achievements in the advancement of women and knowledge of women's history." She has served as Editor, among others, of The Lessing yearbook and The German Quarterly.

Currently, Susanne Kord is working on a book about female killers during the Age of Goethe.

Moishe Postone will visit the Department of German at UC Davis on May 22nd, 2006.

Moishe Postone will deliver a lecture and give a mini-seminar on May 22, 2006. Postone is Professor of Modern European History at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on Modern European Intellectual History, Twentieth-Century Germany, Critical Theories of Modernity, and Anti-Semitism. His most recenent books include Catastrophe and Meaning: The Holocaust and the Twentieth Century (co-edited with Eric Santner,2003) and Deutschland, die Linke und der Holocaust--Politische Interventionen (2005). His visit is sponsored by the UC Davis Center for History, Society, and Culture, and co-sponsored by the Department of German, the Davis Humanities Institute, and the Program in Critical Theory. Further details to be announced soon.