2006-2007 News and Events

Dirk Oschmann to serve as Kade Professor Fall 2006

The Department of German at the University of California, Davis is pleased to announce that Professor Dirk Oschmann of the Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena (Germany) will serve as its Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor in Fall 2006. Prof. Oschmann specializes in modern and postmodern literature, the relationship between literature and philosophy, and literary theory. He has published widely on such authors as Kracauer, Benjamin, Schiller, Kleist, Lessing, Moritz, Johnson, Melville, and Kierkegaard, and on topics such as the concept of movement in late 18th century aesthetic theory, the sensualization of speech, and the philosophy of language. At UC Davis, Prof. Oschmann will offer an undergraduate course on GDR literature and a graduate seminar on Kafka and the history of modern theory.

Christoph König will visit the Department of German at UC Davis on October 5th, 2006.

Professor König is a distinguished scholar and Professor of German Literature at the University of Osnabrück (Germany). For further information about him, see his homepage: http://www.christophkoenig.net/

Professor König will be presenting a lecture on "Paul Celans frühes Sprachparis. Über die Gedichte Auf Reisen und Zwölf Jahre" at noon in Sproul 912.

Dirk Oschmann, Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor, will present a special lecture on November 2nd, 2006.

Professor Dirk Oschmann, as its Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor, will be presenting a lecture entitled "Motion is Madness: How the Concept of Motion Transformed 18th-century Aesthetics" on Thursday, November 2, 2006 in Sproul 912 at 5:00 pm.

Professor Oschmann teaches German Literature at the University of Jena (Germany) and is the Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor at UC Davis this quarter. He has published widely on modern and postmodern literature,the relation between literature and philosophy, and literary theory.

Michael W. Jennings will visit the Department of German at UC Davis on November 28th, 2006.

Michael W. Jennings, Professor of German at Princeton University, is a distinguished literary critic and cultural theorist. He is the author of Dialectical Images: Walter Benjamin's Theory of Literary Criticism (Cornell, 1987) and, with Howard Eiland, The Author as Producer: A Life of Walter Benjamin (Harvard, 2007). He also serves as the general editor of the standard English-language edition of Benjamin's works, Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings (Harvard, four volumes, 1996ff.). He is currently at work on two book projects: studies of the German photo-essay in the twentieth century and of aesthetics and politics in the "long" German 1960's.

Professor Jennings will be presenting a lecture on Lying in the Loggia: Photography and Nihilism in Walter Benjamin's "Berlin Childhood" and Siegfried Kracauer's "Photography" at NOON in Sproul 912.

Susan Buck-Morss will visit the UC Davis on December 5th, 2006.

Susan Buck-Morss is Professor of Political Philosophy and Social Theory in the Department of Government, and a member of the graduate fields of German Studies and History of Art, at Cornell University. Her training is in Continental Theory, specifically, German Critical Philosophy, and the Frankfurt School. She is currently researching and lecturing on politics and religion, theories of sovereignty, legitimacy and faith, and economies of political vision. She is the author of Thinking Past Terror: Islamism and Critical Theory on the Left (2003); Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West (2000); The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Aracdes Project (1989); The Origin of Negative Dialectics: Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, and the Frankfurt Institute (1977). She also is the editor of Theodor W. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 9: Soziologische Schriften II (Suhrkamp Verlag).

Her visit to UC Davis is organized by the Center for History, Society, and Culture. The topic of the lecture will be "Visual Empires." Room and time to be announced.

Alice Kuzniar will visit the UC Davis on May 1st, 2007

Alice Kuzniar is a professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where she has been teaching since 1983 apart from invitations as a guest professor at Princeton University, Rutgers University, and the University of Minnesota. She received her B.A. from the University of Toronto, and her Ph.D. from Princeton.

She is the author and editor of several books and articles, including a book on the German Romantic authors Novalis and Holderlin for which she won the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Award, and a book titled, The Queer German Cinema, on gay and lesbian cinema from the 1920's to the present.

Kuzniar's most recent book is called Melancholia's Dog: Reflections on Our Animal Kinship. For more information on Kuzniar and her new book, check out a recent interview from psychjourney podcasts.

Kuzniar will give a talk at UC Davis entitled, "Whose Melancholy? On the Muteness of Humans and Animals" on May 1, 2007 at 5pm in 912 Sproul.