Berlin Program Summer Workshop

Few moments would seem to better represent the possibilities of “crisis” and “transformation” than the current one: global pandemics, war, accelerated climate change, widespread racial and social injustice, rising authoritarianism, and more. A closer look, however, reveals almost equally ubiquitous references throughout history to crisis as well as to its possibly transformative effects.  What causes a “crisis”? What roles do narrative and ideological frameworks play in representing, possibly even exacerbating, a crisis? How do cultural, historical, political, racial, geographic, sexual, linguistic, gendered, or aesthetic perceptions of crisis differ across time and space? How is crisis intertwined with a search for renewal, reform, catharsis – and ultimately with transformation? Check out our program.

Take a peek at on our cultural excusion to the Schwerbelastungskörper. 

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Berlin Program Alumni Panel at the GSA Conference

This year’s BP Alumni panel on Friday, October 6, 2023 organized by Deborah Barton for the GSA annual conference on October 5-8, 2023 in Montréal, Canada addressed questions such as: How does German media and in particular journalism and news coverage seek to exert influence both domestically and in the international realm? To what extent does analyzing various forms of transnational media in different temporal periods help us to understand how German identity is constructed, understood, contested, and adapted to meet different needs? How does media help us to understand Germany’s relationships with other countries? And how is media an important conveyor of “Germanness” whether via addressing culture, citizenship, contemporary political aims or dealing with a violent past? The research by

• Jennifer Lynn, Montana State University Billings/BP Alumna (presenter)
• Deborah Barton, Université de Montréal/ BP Alumna (presenter)
• Duygu Ergun, University of Michigan /BP Alumna (presenter)

investigated these questions through four papers which cover a time period ranging from the Weimar Republic to the Second World War to the trauma of the post-war up to the economic and societal upheavals of the 1970s in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Jennifer Rodgers, California Institute of Technology/BP Alumna served as the commentator while Paul Nolte, FU Berlin moderated the event.