Past Events
October 28, 2024
Guest Lecture by Dr. Kerstin Leitner, Berlin
Machen Persönlichkeiten oder Institutionen Geschichte? Gibt es Unterschiede zwischen weiblicher und männlicher Führung? Das Beispiel der Vereinten Nationen aus der Sicht einer ehemaligen Mitarbeiterin.
After receiving her Ph.D. in 1975 from the Otto-Suhr-Institute at the Freie Universität Berlin for her research on Kenia’s postcolonial development, Kerstin Leitner started her 30-year career at the United Nations which took her to Africa, China, New York, Geneva, as well as numerous other locations. After returning to Berlin in 2005, she regularly taught classes in international politics, on politics in China, and on the U.N. at both FU Berlin and Universität Potsdam. In her book, Als moderne Nomadin um die Welt / When Only the Sky is the Limit Kerstin Leitner reflects on her work spanning the Cold War, the revolutions of 1989, and the rise of new superpowers. Deeply shaped by experiences during her career she founded the Kerstin Leitner Berlin Fellowships in cooperation with the Ernst-Reuter-Gesellschaft der Freunde, Förderer und Ehemaligen der Freien Universität Berlin e.V.
Dr. Kerstin Leitner with Berlin Program Fellow Song Jialu - Photo Credit: Song Jialu
Berlin Program Alumni Panel at the GSA
The panel organized by Berlin Program Alumni & Fellows at this year’s GSA Conference September 26-29 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA dealt with the women's activism in Germany from 1933 through to 1989. The presentations addressed: the support women in the KPD, German Communist Party, from 1933-1935 as their male comrades were interred in the first concentration camps (Nicholas Goodell; Vanderbilt University), the use of gendered imagery and rhetoric by Italian “guest” worker housing activism in the early 1970s (Sarah Jacobson; Albion College), the expanded conception of politics developed by feminists adjacent to the extraparliamentary opposition in West German with particular attention to its affective dimensions (Belinda Davis; Rutgers University), and the role of the cultural, moral, and emotional stakes of motherhood in mobilizing women to political opposition in the GDR during the 1980s (Yanara Schmacks; CUNY Graduate Center). Atina Grossmann (The Cooper Union) provided a commentary that offered the presenters much food for thought in their future research. The dialogue between the presenters and audience generated a number of productive threads, principally the role of security in the various activist contexts discussed as well as the questions of transnational networks the various actors were imbricated in. The report is by Duncan Lien (FU Berlin) who also moderated the event.
Berlin Program Summer Workshop
We live in an age in which trust is in short supply. In survey findings published in August 2023, the Gesellschaft für Sozialforschung und statistische Analysen reported that “just 27% of people in Germany have the sense that the nation-state is able to fulfill its responsibilities.” In the January 10, 2024 edition of The Atlantic, Jedediah Britton-Purdy describes the lack of trust in the U.S. with Americans neither trusting government, nor each other. However, he cautions us against misinterpreting this pervasive mistrust which “can feel natural, but it isn’t.” The 2024 Berlin Program Workshop addressed trust and its corollaries from contemporary, historical, and future-oriented vantage points and a variety of disciplines and media forms. Check out the program here.
Guided Tour on Friday, June 28, 2024: Hin und Weg. Der Palast der Republik ist Gegenwart
On the third day of our workshop, we visited a special exhibit which explores the forum's site. Until 2008, the Palace of the Republic stood here as East-Germany's parliament and cultural venue. Tracing the various building phases, materials, events etc. the show examines the question as to why the Palace of the Republic was demolished and the Humboldt Forum was built in its place.
GSA Distinguished Lecture
In his talk, Professor Partridge examined the possibilities and limits of a universalized Black politics. Young people in Germany of Turkish, Arab, and African descent use claims of Blackness to hold states and other institutions accountable for their everyday struggle. Partridge tracked how these youth invoke the expressions of Black Power, acting out the medal-podium salute from the 1968 Olympics, proclaiming “I am Malcolm X,” expressing mutual struggle with Muhammad Ali and Spike Lee, and standing with raised and clenched fists next to Angela Davis. Partridge also documented the demands by public-school teachers, federal-program leaders, and politicians that young immigrants take responsibility for countering the global persistence of anti-Semitism as part of the German state’s commitment to anti-genocidal education. He used these stories to interrogate relationships among European Enlightenment, Holocaust memory, and Black futures, showing how noncitizens work to reshape their everyday lives. This interdisciplinary lecture discussed how the concept of Blackness energizes, inspires, and makes democratic participation possible beyond prevailing precepts of national belonging.
Damani J. Partridge is a Professor of Anthropology and Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan. He is also an affiliate with the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, GSA Vice President and GSA President-Elect.
Location: Room 009, Ehrenbergstr. 26/28, 14195 Berlin
Time: 3:30 - 5 P.M. followed by a reception
Guest Lecture
On April 6, 1967 Theodor W. Adorno delivered a lecture at the University of Vienna which has received renewed attention and was published in 2019 in the volume Aspekte des neuen Rechtsradikalismus. This speech capped a long series of analyses in which members of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research around Adorno and Max Horkheimer had sought to warn of the dangers of fascist agitation, both in the United States and in Germany. The Authoritarian Personality identified social psychological traits of potential fascists, and studies by Adorno, Leo Löwenthal, and Norbert Guterman critically inventoried the themes and “tricks” employed by right-wing radio personalities of their day.
Today, these “prophets of deceit” operate in a different media environment, and the fascist agitators have become new right influencers. In his talk, Johannes von Moltke, Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, and of Film, Television, and Media and currently John P. Birkelund Fellow in the Humanities at the American Academy Berlin, examined how the Frankfurt School’s propaganda analyses can be (re)read in the context of today’s social media driven culture wars on both sides of the Atlantic.
Location: Room 009, Ehrenbergstr. 26/28, 14195 Berlin
Time: 4-6 P.M. followed by a reception
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.
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.
Summer Workshop | June 30 — July 2, 2021
We are, maybe we have always been, “alone together.” And while the challenges of being “alone” and “together” have existed historically in various, often complex ways, the current moment of cultural extremism, of Brexit, of American unilateralism, and of a global pandemic, have given the challenge a new urgency. Check out our program.
The keynote "Making and Breaking the Echo Chamber: Social Reality under Pandemic Stress" was given by Harald Wenzel on June 30, 2021.
GSA Distinguished Lecture
In his GSA Distinguished Lecture 2021 Art, Science, and the Paradox of Knowledge: Decolonizing the European Avant-Garde Thomas O. Haakenson frames an important rethinking of the relationship between art and science in Europe since the mid-nineteenth century. However, “Europe” is not a foundational site of discovery in this context, but rather a questionable and illusory point of departure. Offering insights from new research as well as key case studies from his recently published book, Grotesque Visions: The Science of Berlin Dada, Haakenson outlines ways in which the supposedly European avant-garde originally served as the ground for rethinking key assumptions of Western knowledge production more broadly. In decolonizing the story of the “European” avant-garde in this way, Haakenson offers up provocative strategies for reenergizing the field of German Studies as well. Read more
Online Workshop: "How to be a Superapplicant"
In our online skills workshop, Veronika Fuechtner (Dartmouth College) and Johannes von Moltke (Michigan University), both renowned scholars, Berlin Program Alumni and serial fellowship recipients, discussed four test applications with 49 online participants. Pointers & Advice.
GSA Distinguished Lecture
The GSA Distinguished Lecture 2020 was held online by Konrad H. Jarausch, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can watch the lecture and the panel discussion on Youtube. The text of the lecture has been published on H-Soz-Kult. Find more information on the event here.
Guest Lecture
Frank Biess, University of California, San Diego, February 5, 2020
Republik der Angst: Eine andere Geschichte der Bundesrepublik
Berlin Program Summer Workshop
"Disorientations/Desorientierungen" | June 24—26, 2019
GSA Distinguished Lecture
The 2019 Distinguished Lecture was given by Johannes von Moltke (University of Michigan/GSA) and titled "The Meme is the Message: Alt-Right/Neue Rechte and the Political Affordances of Social Media." The lecture took place on July 4, 2019 at the John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin. You can watch the lecture on Youtube.
Guest Lecture
Hope Harrison (George Washington University) | October 30, 2019
After the Wall: Memory and the Making of the New Germany, 1989 to the Present
Berlin Program Alumni Panel at the GSA
This year's Alumni Panel at the GSA (Portland, Oregon) took place on October 5, 2019 and was titled "Across the Borders of Text and Nation: Intertextuality and Intermediality in 20th and 21st Century Film, Art, and Exhibition Culture." Read the report by BP alumna Nichole Neuman.
Berlin Program Summer Workshop
"Strange Bedfellows/Unexpected Allies" | June 27—29, 2018
GSA Distinguished Lecture
H. Glenn Penny: "Kihawahine: German Ethnology and its Histories of the World" | June 18, 2018
Guest Lectures
Randall Halle (University of Pittsburgh, German Film and Cultural Studies): "German European Studies for the 21st Century" | February 12, 2018
Christina Gerhardt (University of Hawaii at Manoa): "Screening the Red Army Fraction: Historical and Cultural Memory" | June 4, 2018
Pamela Potter (Professor of German and Music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison): "The Ghosts of Denazification in History of the Arts" | December 6, 2018
Berlin Program Alumni Panel at the GSA
The 2018 Alumni Panel at the GSA Conference in Pittsburgh on September 29 discussed "State Building as a Cultural Act: Intersections of Bureaucracy with Art and Architectural Production in German Regimes, 1815-1989."
Berlin Walk
On November 24, 2018, Prof. Dr. David Barclay (Executive Director of the German Studies Association) and Dr. Scott Krause (Alliierten Museum Berlin) took participants of the colloquium to historical milestones in the City West. Starting with the Kulturforum with the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and the Philharmonie, the tour continued to the Deutsche Oper. Another stop at Ernst-Euter-Platz, America Haus and the Jewish Community Center in Fasanenstr. The tour ended at another institution in West Berlin: Schwarzes Cafe.
Berlin Program Summer Workshop
"Continuities and Ruptures: Reflections on Cruciall Concepts" | June 28—30, 2017
Read a report by campus.leben.
GSA Distinguished Lecture
Sabina Hake: "The Proletarian Prometheus" | June 12, 2017
Berlin Program Alumni Panel at the GSA
"'The Christian, Democratic Values of the West?': Humanitarianism and Memory in Postwar Germany" | October 6, 2017
Have a look at the flyer or read a report on the panel.
Other Events
Reading and Discussion: Ines Geipel reads from her book Generation Mauer | February 8, 2017
Booklaunch and Panel Discussion: "Different Germans, Many Germanies: New Transatlantic Perspectives" | February 16, 2017
Workshop with Professor Sabina Hake: "Becoming Part of German Studies: Challenges, Strategies, and Opportunities" | June 12, 2017
Berlin Program Summer Workshop
"Becoming TransGerman: Transnational, Transdisciplinary, Transgender, Transhuman" | June 23—25, 2016
GSA Distinguished Lecture
Irine Kacandes: "Memory Work for/in the 21st Century" | June 30, 2016
Berlin Program Alumni Panel at the GSA
"Refugees, Migrants, Citizens: Germany's Recurring Complexities of Becoming a Country of Immigration" | September 30, 2016 | San Diego
Berlin Program Summer Workshop
"Violence, Oppression and Civil Disobedience: From the Cold War Past to the Neoliberal Present" | June 18—19, 2015
GSA Distinguished Lecture
Joy H. Calico: "Arnold Schoenberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw in Postwar Europe: Musical Remigration and Holocaust Commemoration" | June 30, 2015
Guest Lecture
"Finden gehen": Filmmaker Andreas Dresen and Film Scholar Randall Halle meet with Berlin Program Fellows | February 2, 2015
Reading and Discussion
Adriana Altaras reads from her book Doitscha: Eine jüdische Mutter packt aus. The event was moderated by Irene Kacandes (Professor for German Studies and Comparative Literature at Darthmouth College). | November 25, 2015
Adriana Altaras (right) in conversation with Irene Kacandes (left); Image Credit: Karin Goihl, Berlin Program
Berlin Program Alumni Panel at the GSA
"Writing Histories of Germans Abroad: Approaches and Methodologies to German Sources on Africa and the Middle East" | October 4, 2015 | Washington, D.C.
Berlin Program Summer Workshop
"Virtual Germans" | June 19—20, 2014
GSA Distinguished Lecture
Suzanne L. Marchand (Louisiana State University): "Orientalism and the Classical Tradition in Germany" | June 2, 2014
Guest Lectures
Prof. Dr. Mark Cassell (Kent State University, Political Science & Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin): "The Social Market Economy and Corporatist Governance - What are these terms and why do they matter" | April 30, 2014
Dr. Luis-Manuel Garcia (University of Groningen): "The Creative Hustle: Surviving Precarity in Berlin's Electronic Dance Music Scenes" | October 27, 2014
Dr. Sean Nye (University of Southern California): "Minimal by Design: Die Berliner Republik und Minimal Techno" | December 15, 2014
Lesung & Gespräch
Necla Kalek liest aus Chaos der Kulturen | February 4, 2014
Workshop
Prof. Irene Kacandes (Dartmouth College & GSA): "Preparing for the Academic Job Market" | December 1, 2014
Berlin Program Alumni Panel at the GSA
"Integration in Theory and Practice" | September 20, 2014 | Kansas City, Missouri
Berlin Program Summer Workshop
"Germany looks East" | June 20—21, 2013
GSA Distinguished Lecture
David E. Barclay (Kalamazoo College): "Old Glory und Berliner Bär: Die USA und West-Berlin 1948-1994" | July 3, 2013
Guest Lectures
Prof. Dr. Claudia Albert (Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Deutsche und Niederländische Philologie): "'Zwei getrennte Literaturgebiete'? Neuere Forschungen zu ‚DDR‘- und ‚Nachwende‘-Literatur" | November 12, 2013
Prof. Dr. Jim Brophy (Francis H. Squire Professor of History, University of Delaware / American Academy Berlin): "Grautöne: Zensurregimen und Verleger in Mitteleuropa 1770-1850" | December 3, 2013
Reading & Discussion
Marion Brasch liest aus Ab jetzt ist Ruhe. Roman meiner fabelhaften Familie | February 2, 2013
Berlin Program Alumni Panel at the GSA
"Studying Memory: Methodologies and Tools for Research" | October 5, 2013 | Denver, Colorado
Berlin Program Summer Workshop
"German Studies Between the Global and the Local" | June 25—26, 2012
Guest Lecture
Johannes Zechner (Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, FU Berlin): "Die Natur der Nation: Eine Ideengeschichte des 'deutschen Waldes' 1800-1945" | Janaury 24, 2012
Gabriele Metzler (Institut für Geschichtswissenschaften, HU Berlin): Werkstattsgespräch | December 10, 2012
Reading & Discussion
Emine Sevgi Özdamar liest aus Die Brücke vom Goldenen Horn | October 29, 2012
Berlin Program Alumni Panel at the GSA
"A New Era of German Bevölkerungspolitik? Legacies and Myths in German Discourses on Demography" | October 7, 2012 | Milwaukee, Wisconsin
25th Anniversary Alumni Conference
In June 2011, the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies celebrated its Twenty-Fifth Anniversary with an alumni conference. The conference was titled "The Good Germans? New Transatlantic Perspective" and took place from June 29—July 2.
Since the program's establishment in 1986 at the Freie Universität Berlin it has supported more than 250 scholars who now teach and research at some of the most influential universities and colleges in the US, Canada and beyond. The conference provided an opportunity for Berlin Program alumni to reconnect with the Freie Universität Berlin and other academic institutions. We wish to thank the DAAD and the Ernst-Reuter-Gesellschaft for its generous support.
Guest Lecture
Prof. Peter O’Brien (Trinity University, Dept. of Political Science & BP Fellow 1986/88): "Clashes within Western Civilization: Normative Controversies Regarding Muslim Immigrants in Europe" | February 7, 2011
Berlin Program Alumni Panel at the GSA
"Architectures of Berlin" | September 24, 2011 | Louisville, Kentucky
Guest Lecture
Jens Loescher (Institut für deutsche und niederländische Philologie, HU Berlin): "The West and the Rest: Die 'imaginäre Geographie' ost- und westdeutscher Autoren" | January 13, 2010
Dr. Naika Fourotan (Institut für Sozialwissenschaften, HU Berlin): "Hybride europäisch-muslimische Identitätsmodelle" | February 10, 2010
Berlin Program Alumni Panel at the GSA
"The Visual Arts in Cold War Germany and Beyond" | October 9, 2010 | Oakland, California
Guest Lecture
Dr. Jens Loescher (Freie Universität Berlin): "Räusche, Vereinigungskater und falsche Propheten: Gegenwartsliteratur (West) über den 'Osten'"
Berlin Program Alumni Panel at the GSA
"Making the GDR: Constructing a Socialist Society in the East After 1945" | October 4, 2008 | St. Paul, Minnesota
Distinguished Guest
Prof. David Barclay (Kalamazoo College, Department of History)
Berlin Program Alumni Panels at the GSA
"The Berlin Wall: Ethnographic, Historical, and Literary Analyses" | October 7, 2007 | San Diego, California
"The Shared Intellectual History of Germany and the US before and after WW II" | October 7, 2007 | San Diego, California
Guest Lecture
Prof. Peter Fritzsche (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign): "Narrative and its Insufficiency in Postwar Germany"
Dr. Dietmar Schirmer (FU Berlin, Otto-Suhr-Institut für Politikwissenschaften): "A Monumental Era: Stripped Classicism and the Muscular State, 1920-1940"
Berlin Program Alumni Panels at the GSA
"Colonial Past and Postcolonial Present: Reflecting on Race and Warfare in German Thought, 1890-2005" | September 29, 2006 | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
"Representing Dictatorship: The Third Reich and the GDR" | September 29, 2006 | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Guest Lectures
Prof. Dr. Paul Nolte (FU Berlin, Friedrich-Meinecke Institut): "Jenseits der Klassengesellschaft? Ökonomie und Kultur in alten und neuen Spannungslinien"
David Prickett (HU Berlin, Zentrum für transdisziplinäre Geschlechterforschung): "Body Crisis, Identity Crisis: Modernity, Aesthetics, and Gender Consciousness in Wilhelmine- and Weimar Berlin"
Jana Simon (DIE ZEIT): Lesung und Diskussion
Guest Lecture
Prof. Dr. Friedemann Büttner (FU Berlin, Otto-Suhr-Institut für Politikwissenschaften): "Religion und Politik im Christentum und im Islam"
BP Alumni Panel at the GSA
"Negotiated Identities: The Struggle to Define German and Immigrant Identities in the Twentieth Century" | October 8, 2004 | Washington, D.C.
Distinguished Guests
Vorträge von und Gespräch mit Prof. Dr. Klaus von Beyme (Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg) und Charlotte Frank (Schultes Architekten) zum Thema Politik und Architektur
Gespräch mit Prof. Dr. Robert Leicht (DIE ZEIT): "Unterschiedliche Konzeptionen der europäischen Integration"