Iris Bork-Goldfield

Friday, December 7th, 6:30 p.m. Deutsches Haus at New York University, 42 Washington Mews New York, NY 10003

Please join the German House in New York City for a discussion with Fatima Naqvi (Rutgers University), Christoph Bartmann (Goethe Institut NYC), Klaus Kastberger (University of Vienna), Heike Polster (University of Memphis), Krishna Winston (Wesleyan University), and Thorsten Carstensen (The Indiana University School of Liberal Arts).

Peter Handke in America is an important theme for understanding the writer’s work. Because of his life-long fascination with America, Handke was among the first German-speaking writers of his generation to present a positive image of the United States against the anti-imperialist aversions of the European 1968-movement. Particularly in his early work, scholars have traced his fascination with writers such as John Ford, Walker Percy (whom he also translated), as well as the blues, New York City, the image of the “Native American” and with the beauty of the American landscape. His 1971 novel Short Letter, Long Farewell makes his fascination with the United States the central motif. Handke also lived in New York (after lengthy travels through Alaska), where in 1979 he wrote his important novel The Long Way Round. In his film Three American LPs, he co-produced with Wim Wenders, many of these themes can also be clearly identified. More information

You can watch some of the discussion on Youtube.

Several German authors, works and themes will be presented at this year’s annual conference of the Northeastern American Society for 18th Century at Wesleyan University on October 12 and 13.

Friday, 12 —  9:00 – 10:30 a.m. 

The Imagination and Sociability in German Literature ……………………………………………………………  Wyllys 115

Chair:  David Pugh (Queen’s University)

Andrea Speltz (University of Guelph):“Imaginative Compassion in Christoph Martin Wieland’s Die Geschichte des Agathon” 

Paola Mayer (University of Guelph): “Einbildungskraft as Creator of Einbildung: E.T.A. Hoffman’s Die Räuber”

Dennis Mahoney  (University of Vermont): “Joseph von Eichendorff and the Domestication of the Romantic  Imagination”

Edward Larkin (University of  New Hampshire): “Imagining the Social Individual: C.W. Frölich’s Über den Menschen und seine Verhältnisse”

 

Friday, 12 — 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Open Panel on Enlightenment Philosophy  …………………………………………………………… Usdan 108

James J. Caudle  (Yale University): “‘Sociability and other Cruel Sports’: James Boswell Among The Soaping Club and The Criticks”

Charlotte M. Craig (Rutgers  University): “Ambivalent Traits in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s Image: Enlightener, National Author, Patriot,  Cosmopolitan, Freemason”

Michael Printy (Wesleyan University): “‘Revolutions of the Spirit’: The Protestant Enlightenment and the Rise of German Philosophy”

Catherine Keohane (Montclair State University): “Seeing Oneself  in(stead of) the Poor: Charity and Imaginative Substitution”

Satuday, 13  —  10:45 a.m. – 12:15 p.m.

Sense and Sociability in France and Germany ……………………………………………………………  Wyllys 110

Chair:  Edward Larkin (University of New Hampshire)

Masano Yamashita  (University of Colorado): “Enlightenment Conceptions of Commonality: French Questionings of the Public Nature of  Aesthetics”

David Pugh  (Queen’s University):  “Social Anxieties in German Asthetics”

Mark Ilsemann  (University of Virginia): “‘Everyone has  […]  Their Own Way of Seeing’: The Science of  Optics  (and its Metaphors) in Georg   Forster’s  Anthropology”

 

Satuday, 13  — 2:00 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.

Amelia Bitely  (University at Buffalo): “‘His name consenting crowds repeat’: The Exhortations and Praise of Genii Loci”

Lorraine Piroux  (Rutgers University): “Imagining the Social Genius: Possession and Self-­‐Possession in Diderot’s  Paradoxe sur le comedien”

Joseph Drury  (Villanova University): “The Machine in the Ghost: Ann Radcliffe’s Music”