Please join us for the first lecture in the German Department’s fall series on commemorating the 25th Year of the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
This Wednesday, September 24 in FISK 210 at noon, Erik Grimmer –Solem will speak on “From Great War to Great Wall: The Fall of the Berlin Wall in Historical Perspective.”
Refreshments will be served.
Shemuel Garber ’13, a double major in German Studies and the College of Letters, wrote his thesis for COL, entitled, The Circular Cut: Problematizing the Longevity of Civilization’s Most Aggressively Defended Amputation.
He will spend this summer in Brooklyn before leaving for Germany with a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship to teach English at a high school in Mainz, Germany.
James Gardner ’13 is a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and a German Studies major. His Senior Honors Thesis explores Afro-German history from 1871 to 2013. He has been awarded the Prentice Prize for his excellent work in German, the Heidemann Award, for helping others in the Wesleyan community, and the Butterfield Prize for his leadership, intellectual commitment and concern for the Wesleyan community.
James will continue his work with the Afro-German social work organization, Joliba, in Berlin, where he worked while studying abroad in Berlin in 2012. At Joliba, James will coordinate initiatives, tours, and events in line with his Afro-German academic work. He also hopes to obtain the International Parliamentary Scholarship (IPS), which offers young people the opportunity to gain practical experience in parliamentary work during a 15-week internship under the auspices of a Member of the German Bundestag. James is planning to apply for a DAAD scholarship this fall in order to continue his studies at the Free University of Berlin.
Max Kaplan ’13 will be working at The Fund for the Public Interest in Philadelphia. This is a national non-profit organization that works to build support for progressive organizations across the country. They run campaigns for USPIRG, Environment America, the Human Rights Campaign, and Environmental Action.
Adam Rashkoff ’13, a double major in German Studies and the College of Letters wrote a senior essay for both departments on Freud’s theories of psychological repression to analyze Theodor Adorno’s appropriation of the German Idealist concept of Naturschöne, or natural beauty. He will spend the upcoming academic year teaching English at two secondary schools in Vorarlberg, Austria, under the auspices of USTA-Austria, a program administered by the Fulbright Commission and funded by the Austrian Federal Ministry for Education, the Arts and Culture. This summer, he will split his time between Stanford University, where he will work at a literature and arts summer camp for middle and high school students, and Brooklyn, NY. In New York, he will intern on a project to develop a humanities curriculum for a network of charter schools. Ultimately, he plans to pursue his interest in German Studies at the graduate level.
Avery Trufelman ’13, a double major in German Studies and the College of Letters, wrote a senior thesis in both departments. Avery translated the autobiography of Hans Rosenthal, an iconic German gameshow host and holocaust survivor. She received high honors for this work. Avery is also the recipient of the Scott Prize, awarded for excellence in foreign-language study. She will go on to intern for NPR Berlin (produced entirely in Washington, DC).
Mari Jarris ’14 This summer, Mari will conduct her thesis research on the Frankfurt School’s critique of German Idealist philosophy using the archives and libraries at the University of Frankfurt and the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. She received the DAAD Undergraduate Scholarship, the Davenport Grant, and the Blankenagel Prize to support her summer research.
Maddy Smith-Huemer ’14 She is a German Studies and History major who has been studying at the Free University of Berlin with the Duke in Berlin program since January 2013. She will continue her studies there until the end of July, while also conducting research for her senior year thesis on resistance movements in the former GDR.
Oscar Takabvirwa ’14, a double major in German Studies and Mathematics, hopes to be working for a consulting firm in New York City this summer. He will start research for his honors thesis for German, a translation of works by authors whose parents migrated to Germany and who grew up in a multi-cultural environment.
Jaqueline Heitkamp ‘15, Colin O’Connor ‘15 and Daniel Hurlbert ‘15 have been studying in Regensburg since January 2013 and will continue their studies there until the end of July.
In the photo below, Colin is joined by former Wesleyan students and Regensburg exchange students who visited the Regensburg Dult, an annual folk festival, in May 2013.
The third and last movie in our German film series for this semester is When We Leave (Die Fremde), Germany 2010, directed by Feo Aladag, 
with Sibel Kekilli, Nizam Schiller, Derya Alabora. 119 min.
A young German woman of Turkish descent flees a difficult marriage by moving to Berlin, but her fight for more freedom and independence causes strife within her family. Introduced by Katja Straub, Visiting Assistant Professor of Film Studies
The second movie in our film series in the crime thriller Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt), Germany 1998. Dir: Tom Tykwer, with Moritz Bleibtreu, Franka Potente. 81 min.
The film begins with Lola receiving a phone call from her distraught boyfriend Manni, a small-time criminal, who lost 100,000 marks belonging to his crime boss. Manni fears for his life. Can Lola help? Introduced by Leo Lensing, Professor of German Studies & Film Studies.
Eat and speak German
Faculty Dining Room
USDAN im dritten Stock
Mittwoch, den 27. März
12.15 – 13.30 Uhr
| Almanya – Willkommen in Deutschland is the first movie in our spring film series. Hüseyin Yilmaz came to Germany from Turkey in 1964, and later brought his wife and children. With warmth and a sense of humor, his granddaughter recounts their family history during a family vacation back home in Turkey. An uplifting, funny film about heritage and intercultural family life. Directed by Yasemin Samdereli, 95 min., Germany 2011 Introduced by Iris Bork-Goldfield, Professor of German Studies.More Information and Trailor |
Eat and speak German
Faculty Dining Room
USDAN im dritten Stock
Mittwoch, den 13. Februar
12.15 – 13.30 Uhr
William Donahue, Professor of German and Professor of Literature as well as a member of the Center for Jewish Studies and the Center for European Studies at Duke University, will discuss new research on the reception of the Holocaust for a work in progress and for Holocaust Lite, the recently published German translation of his book Holocaust as Fiction. Bernhard Schlink’s “Nazi” Novels and Their Films. Holocaust in Fiction is “the first scholarly study to probe the ‘Schlink phenomenon’ and to analyze its profound role in coming to terms with the Holocaust. Donahue dissects the seductive, transnational appeal of his work and the ways in which popular culture more generally has contributed to the success of Germany’s normalization campaign” (Todd Samuel Presner).
Tuesday, November 13, 2012 at 7:30p.m. Downey 113
Sponsored by German Studies and Jewish & Israel Studies
Meet Jochen Wohlfeil, Adjunct Associate Professor of the Practice in German and Resident Director of Duke in Berlin
Jochen Wohlfeil, usually omnipresent in Berlin as Director of Duke University’s academic program there but in residence in Durham this semester, will give a presentation on Duke in Berlin and discuss student life in Germany’s greatest city.
Monday, November 12
4:30p.m – 5:30p.m. in Fisk 210
Das German Studies Department lädt ein zu zwei Vorträgen von GRST Majors
Freitag, den 9. November um 14.00 Uhr in Fisk 404
Mari Jarris
“A Contemporary Critique of Metaphysics:
Adorno’s Nietzschean Analysis of Astrology.”
&
Katie Dean
“‘Überfrau’ oder Opfer?
The Liminal Characterization of Women in 19th Century German Drama.”
Die Vorträge sind auf Englisch, die Diskussion auf Deutsch und Englisch.
SAVED FROM EUROPE: THE KALLIR FAMILY COLLECTION OF AUSTRIAN AND GERMAN LITERATURE
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2012 — 4:30 – 6:00 PM
SMITH READING ROOM, OLIN MEMORIAL LIBRARY
252 CHURCH STREET, MIDDLETOWN
In 1939, the Austrian art-dealer and publisher Otto Kallir fled war-torn Europe, bringing with him to New York his irreplaceable art and book collections. In New York, he started his life over, establishing a new art gallery (the Galerie St. Etienne, still operating today), a publishing house (the Johannes Presse), and becoming one of the central figures in circles of Austrian émigrés in the U.S., maintaining his many contacts to leading artistic and literary figures of his day. The Kallir family has generously donated Otto Kallir’s book collection of Austrian and German literature to Wesleyan University, highlights of which are on display in Olin Library from October 19 to November 27, 2012. The collection features first editions, signed copies, books inscribed to Kallir and his wife, fine press books, several unique manuscript items, and more. An opening reception will be held on Wednesday, October 24, from 4:30-6pm, with remarks by John Kallir (Otto Kallir’s son), and a short talk about the collection by Wesleyan Associate Professor of German Studies Ulrich Plass. The event is free and open to the public.
SPONSORED BY
The German Department, Olin Memorial Library, Special Collections & Archives, and the Friends of the Library
Komm zur deutschen Quasselstunde und sprich deutsch!
Freitag, den 19. Oktober von 13-14 Uhr in Fisk 404.
Thema der Woche: “Hör doch mal zu!”
Uli Plass & Iris Bork-Goldfield
Komm zur deutschen Quasselstunde und sprich deutsch!
Freitag, den 28. September von 14-15 Uhr in Fisk 414.
Thema der Woche: “Sei doch mal still!”
Uli Plass & Iris Bork-Goldfield
Professor Kathleen James-Chakraborty (University College Dublin), an expert on 20th century German architecture and author of numerous publications will lecture on architecture and identity in Germany at Wesleyan University on Tuesday, Sept. 25, at 4:30pm, in 41 Wyllys, room 112.
Although the most prominent buildings in Berlin since the fall of the wall in 1989, such as Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum, Norman Foster’s renovation of the Reichstag, and David Chipperfield’s reconstruction of the Neues Museum, are often understood as examples of a postmodernist strategy, their juxtaposition of historic architecture, often damaged in the Second World War, and modern forms that recall the architecture of the Weimar Republic, are in fact only relatively recent examples of an architectural strategy that can be traced back to the founding of the Federal Republic. Now associated with coming to terms with the atrocities of the Third Reich, in its original entirely modernist context this pairing originally encompassed conservative nostalgia for a pre-democratic past even as it helped define a specifically non-Communist present. Following reunification it served as alternative to the postmodernism with which it is too often confused in part because the degree of modernism’s rupture with the past is often exaggerated.
This talk is made possible through the Department of Art and Art History, Samuel Silipo ’85 Distinguished Visitor Fund, and the German Studies Department.
