Events

Martin Bäumel: Creating Attention: Poetry, Form, and the Observing Self, 1680-1750

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October 17th @ 6pm at Daniel Family Commons

This talk explores the medial and communicative conditions of the (German) Enlightenment creation of the modern observing self, broadly defined as a self that encounters the world both rationally and sensually and has to account for the validity of its cognition without recourse to something outside itself. It contends that lyric poetry is at the forefront of attempts to practice and theorize this human world encounter. In an investigation spanning roughly the first half of the eighteenth century, it explores the connection between poetic speech and philosophical attempts to understand and evaluate processes of cognition as well as the incorporation of an observing self into a larger social whole. In particular, it shows how an increasing use of poetic mediality profoundly shapes what humans can pay attention to, and how they can account for the accuracy of an observation that can never be observed in the moment of cognition.

German Movie Night – online

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February 25–27
Online
Image: Joel Basman and Marie Leuenberger in Caged Birds
Oliver Rihs, Caged Birds (Switzerland/Germany, 2020, 119 min.) Barbara “Babs” Hug is a young radical lawyer fighting Switzerland’s antiquated prison system in the 1980s. She is tracked down by Walter Stürm, a Foucault-reading convict who has just managed to escape from prison – again. With the police closing in, Babs finds Walter temporary refuge with a militant organization, and takes him on as a client in hopes of using the Jailbreak King’s publicity to advance her cause. But the less Walter yields to her reasoning, the more Babs falls for his uncompromising idea of freedom. Based on a true story. Free streaming in the U.S. as part of our monthly German Movie Nights. Register to attend.