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.
…
Join us for another Kaffeestunde
in the German House at 65 Lawn Avenue
Friday, October 26 from 5-6:30 p.m.
Talk German while enjoying a cup of coffee and some cake.
…
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
Interested in becoming a GERMAN STUDIES major or minor?
Want to learn more about the GRST department and studying in Germany?
Come and join us at our Open House on Wednesday, October 17 at 4:30p.m. in FIsk 404.
On October 14, actors from the Berliner Ensemble, the theater founded by Bertolt Brecht, will stage a second dramatic reading of Leo Lensing’s edition of Schnitzler’s Träume, co-edited with Peter Michael Braunwarth and published by Wallstein Verlag. The first performance was given on June 24 to a full house.
Since its publication in March, which was followed by a second printing in June, Träume has elicited an unexpectedly wide and positive response in the Austrian and German media. ORF TV (Austrian National Television) presented a feature on the book in the evening news on May 6; and Austrian Public Radio included a review a month earlier in “Ex libris,” a weekly program discussing new books. Deutschlandfunk, Deutschland Radio and Westdeutscher Rundfunk, three of Germany’s most prominent public radio stations, broadcast extensive reviews; Deutschlandfunk also named Träume “Book of the Week” on May 15 (Schnitzler’s birthday). The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published a full-page excerpt from the book in its Sunday edition in February and followed up with a very positive review and the designation as one of five “Books of the Week” on May 14. The reviewer for the prestigious Arts pages of the Süddeutsche Zeitung (Munich) called Träume “the most fascinating new book of the season,” and Die Welt (Berlin) published a two-page spread that combined a review with lengthy excerpts. Austrian Public Radio included the book on its May “Bestenliste,” the ten best books of the month; and Southwest German Broadcasting (SWR) followed suit by naming it number 5 on its own list of the ten Best Books for July and August. Most recently, reviews appeared in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the Times Literary Supplement.
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
Chair: Lucy Guenova (Wesleyan University)
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.
Genius ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Wyllys 112
Chair: Ulrich Plass (Wesleyan University)
Sarah Eron (University of Rhode Island): “Fielding’s Muse: Inspiration, Genius, and the Dialogic Novel”
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”
Pretzel making at the German House
65 Lawn Ave, on Saturday, Sept. 29 from 2-5 p.m.
Everyone is invited!
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
On September 21, Krishna Winston and German author Christopher Kloeble read from his book Meistens alles sehr schnell and Krishna’s translation of it (More Often Than Not All Very Fast) at the Deutsches Haus at New York University. The event was moderated by Martin Rauchbauer, director of the German Haus.
The serious but still humorously told story centers around the Bavarian village of Königsdorf and the complicated family history of its main protagonists. Albert, who is 19 years old, grows up in an orphanage without knowing who his mother is, or whether she is even alive. All his life he had to play father to Fred, who needs his help, even though Albert is his son: Fred is an elderly man with the mind of an innocent child who occupies himself with reading encyclopedias, counting green cars and is considered the hero of a tragic bus accident that took place in the village. When doctors discover that Fred only has five months to live, father and son embark on a quest to find Albert’s mother, an odyssey that leads deeper and deeper into the past. Kloeble in his own words: “This novel is primarily about love. Love between father and son. Fading love. Motherly love. False love. Passionate love. Love-hate. And last but not least the (impossible) love between brother and sister.”
http://deutscheshaus.as.nyu.edu/object/dh.event.mymostprizedpossesions210912
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.
Interested in studying abroad in Germany?
Join us for our first Kaffeestunde this semester in the German House at 65 Lawn Avenue on Wednesday, September 19 from 5-6:30 p.m. You will meet former Wesleyan students who have studied in Regensburg and Berlin. They will talk about their experiences and answer questions.
Matthew Alexander ’12, a Phi Beta Kappa scholar and the recipient of the Blankenagel Prize for his outstanding accomplishments in German, also received a Fulbright assistantship to teach English at a high school in Saxony, Germany. Matt’s thesis, for which he received high honors, was a translation and adaptation of Lord Schadt’s online play, “Lost Modern 
Love.” The play premiered at Wesleyan in May 2012 under Matt’s direction. An excerpt of his adaptation has been published in VOID Digest Vol. 2, May 2012, pp. 57-59. This summer Matt will intern as a script reader in Los Angeles.
Max Flescher ’12 is an alternate for a Fulbright teaching assistantship to teach ESL in Austria.
Lynn Heere ’12 received a Fulbright assistantship to teach English at a high school in Thuringia, Germany. She also received a teaching assistantship for English in Kärnten, Austria, but decided in favor of Germany. Lynn 
wrote her thesis, for which she received honors, on “From Spassguerilla to Stadtguerilla: The Theory and Praxis of the West German Student Movement.”
Steven Le ’12 will be teaching English as a Foreign Language in Vietnam. He leaves to take up his teaching position in July.
Jessica Spates ’12 received the Baden-Württemberg scholarship for study and research at Freiburg University in Germany.
Katherine Wolf ’12 was awarded the Scott Prize for excellence in foreign-language study. A major in German Studies and art history, she wrote her senior essay on “The Fabric of the Bel Composto: Bernini’s Draperies and the Redefinition of the Arts.”
Carmen Yip ’12, a Phi Beta Kappa scholar and double major in German Studies and sociology, will be working as a resource analyst for Deutsche Bank in New York. She will start her training in September 2012, then move to London, followed by Frankfurt, before returning to New York City. Carmen plans to spend the summer at home in Hong Kong.
Wesleyan University Program in Regensburg Participants
Hsiao Tung Huang ’12, a dance major, declined an offer to study in the European Erasmus Program in favor of the dance program at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. But she hopes to return to Germany very soon!
Lana ’12, a music major, received the Baden-Württemberg scholarship and will conduct research at Heidelberg University in Germany next year. She hopes to find a performing arts internship in Heidelberg.
And what are some of our sophomores and juniors doing this summer? 
Julius Bjornson ’14 has been studying in Regensburg since January 2012 and will finish his semester at the end of July. Then he will move to France, where he will spend a semester in Wesleyan’s Paris program.
Nathaniel Elmer ’14 received a DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) University Summer Course Scholarship for the Humboldt University summer course “Deutsch Erleben.”
James Gardner ’13, a Mellon Mays Fellow, has been studying under the auspices of the Berlin Consortium for German Studies at Berlin’s Free University since February 2012, while conducting independent research on Afro-Germans.
Mari Jarris ’14 received a scholarship from the DAAD to attend a German language and culture course from July 8 to August 2 at Bremen University in Germany.
Julian Theseira ’14 received a DAAD scholarship to attend a summer course on German literature at the Catholic university Eichstätt-Ingolstadt from July 17 to August 9, 2012. The course focuses on the discovery of physical spaces in modern German literature.
Oscar Takabvirwa ’14 has been studying at Regensburg University since January 2012; the semester there ends in late July.
Avery Trufelman ’13 received the Prentice Prize, given to a junior or senior who excels in German or French. Avery also received the DAAD “internxchange” scholarship, which will enable her to spend 11 weeks in Berlin this summer. She will attend a 6-week seminar program designed to deepen the recipient’s understanding of the politics, society, and culture of Germany, the country’s current media landscape, and working conditions for journalists. She will complete her stay with a 5-week internship with a German newspaper, (online) magazine, TV or radio station, or press or PR agency in or near Berlin.
