Hermann Broch on Modern Art in "Hofmannsthal and His Time"

From the start, the Austrian philosopher and novelist Hermann Broch (1886-1951) was fascinated by changes in all fields of modern culture, changes that he traced back to the revolution in European thinking that took place around 1500.  He sought to analyze ruptures and new developments in the fields of religion, philosophy, literature, architecture and art.  Shortly before his death Broch finished  "Hofmannsthal and His Time," an interdisciplinary study which includes reflections on modern art from Cézanne and Manet to van Gogh and Picasso with an eye to developments in Austria.  This lecture deals with this discussion of modern painters, in which Broch's theory of "kitsch" plays an important role.

Bloodlands: The Holocaust as European History

In the years that Hitler was in power, on the lands where the Holocaust took place, eight million non-Jews were deliberately murderedbefore and during the implementation of the Final Solution.  The Holocaust was the terrifying apex of the most fearsome moral and demographic catastrophe in the history of the West.  This lecture will provide an account of the Holocaust which, while preserving its specificity, anchors it historically in its time and place.

Timothy Snyder is Professor of History at Yale University. He is the author of Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569-1999, and Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist’s Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine.  His most recent book is Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin, a history of Nazi and Soviet mass killings on the lands between Berlin and Moscow is a New York Times bestseller.

Yehuda Amichai and Paul Celan: An Encounter Between German and Hebrew

In April 1957, Yehuda Amichai went on a hike in northern Israel, an experience that the poet documented in a small notepad. The notepad supplies evidence not only of the excursion but also of Amichai's exploration of and experimentation with his German-Hebrew bilingualism. Professor Rokem analyzes the bilingual archive of the celebrated Hebrew poet, who was born in Southern Germany. Amichai's German-Hebrew experiments raise the question of orientation-as a topographic, a linguistic, and an existential probelm-a question that she uses to bring Amichai into dialogue with another great 20th century Jewish author, Paul Celan.

This lecture, the annual Arnold Band Lecture, is organized by the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies.

Fatima El-Tayeb, Comparative Literature, UC San Diego
Damani Partridge, Anthropology, University of Michigan
Michael Saman, Germanic Languages, UCLA
Mark Thompson, English, Johns Hopkins University

German philosophy of the eighteenth century yields the first attempt to define scientifically the highly indeterminate concept of Rasse (borrowed, without any precise definition, from the French race).  German political culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries moves the concept of race indelibly from the realm of scientific speculation into political and social reality.  While there have been many studies on the general concept of "race" in Germany before and after the Nazi period, the purpose of this symposium is to focus in particular on notions of Black race and identity in German social as well as intellectual history.

In order to explore the specificity of Blackness within German discourses on race and culture, this symposium brings together a group of scholars to examine the question from the viewpoint of multiple disciplinary methodologies, including anthropology, intellectual history, cultural studies, and literature.

The symposium is organized by Michael Saman, UCLA Department of Germanic Languages.

Performing Community in the Digital Age

David Barnett, Head of Drama, University of Sussex, UK
Nurkan Erpulat, Director, Ballhaus Naunynstraße / Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus
Sonja Kuftinec, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, University of Minnesota
Katrin Sieg, Professor of German, Georgetown University

In the German speaking countries today, theater and performance continue to challenge theatrical conventions which valorize the spectator’s passive attitude toward the stage. While the so-called postdramatic genre emphasizes the co-production of meaning by its audience, the popularity of collaborations of acclaimed theater groups with lay actors, street improvisations, and productions in which the audience intervenes in the performance further contribute to a highly interactive theatrical landscape.

The goal of our symposium is to examine how we can assess the current interest in audience participation, focusing in particular on the role different performance genres play as tools for building communities. In the face of a widespread critique of contemporary theater's inability to make a meaningful intervention in life, participatory performances invite us to rethink the parameters for critical engagement. At the center of our investigation lie questions about the conditions under which such an engagement intersects with or evolves into social and political commitment and how this commitment shapes the (self-) understanding of local, national and international communities.

This conference is organized by Brechtje Beuker, UCLA Department of Germanic Languages, and cosponsored by the UCLA Center for Performance Studies