News Archive

BCB Faculty Sladja Blazan’s article “Something Beyond Pain: Race, Gender, and Hyperempathy in Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower” was published in the journal gender forum’s Special Issue on Gender, Violence, and the State in Contemporary Speculative Fiction. The article discusses how speculative fiction addresses the violence of liberal conceptions of the human under racial capitalism.

Blazan writes, 

Nina Tecklenberg, a professor of theater at Bard College Berlin, is set to debut the interactive, participatory show Chat-Inferno on September 30 with the performance group Interrobang.

Chat-Inferno is inspired by Dante’s Inferno within The Divine Comedy. The piece examines the communication form of online chats with all of their emotionalizing and social volatility; audiences can walk around with smartphones and headphones and chat with each other. A parallel online audience can also take part in the chat. Together, the participants set off through the circles of hell of our time: the limbo of the indifferent, the sea of flames of deceptions or in the quagmire of wrathful souls.

Chat-Inferno is a part of the Spy On Me #4 Festival, a festival on theater and digital culture, run by HAU (Hebbel Am Ufer). This year’s theme is ‘New Companions’. In an interview with HAU, Tecklenburg said,
 
The German-language piece will run from September 30 until October 3rd. For more information, visit the Chat-Inferno page of the HAU website.

Concept: Interrobang / By and with: Max Gadow, Lisa Großmann, Elisabeth Lindig, Peggy Mädler, Till Müller-Klug, Lajos Talamonti, Nina Tecklenburg / Coding: Florian Fischer, Hannes Breul / Stage: Sandra Fox / Music: Friedrich Greiling / Dramaturgical cooperation: Christiane Kühl / Coding dramaturgy: Pilar Petropoulos-White, Veronika Risnovska / Final rehearsal coordination: Selma Böhmelmann / Assistance: Annelie Uhlig / Light design: Dirk Lutz / Graphics, animation: Jürgen Fehrmann, Julia Elger / Video engineering: Marius Bratoveanu / Production management: ehrliche arbeit, Sandra Klöss / Public relations: Tina Ebert / Internship: Aurelia Kraus

Bard College Berlin senior Vala Schriefer wrote the text for the exhibition guide that accompanies the Goya exhibition, Goya Yo lo vi – Ich sah es – I Saw It at the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg, which shows around three dozen prints and all four print cycles by Francisco de Goya. Vala Schriefer also created the nine-part series of gouaches The Atlas of the Stranger (2021), which is displayed in the Stüler Building for the duration of the Goya exhibition. In the series Vala explores the themes of borders, as enforced by the nation-state system and hospitality as the remedy for divisioned identities. Vala created the work as part of the BCB seminar, Research Creation: Forced Migration and the Arts. The exhibition is the core part of Bard College Berlin’s Eine Uni ein Buch (One University one Book) project.

The themes depicted by Goya are close to the real-life experiences of several BCB students. As Vala writes in the guide: “Studying such an aesthetically and politically powerful artwork as Goya’s Los Desastres de la Guerra creates a newly empathetic viewpoint from which to consider the diverse catastrophic effects of war, including the flight of populations, psychological wounds, and political and geographical reconfigurations across the earth in the present day.” 

Goya’s works are particularly relevant to the BCB student body for perceiving images of war and reflecting on ways to move forward. As Vala puts it: “... to be moved by such works, is to allow the beauty and sublimity, or the resistance to them, to be the medium of communication and to be granted that space to feel and think in communion: to feel the horror, and to think, what can be done?” The college’s scholarship initiative, the Program for International Education and Social Change, supports the refugee students that are studying at BCB, a number that represents nearly 15% of the student body.  

Goya Yo lo vi - Ich sah es - I saw It will run until November 6, 2022. Over the next several weeks, Bard College Berlin students and faculty will be organizing events in connection with the exhibition and centered on themes such as migration, borders, and Francisco de Goya’s extremely influential role in art history.

This summer Bard Berliners were engaged in a number of enriching and meaningful pursuits across the globe. From teaching French, to flexing their German language skills working at a hotel in Berlin, to helping out at Documenta 15, and volunteering with NGOs in Mexico, Bard Berliners were quite busy.

Bard College Berlin’s connection with the Open Society University Network offered the opportunity for students to take courses with students from around the world. Other students worked for the US Senate in Washington, D.C., a Market Research position, and the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung in Tunisia.

Watch this video to hear from our students in their own words of the work they accomplished over the summer.

In Fall 2022, Bard College Berlin enrolled 62 first-year students and 36 transfer students, coming from 24 countries around the world. 8% of the new students are the first in their family to attend college.
 
However, beyond the numbers, our new students also have impressive stories to tell. 

Two of the new BCB-ers completed voluntary social years in Rwanda and Spain. Three of the incoming students are recipients of the U.S. Department of State-funded merit-based scholarship program, Future Leaders Exchange. Our students have been TED speakers, delegates in Model UN conferences, climate change activists and participants in Brown and Princeton University summer schools.

Our new students have completed internships and volunteered at the Columbia University High School Law Institute, Red Cross Society, Lahore University, International Development Initiative as well as multiple refugee camps and children’s hospitals. The class of 2026 also has a significant number of students with experience in tutoring activities, particularly teaching English as a foreign language.

The first-year and transfer students completed an annual two-and-a-half-week Language & Thinking Program, introducing them to academic and social life at Bard College Berlin, and the bustling city of Berlin. You can see a short recollection of the L&T 2022 program here. 

The class of 2026 are not the only newcomers to campus this fall. Dr. Nassim AbiGhanem has been appointed to the faculty, and he is joined by new guest faculty, Angela Anderson, Aaron Alle, Noam Brusilovsky, Razieh-Sadat Mousavi, Tirdad Zolghadr, Siegmar Zacharias and new guest faculty in the German Studies Program, Adelaida Ivan, Aleksandra Kudrishova, Dr. Florian Scherübl, Dr. Eugen Wenzel. You can learn more about the distinguished scholars joining BCB this semester here. 

We wish everyone in the BCB community a warm welcome (back) to campus!

In March of this year, Bard College Berlin was one of the ten universities that were selected by the Stifterverband and the Klaus Schira Stiftung to receive the Eine Uni ein Buch (One University one Book) award. For BCB, this is a 100% award success rate: thrice the college applied and all three times we triumphed. In 2017, the book of reference was Plato’s Republic, in 2018 we applied with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and this year, in a bold and daring move, we proposed a book that was in every sense extraordinary: Francisco de Goya’s Los Desastres de la Guerra (‘The Disasters of War’), a series of 82 prints in which the artist depicted the atrocities of the Napoleonic wars in Spain. The series was published in a bound format in 1863, 35 years after Goya’s death.

The heart of the project is the exhibition of a copy of Goya’s Les Desastres de la Guerra book, together with three additional series of prints that appeared in a bound format - Los Caprichos, Los Disparates and Tauromaquia - and single works on paper by the artist. Simultaneously, large projections of the individual images from Los Desastres de la Guerra as well as Los Caprichos will be shown, providing a unique opportunity to see each print represented in the series in a larger-than-life format. Goya Yo lo vi – Ich sah es – I Saw It takes place at the Sammlung Scharf-Gerstenberg and will run until November 6, 2022. 

Vala Schriefer, a 4th year student at Bard College Berlin, writes in the exhibition guide: “Studying such an aesthetically and politically powerful artwork as Goya’s Los Desastres de la Guerra creates a newly empathetic viewpoint from which to consider the diverse catastrophic effects of war, including the flight of populations, psychological wounds, and political and geographical reconfigurations across the earth in the present day. These events, animated and stressed by the haunting and torturous visions of Goya’s etchings, are to some BCB students in fact intimate experiences. Since the beginning of the university’s Program for International Education and Social Change, over 10% of the BCB student body has been made up of young refugees.”

Over the next several weeks, Bard College Berlin students and faculty will be organizing events connected to and inspired by the exhibition. More information about the exhibition and accompanying program can be found here. 

After a successful exhibition and symposium in Berlin, "Viral Theatres: Pandemic Past/Hybrid Futures", co-created by BCB theater professors Ramona Mosse and Nina Tecklenburg, will move to Theatermuseum Düsseldorf this fall. The exhibition will run from 11 September 2022 to 12 February 2023.

The exhibition offers a look into the Living Archive with video and audio documents of pandemic theatre making and audience experience via interviews, rehearsal shadowing, video documentation and digital interactions. It investigates the questions: How hybrid is the future of theatre? In what ways has the pandemic changed how we work in theatre and gather in it as a public space? 

The Living Archive includes a section created by Bard College students from Berlin and Annandale, who participated in the network course "Post/Pandemic Theatre in Berlin and New York" in the Fall 2021 semester.

It is co-created by members of the artistic research project Viral Theatres (Volkswagenstiftung): Ramona Mosse (principle investigator, BCB and FU), Nina Tecklenburg (BCB and Interrobang), Janina Janke (Turbo Pascal) and Christian Stein (game.lab HU).

Following his appointment as Global Teaching Fellow at Bard College Berlin for the 2021/2022 year, Dr. Nassim AbiGhanem has now joined the faculty of the college in the field of politics. He completed his Ph.D. in International Relations at the Central European University in 2021 and his research interests include civil society organization (CSOs) resilience roles, civic engagement, non-state actors’ involvement in international politics, and conflict management and peacebuilding. At BCB he is teaching courses in globalization and international relations, research methods, quantitative methods in social sciences, and peace and conflict studies. 
 
Several distinguished scholars join BCB for the first time this fall as guest faculty. 

• Angela Anderson (MA Film and Media Studies, The New School) is an artist and researcher working in the mediums of multi-channel video and sound installation, sculpture and photography. 
• Aaron Allen (MA Security Studies, Georgetown University) is a non-resident fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and freelance journalist focusing on transatlantic relations, democratic resilience, strategic arms control, and German foreign policy. 
• Noam Brusilovsky (Hochschule für Schauspielkunst Ernst Busch) works as an author and director for German public broadcasting corporation ARD. His radio plays twice won the German Radio Drama Award and were nominated for the Prix Europa. 
• Razieh-Sadat Mousavi (MA in History of Science, University of Tehran) is currently finishing her PhD thesis at the Humboldt University of Berlin and is a predoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.
• Tirdad Zolghadr is a curator and writer, most recently working as associate curator at KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin. 
• Siegmar Zacharias (MA Performance Art, DasArts Amsterdam) who works in theory and practice in the field of performance, also returns to the guest faculty. 
 
A number of new guest faculty will be teaching in the German Studies Program. 
• Adelaida Ivan (MA Intercultural Communication, University of Bucharest) has received several grants for her cross-border research projects and is a former fellow at the Institute for Media and Communication Studies, Free University of Berlin. 
• Aleksandra Kudrishova (MA Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Groningen) is a scholar of film, art, architecture, German language and literature.  
• Dr. Florian Scherübl (PhD in German Literature, Humboldt-University Berlin) teaches Modern German Literature at the TU Dresden. 
• Dr. Eugen Wenzel (PhD in German Studies, University of Paderborn) has been a lecturer at universities including Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf, Bard College Berlin, and TU Chemnitz.  

BCB Faculty Member Marion Detjen has recently published an article in Zeit-Online, titled “Die Arbeit an den Gurken” (Work on Cucumbers). Detjen explores the ways in which Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” can be read in times of Russia's war in Ukraine. The article explains the importance of decoupling Ukrainian and Russian cultures and respecting the invaded peoples’ unwillingness to enjoy hegemonic cultures. Detjen also notes the imperial biases in Russian and German literature and calls for reading post-colonial works like Tolstoy’s Haji Murat, which can contribute to alleviating ethnic tensions, rather than deepening them. 

Read the full article on Zeit-Online.

Gale Raj-Reichert of BCB and Florian Butollo of the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society were successful recipients of a funding award by the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin's Blankensee-Colloquia, and will hold an international workshop on 'Who captures the Gains? New Theoretical Concepts on the Impact of Digital Transformation on the Global Economy'.
The workshop will bring leading academic researchers and thinkers from around the world in an interdisciplinary manner to discuss how digital transformation affects the distribution of economic and social gains in global value chains and what industrial policy options there are for achieving more equitable results in global economy facing repercussions of a global pandemic and geopolitical disruptions.
The workshop is a part of the Blankensee-Colloquia, international workshops, each on an innovative issue from the humanities or social sciences.
'Who captures the Gains? New Theoretical Concepts on the Impact of Digital Transformation on the Global Economy' will be held from 14 to 16 September at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society.

The article is also a call for scholars, intellectuals, activists and others involved in political debates to shape more inclusive narratives. In the authors’ words, “this search for a more encompassing meaning of racism must be undertaken without fear of naming-and-shaming campaigns, which only aggravate an already taut context."

Read the full article in Jacobin magazine >>
 

Professor of English and Human Rights and Associate Dean of Bard College Berlin, Kerry Bystrom, has co-authored an introduction to a book forum published by University of Virginia’s Global South Studies project. The book forum is a collection of essays by various authors in response to a single book, in this case, Monica Popescu’s At Penpoint: African Literatures, Postcolonial Studies,  and the Cold War (Duke University Press 2020).

Bystrom wrote the introduction with Carolyn Ownbey, Assistant Professor and Chair of English, Communications, and Literature at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. Popescu’s book traces the development of African literature during the second half of the twentieth century to address the intertwined effects of the Cold War and decolonization on literary history.

The project aims to advance the emergent field of Global South Studies by providing a platform and forum for a conceptual mapping of key concepts/thinkers/moments/issues within the field and is inspired by Deepika Bahri's innovative and influential [email protected].

Read the full essay on the Global South Studies website >>
 

BCB Professor of Public International Law Zeynep Kivilcim was invited to speak by the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, which took place August 5-9, 2022 in Los Angeles, California.

This year's theme was centered on "Bureaucracies of Displacement." Together with Mimi Kim, Poulami Roychowdhury, Montserrat Sagot, Myra Marx Ferree, and Paige L. Sweet,  Zeynep participated on the panel that focused on "State Bureaucracies and Gender-Based Violence Across National Contexts."  

According to the ASA's press release, "Gender-based violence creates “displacements:” isolation from social networks, loss of access to paid work and welfare benefits, psychological upheaval, forced migration, lost faith in trusted institutions, housing insecurity, and coercive legal system involvement. Due to action or inaction, states create, interrupt, and/or reproduce such displacements." The panelists discussed a number of themes related to this topic, including: What role should states play in responding to intimate violence? Whose visions of “protection” are amplified in state policy? What kind of state exists for non-normative victims? How do state categories—such as “victim” or “refugee”—shape our understandings of violence and of survival? 

For more information on the ASA’s 117th Annual Meeting >>

Cambridge University Press has published Director of the German Studies Program Ulrike Wagner’s article “On Dialogical Writing, Self-forming, and Salon Culture: Rahel Varnhagen, Henriette Herz, and Fanny Lewald” in the Hegel Bulletin. The article was published on August 1, 2022. 

From the abstract: 
Salons evoke high-flown associations; we picture elegant people gathering in glamorous settings for cultivated conversations about the arts, literature, and politics. The so-called salons hosted around 1800 in Berlin by bourgeois Jewish women are tied to promises of emancipation and religious toleration. Scholars have either hailed the empowering functions of these convivial gatherings or debunked their enlightened promises as myths. Drawing on the latest research on conviviality in the social sciences, on Friedrich Schleiermacher's theory of sociability, and on writings by and about Rahel Varnhagen, Henriette Herz and Fanny Lewald, this essay approaches the topic of the salon from a different angle. I argue that these women's social endeavours were not tied to specific ends that we can either admiringly endorse or expose as failures from today's perspective. The notions of the female self, of writing, and the conceptions of literature and philosophy emerging from these convivial constellations are inherently dialogical and shifting. Conversations may sometimes break open hierarchies, but they may also foster conflict and no improvement. The value of these encounters, I suggest, lies in the effort made rather than a classifiable outcome.

To read the full article >>

Israel Waichman Professor of Economics at Bard College Berlin has joined the editorial board of Climate Action.

Climate Action is a Springer Nature open-access journal that publishes high-quality original research, reviews, and essays targeted at an audience of researchers and diverse stakeholders who are interested in mitigating hazardous effects of the global climate change. It aims at building a bridge from science to action towards scientifically informed policies at local and global level. The journal’s scope covers transdisciplinary research from social and physical sciences, combining political, environmental, socio-economic, and behavioral science, with a special focus on the climate change mitigation; climate governance and existing action plans; their feasibility (but also limitations) in the different regions of the world

The Journal’s Editor-in-Chief is Professor Jale Tosun and the Managing Editor is Dr. Spyros Bakas

BCB Professor of Political Thought Ewa Atanassow will be participating in the Barriers and Borders’ event “Crossing Borders” on July 23, 2022 at Cambridge University. Barriers and Borders is part of an ongoing collaboration between Columbia World Projects and the Centre for History and Economics and is supported by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. 

Prof. Dr. Atanassow’s presentation is titled “On the Use and Abuse of Crossing Boarders.” She will be presenting in the second section at 4:55 pm CEST. 

About Barriers and Borders: 
In recent years, political turmoil in both North America and Europe has been focused, arguably to an unprecedented extent, on barriers to movement. The resurgence of nationalism, anti-immigrant sentiment, religious intolerance, and protectionism are aspects of restriction that restrain and inhibit cross-border flows of people, goods, money, ideas, and information. At present, the world also struggles with new barriers to movement coupled with personal restrictions imposed by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
These sources of closure, often marked by anxiety and mistrust, are placing liberal constitutional regimes under great pressure.
Barriers and Borders aims to deepen trans-Atlantic scholarly exchanges by convening a research network centred on these themes. It seeks to bring sustained conceptual, analytical, and historical attention to the causes and consequences of constructing (or reconstructing) such impediments. 
 
For more information on Barriers and Borders >>
 
For the full Crossing Borders’ program >>

BCB Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak and faculty member Florian Duijsens are featured speakers at City, University of London’s seminar “Revisiting Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies out of Place.” The seminar will take place online on July 21, 2022, at 3:00 pm CEST and is open to the public. 

From the announcement: 
Some bodies are deemed as having the right to belong, while others are marked out as trespassers who are, in accordance with how both spaces and bodies are imagined (politically, historically and conceptually) circumscribed as being ‘out of place’.

18 years ago, Nirmal Puwar published Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies out of Place (Berg, 2004).
Some bodies, the book pointed out, are ‘deemed as having the right to belong’: they fit into social institutions with ease, due to the sedimented histories, cultures and politics of ‘race’, gender and class. Such people are the ‘somatic norm’. Others are positioned as conceptual and historical ‘space invaders’, who are too different degrees ‘out of place’.

Written at a time when ‘increasingly, women and minorities are entering fields where white male power is firmly entrenched’, this powerful book used an expansive range of examples from across UK national institutions (including parliament, civil service, the art world and academia) alongside an inventive range of theory to understand how processes of exclusion are tied to conditions of inclusion, alongside how people negotiate and contest them. Space Invaders asks the question: ‘What happens when those bodies not expected to occupy certain places do so’?
Puwar’s lucid, nuanced and compelling book has been highly influential, inspiring work in the museum, arts and cultural sector (such as ‘The Space Invaders collective’ and podcast, as well as the ‘Spatial Feminism’ book club).

This book was launched in Milan and has been widely taken up in academia, used extensively in teaching (including in BCB’s Internship Seminar) and creative practices internationally. This afternoon event will revisit Space Invaders in a contemporary context marked by renewed activist work and institutional attention to ‘inclusion’, alongside the optics and capitalisation of diversity and the rise of new aggressive forms of inequality.
 
For more information on Revisiting Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies out of Place >>
To the seminar’s registration >>

BCB alumna Aya Ibrahim has been chosen to be one of Medium Magazine’s “ Top 30 bis 30” (Top 30 under 30), a highly prestigious award given to 30 outstanding journalists under 30 years of age. This is Medium Magazines' seventeenth year presenting this award. 

From Deutsche Welle: Aya Ibrahim has worked for DW for nearly 10 years, currently as a freelance reporter for DW News. The magazine particularly highlighted DW's "Seitenwechsel" format, developed by Ibrahim, which aired in the run-up to the 2021 German federal election and provided voters with a platform to discuss relevant issues.

In the featured article on the Top List in the magazine’s current issue, Ibrahim was asked what drives her in her journalistic work. She replied, "Curiosity. And the idea that quality journalism is crucial to the development of more just societies." 

To read the full article in English on Deutsche Welle >>  

To read the full article in German on Deutsche Welle >>   

For more information on Medium Magazin’s 30 bis 30 (German) >>

The Margarita Kuchma Project Award selection committee has named a proposal by two Bard College Berlin students as one of two final winning projects. Michael Nyakundi ’23 and Abdullah Naseer ’23 won with “Project MA3: Masanse Na Mayouthman (From Violence to Co-existence),” which focuses on community engagement as a working solution to police brutality in Soweto slums in Embakasi, Nairobi. They will be awarded $5,000 to realize their projects over their proposed timelines. The results of the winning projects will be presented to the Bard community in a public presentation sometime during the fall 2022 semester.

Michael Nyakundi and Abdullah Naseer write, “Most solutions to police brutality have involved the often-lengthy process of bringing police to justice through jurisprudence, or, as is the case in the US, demanding for the defunding of police. While these solutions are salient, they rarely mend the bad blood/fears between police and the youth.” Their project introduces a workshop where police representatives and youth representatives (a) have a dialogue about ways in which they both can civically engage/communicate in order to promote conviviality and (b) go through various restorative justice measures the police can explore when dealing with crime. They will also organize a community engagement endeavor, such as rubbish collection or a soccer tournament, in which both the police and the youth would engage to further cement a cordial relationship. Further, they plan to lobby members of parliament to promote police and youth engagement in my Soweto slums. 

The award winners were decided through a multi-step process. Twenty-five applicants submitted project proposals in an open call round. Five projects were selected to advance to a second round and given an award of $1000 and another month to conduct research and identify partners and materials needed to realize the project. Two finalists were selected from this stage and awarded a further $5000 to create a detailed project activation blueprint and timeline. Both finalists were named winners and split the final $10,000 award to realize their projects.

This award’s selection committee was chaired by Associate Director of the Human Rights Project Danielle Riou and included Dean for Social Action and Director of the Trustee Leader Scholar Program Paul Marienthal, Vice-Chair of the Board of Governors of Bard College Berlin Susan Gillespie, former Research Professor at the Andrew Gagarin Center for the Study of Civil Society and Human Rights at Saint Petersburg State University Carine Clément, and Executive Director of [email protected] Dariel Vasquez ’17.

About the Margarita Kuchma Project Award
Organized by Bard’s Human Rights Project, the Margarita Kuchma Project Award was created in honor of Margarita Kuchma, a student who was passionate about confronting injustice head-on. The award supports a real-world, student-led project that addresses fundamental issues of equality, freedom, social justice, civil rights, and human rights. Currently enrolled students and recent alumni/ae from across the Bard network, including Al Quds, Bard Berlin, AUCA, Bard Annandale, were invited to apply. 

On June 10, 2022, BCB Professor of Art History Aya Soika presented the lecture “Mies van der Rohe’s Relationship to Nazism” as part of the Mies van der Rohe Haus lecture series Mies und die unvollendete Moderne (Mies and Unfinished Modernism) which examines his 1926 memorial in commemoration of the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg in its wider historical and architectural context. Her talk was preceded by a lecture by political scientist Prof. Dr. Carl Leggewie. The Mies und die unvollendete Moderene lecture series runs until November 11, 2022. 

Translated from the abstract: 
Since the late 1980s, the interpretation of Mies as a supposed opponent or even victim of National Socialist cultural policies has been under public scrutiny. This lecture focuses on Mies van der Rohe's situation in 1933 and 1934, and more broadly on the relationship between political judgment and architectural modernism. Just as Mies designed the pavilion for the World's Fair in Brussels in 1934 at the invitation of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, among other things, he also saw the Revolutionary Monument as a primarily aesthetic-architectural challenge as early as 1926 - in the years of the Weimar Republic - freely following the motto: "I am not interested in whether the man who mixes the cement is a Nazi or a Communist. I'm only interested in whether he makes good cement." In retrospect, how can we appropriately classify Mies's role in the early years of National Socialism, during the time of an internal party dispute over the direction of modernism? And how does his understanding of architecture relate to our standards of evaluation today?   

To watch the lectures (in German) >> 

For more information on the Mies und die unvollendete Moderene lecture series >> 

BCB Professor of Comparative Literature Laura Scuriatti is co-organizing two workshops on “Rethinking Lyric Communities.” Together with Francesco Giusti (former ICI fellow and guest faculty at BCB, now at Christchurch College, Oxford) and Irene Fantappiè (FU). The workshops will take place in Oxford on June 23, 2022 and ICI Berlin on July 5, 2022. 

From the announcement: From the circulation of poetic forms across different languages and traditions around the globe, through the envisioning of national and transnational discursive communities, to the use of poetry in contemporary episodes of political resistance and its dissemination on social media, lyric poetry seems to be a privileged site for an inquiry into community formation and its politics. Various theoretical approaches cast poetry in this peculiar role, from French and French-oriented political philosophy, (exemplified in the famous exchange between Maurice Blanchot and Jean-Luc Nancy begun in the 1980s), to the reevaluations — in reader-response criticism as well as in postcolonial and decolonial studies — of poetry’s roots in orality and performance.

This workshop aims to bring the investigation of historical poetic communities into dialogue with recent developments in the theory of the lyric and in theories of community. While discussing a variety of poetic phenomena in modern European poetry that have been at the center of the critical debate — the poetics of the fragment, the unworking or désœuvrement of the work, the obscurity or polysemy of language, a change of aesthetic regime —, the workshop will also explore the lyric, in its longer history and transnational features, as a particular discursive mode that may offer alternative models of community formation.
 
These workshops are held in cooperation with ICI Berlin and Bard College Berlin with the support of the Oxford-Berlin Research Partnership.
 
For more information on the workshop at Christchurch College, Oxford >> 

Registration for the Workshop at Christchurch College, Oxford University is due June 20, 2022.
To register email Francesco Giusti at [email protected]. 

For more information on the event at ICI >> 
Registration is required and opens on June 21, 2022. 

Professor of Politics and Director of the Politics Concentration Boris Vormann recently presented papers at L'Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) and McGill University. 

From the abstract: Logistics, the art, and science of circulation are both at the heart of military campaigns and business interactions. It can also be used as a key analytical prism toward understanding two of the most important fields of intervention of any state: defense and commerce. Using the case of the US-American state apparatus, [Vormann] articulated how [he used] the concept "logistical power" and what the implications of this analytical perspective could hold for the way we think about American political development, patterns of state intervention, and planetary urbanization.
For more information on the UQAM talk >>

BCB Professor of Politics Ewa Atanassow was one of five scholars chosen to attend an Open Society University Network workshop on Uday Mehta’s upcoming book “Different Vision: Gandhi’s Critique of Political Rationality.” The five scholars and ten students invited to the workshop will have the opportunity to read and discuss the manuscript with the author, Yehunda Elkana Fellow Uday Mehta.  The workshop will take place on the Central European University campus in Vienna from June 13 to June 15, 2022. 

From the blurb: Mehta’s forthcoming book examines the political thinking of Mahatma Gandhi, unearthing a non-liberal politics that rejects both imperialism and nationalism. If liberalism seeks freedom by elevating a state to discipline obedient citizens, Gandhi's political theory explicitly links politics to spiritualism and self-realization. Thus Gandhi is opposed to the power of the state as a mediating institution. He thinks in civilizational terms based in family and religion. And he values individual courage because it allows freedom and maturity. Mehta finds in Gandhi a political theory fundamentally at odds with the liberal-nation-state project. 

Different Vision: Gandhi’s Critique of Political Rationality will be the topic of the 2022 Yehuda Elkana Fellowship text seminar. Professor Mehta and a number of world authorities on Gandhi and political thinking will be on hand to lead the discussion.

The workshop is supported by OSUN’s Hannah Arendt Humanities Network (HAHN).

For more information on the OSUN workshop >> 

BCB Professor of Middle East Studies and EUME Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (‘19-’23) Hanan Toukan is a featured speaker at the roundtable: Thinking the “Creative Class” between Amman, Beirut, Haifa and Berlin. Prof. Dr. Toukan will be joined by Aseel Sawalha (Fordham University) and Himmat Zoubi (EUME Fellow 2018-22) as they discuss “issues of creativity, knowledge production, political engagement, the mobility and immobility of artists, and art-related products, and solidarities in the lives and works of activists, scholars, artists and writers in and from four interconnected cities in the Arab region and Europe.” The round table discussion will take place on June 8, 2022, 5:00pm CEST at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Wallotstr. 14, 14193 Berlin.

From the blurb: This conversation invites a reflection on artistic and cultural practices in formal and non-formal spaces in and between four distinct urban locations that nonetheless share fundamental similarities: Hayfa, Beirut, Amman and Berlin. This reflection provides an opportunity to think about the ways in which the multitudes of cultural and knowledge producers at work in the gig economy today respond to neoliberal capitalism’s precarious policies towards cultural labor. Thinking about the conditions of possibility of alternatives ways of organizing within this framework the panel ask several questions: What drives the creative class today? What structural challenges does it face and what shapes the varied forms of its production? And what role does urban context, generation, class and gender play in shaping the subjectivities and conversations this class of creatives generate, beyond issues of the politics of representation? 

For more information on Thinking the “Creative Class” between Amman, Beirut, Haifa and Berlin >>

On May 2, 2022, Professor of Politics and Director of the Politics Concentration Boris Vormann was a featured speaker and invited expert to Aspen Germany’s Laboratories of Democracy Initiative: America 101 – Exploring Subnational Governance in the United States.

From the blurb: Dr. Vormann’s presentation and the subsequent joint exchange addressed governance in the United States at the federal, state, and local level to lay the foundation for all upcoming discussions in this project. It gave the seven parliamentarians from Germany the opportunity to learn more about the U.S.-American political system and the distribution of power and responsibilities. With regard to the focus topic of the second round of exchanges, a special emphasis was placed on climate and energy policy. 

The Laboratories of Democracy Initiative is supported by the Transatlantic Program of the Federal Republic of Germany, funded by the European Recovery Program (ERP) of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action (BMWK).

For more information on the Laboratories of Democracy Initiative: America 101 – Exploring Subnational Governance in the United States >>

BCB Board Member Ken Roth and executive director of Human Rights Watch, Ken Roth, has recently published an article with the Secretary General of Amnesty International, Agnès Callamard, in Foreign Affairs. Roth and Callamard’s article, “Ethiopia’s Invisible Ethnic Cleansing: The World Can’t Afford to Ignore Tigray,” examines the forcible removal of hundreds of thousands of Tigrayns in Northern Ethiopia.

Roth and Callamard fully believe that without pressure for peace from Ethiopia, Africa, and the West, the mass detention, murder, rape, and removal of hundreds of thousands will continue. Roth and Callamard also emphasize the necessity to negotiate humanitarian corridors in order to protect the Tigrayan people from the horrors they are facing. 

Read the full article in Foreign Affairs >>

My appeal to you is to apply the elements of your [Bard College Berlin] liberal education throughout your life – to recognize that your graduation today is not the end of an era but the beginning of a challenge that is in urgent need of your help in meeting it. The contest between democracy and autocracy will depend on you. – Kenneth Roth, "The Future of Democracy Depends on You"

BCB was honored to have Kenneth Roth as our commencement speaker this year. Kenneth Roth has been the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world’s leading international human rights organizations, which operates in over 100 countries. 

During his tenure, Human Rights Watch has worked tirelessly to bring justice to victims of the worst abuses, documenting war crimes from Syria to Yemen and from Iraq to Congo, and has expanded its work on the rights of women, children, refugees, migrant workers, LGBT people, and people with disabilities. 

Prior to joining Human Rights Watch in 1987, Kenneth Roth served as a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington. 

A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, he has conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world and has written extensively on a wide range of human rights abuses. Kenneth Roth joined the Board of Governors of Bard College Berlin in 2018.

In his speech, Kenneth Roth urged the graduates to force “our democracies . . . to do better. They must be more responsive to the big problems before us, and to all the people who live in our nations. As you leave the comfort of the classroom, that is your task. It is an urgent task if we are to retain the world for which your Bard education has prepared you. The most dangerous position is to say that democracy will never fade. Complacency is the friend of tyranny.” 

Read his full speech The Future of Democracy Depends on You >>

BCB Professor of Political Thought Ewa Atanassow will give a talk on “Diversity and (Liberal) Democracy” at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS) Diversity: Concept, Measurement, and Application Conference. Her presentation will be part of the opening panel on Friday, May 20, 2022. 

From the AIAS Conference description: This conference gathers scholars with expertise in diversity in various scientific disciplines and policy areas, ranging from biodiversity conservation and the protection of cultural heritage, to affirmative action and civil rights legislation. While diversity is central to a variety of scientific debates and has a substantial impact on a number of different policy areas, comparatively little research looks at diversity across domains. The conference wishes to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue on diversity and trace both differences and communalities in the theoretical conceptualization, empirical measurement, and political implementation of this topic.

For more information on Diversity: Concept, Measurement, and Application, visit the AIAS Conference website >> 

Dean of Bard College Berlin and Professor of Literature Prof. Dr. Catherine Toal reviewed novelist Preti Taneja's memoir Aftermath in The Irish Times in an article titled "Aftermath by Preti Taneja: Terror attack recalled for a deeper purpose."

The book "centres on the London Fishmongers’ Hall attack of November 2019, when Usman Khan, a paroled terrorism convict, stabbed five people at a conference on offender rehabilitation, killing two of them," through the lens of the author's personal connection with the event. "Khan had been a participant in one of the creative writing classes taught at Whitemoor Prison by British novelist Preti Taneja. Invited to the conference, Taneja happened not to attend." In her review, Prof. Dr. Toal says Taneja "avoids typical ‘trauma’ memoir and instead makes trust her subject." She continues that Taneja "weaves a mesmerising blend of recollection, theory, aphorism, poetry and, yes, fact."

Continue reading on The Irish Times >>

Fellows of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin and Guest Faculty at Bard College Berlin Rocco Gaudenzi and Stefano Furlan have published the article "The earth vibrates with analogies: the Dirac sea and the geology of the vacuum" in the journal Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 92 (2022). The paper explores the historic use of analogies in the sciences. 

In their acknowledgements, the authors note that "part of the content of this article has been stimulated and refined in the context of the university course 'What is an analogy? A journey from the sciences to the humanities and back' designed and held by the authors at Bard College Berlin." They express their thanks to the students in the class. 

Continue reading on Science Direct>>

BCB Professor of Art History Aya Soika contributed her essay “Erich Dieckmann im Nationalsozialismus” (Erich Dieckmann in the Third Reich) to an exhibition catalog focusing on the life and work of the former Bauhaus chair designer. The catalog accompanies the Berlin Museum of Applied Arts at Kulturforum current show Chairs. Dieckmann! The Forgotten Bauhaus Master Erich Dieckmann.

In her essay, Prof. Soika examines Dieckmann's attempts to position himself during the "Third Reich".  
 
Prof. Soika participated in a podium discussion in which she discussed Dieckmann. Watch it here (in German):
 
More information on the exhibition catalog can be found on Lehmanns Media >>
 
For more information on the Berlin Museum of Applied Arts exhibition >>

BCB Associate Dean and Professor Kerry Bystrom will be moderating the panel “Border Crossings and Home at the Border” at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry Haunted by Homes symposium. The symposium runs on May 5 and 6, 2022. 

From the blurb: While home is often theorized as a category of space, the question of home for migrants is a complicated one. It brings to the forefront complex relations beyond the reductive dichotomies of ‘home’ and ‘away’, place of origin and place of residence, which postcolonial and diaspora studies often focus on. With the upsurge in migration rates in the past years, it becomes crucial to reflect on how to define home or the process of homemaking in an attempt to explore the experience of ‘home’ for mobile individuals.
This two-day symposium will explore experiences and narratives of home and/or homelessness in literature, art, and film. By focusing on expression as a process of homing; on home as an open, ongoing process; on its temporal and spatial dimensions; on its existence as a set of relations with objects, people and the world at large; and on its imagined and imaginary dimensions in defining such relations, the symposium tackles questions about home, home making, belonging, migration, memory, nostalgia, and affect.

Find out more about the Haunted by Homes symposium at ICI >>

Director of Human Rights Watch Kenneth Roth has been announced as the Bard College Berlin commencement speaker for the Class of 2022 and 2020 graduation which will be taking place on Saturday, May 21st, 2022. Ken Roth is also a member of the BCB  board of governors. He recently announced that, after thirty years of service, he will be stepping down as the director of Human Rights Watch. 

Commencement Speaker Bio:
Ken Roth is the executive director of Human Rights Watch, one of the world's leading international human rights organizations, which operates in more than 90 countries. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch in 1987, he served as a federal prosecutor in New York and for the Iran-Contra investigation in Washington, DC. A graduate of Yale Law School and Brown University, Ken has conducted numerous human rights investigations and missions around the world. He has written extensively on a wide range of human rights abuses, devoting special attention to issues of international justice, counterterrorism, the foreign policies of major powers, and the work of the United Nations. His articles and reviews have appeared in such publications as The New York Review of Books, The Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, and The New York Times Book Review. He frequently addresses audiences around the world, including at the United Nations in New York, universities, and conferences, including the Munich Security Conference and the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Learn more about Ken Roth and Human Rights Watch >> 

To read the enlightening transcript of his interview with The Octavian Report "Playing handball: Kenneth Roth on His Three Decades Leading Human Rights Watch" >>

Erick Moreno Superlano, a 4th-year BCB student concentrating in Rhetoric and Literature, was nominated for the scholarship by Prof. Dr. Agata Lisiak. He was in Dr. Lisiak’s Lexicon of Migration class, and worked with her as a research assistant on "Migration, Space, and Power: Learning from Rosa Luxemburg and Doreen Massey." Dr. Lisiak’s class and research were a great inspiration for Erick. 

The Studienstiftung is granted through the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, Germany's largest and most prestigious scholarship foundation, and is open by nomination only. 

Once he was nominated, Erick prepared and submitted his application materials in German. His application was selected, and Erick went through a lengthy interview process with the selection committee. It included two interviews with two different professors from other universities, and presentation and a moderated debate with the other applicants– some of the best and brightest students in Germany. Erick credits BCB’s seminar based program, which requires students to debate their ideas in the classroom, for his success in that part of the selection process. Erick's presentation was based on an essay he wrote for his class African Narratives of Migration taught by Dr. Fatin Abbas, his thesis advisor. In the end, only 25% of the invited applicants were accepted.  

As part of the interview section, Erick talked about the Latinx club he founded at BCB, which he established to bring more Latinx representation into the university.

Erick was eager to study at BCB, not only because he received a scholarship, but because he was unable to attend a German public university, because his Venezuelan high school diploma isn't recognised in Germany. After graduation, Erick will go on for a Master’s in Migration Studies. He has been admitted into University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge, and will be making his final decision soon.  

For more information about fellowships and post-graduate study, Career Services is available for questions and assistance. 

BCB student Ibrar Mirzai was recently interviewed by The Clemente in their article “Ibrar Mirzai: a Journey to the Liberal Arts.”

In the article, Ibrar discusses the profound impact taking courses with the Socrates Project at Central European University had on him. His decision to enroll in classes with the Socrates Project ultimately led him to study full time at Bard College Berlin. Ibrar has been studying Economics, Politics, and Social Thought (EPST) on a full scholarship at BCB since Fall 2020. At BCB, Ibrar “appreciates the experience of being in small, discussion-based classes with students from various parts of the world. And he values the way that, like in the Socrates Projects, knowledge is co-created in the classroom instead of being passed down from a professor. 'It provides me the opportunity to discuss ideas and also dispute ideas,' he says. 'It recognizes that ideas are not absolute.'”

The Socrates Project is a collaborative educational outreach program of the Civic Engagement Initiative at Bard College Berlin and the Community Engagement Office at Central European University. It offers free university-level courses in the humanities and social sciences to adults in the wider community who have been denied educational opportunities in the past, including those who have not completed secondary school.  All courses are discussion-based and tackle the big questions of life and society in a friendly atmosphere yet with academic rigor. By engaging in conversations with peers and teachers on a variety of interconnected topics, the participants are empowered to keep educating themselves and deepen their involvement in the cultural and civic lives of their communities. 

Read Ibrar’s story in the full Clemente article >>

To learn more about the Socrates Project >> 

BCB Director of Studio Arts John von Bergen will be opening a sculpture/installation exhibition entitled "Replace the Space" with Noa Heyne at the Kommunale Galerie on Tuesday, May 3, 2022. The exhibit will run until June 26th, 2022. 

Translated from the press release: 
Urban planning and architecture have always been steadfast witness to the social and political constitution of societies. But what happens when this architecture is decontextualized or fragmented? When architectural elements are reinterpreted and used as symbolic and meaningful vehicles of a building's function? Noa Heyne and John von Bergen devote their work to this new, different use of space and spatial experience. In their works, they take fragments of architecture or objects of everyday use and suspend their strict interpretive principles and concepts. Their work is thus, as it were, a call to rhapsody, to the disobedience of thought to urban, architectural space.

John von Bergen (born 1971 in Connecticut, USA) received his BFA with honors from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He has been living and working in Berlin since 2003. Numerous of his works have been presented in exhibitions in museums, galleries and cultural institutions - in Germany, among others, in the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, in the Wilhelm-Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen, in Halle 14 in Leipzig and in the Galerie Schmela in Düsseldorf.

Von Bergen has received numerous awards and residencies, including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Prize, the Stiftung Deutsche Klassenlotterie Foundation (for an acquisition by the Berlinische Galerie), and most recently a research grant from the Berlin Senate. He is currently working on an art-in-construction project for an extension of the German Bundestag, which is scheduled for completion in 2025.

Von Bergen has been Director of Studio Arts at Bard College Berlin since 2017. The artist has his studio in a former Stasi building in Hohenschönhausen.

Read the full press release and reserve tickets from the Kommunale Galerie >> 

Professor of Politics Gale Raj-Reichert is a featured speaker at the Mosbacher Institute’s “Improving Working Conditions in Supply Chains: Practical Examples & Future Challenges” conference. The conference takes place on May 4, 2022 in Washington, DC and via Zoom and was organized by Texas A&M University. 

From the brochure: The goal of this conference is to synthesize current research and present new results that inform the debate surrounding the role of various stakeholders in improving working conditions and compliance with global labor standards and national law in supply chains.
Stubborn persistence of poor working conditions in supply chains keeps compliance with national law and global standards at the forefront of policy debates. In order to address poor working conditions in a widespread and sustainable way, it is important to have a solid understanding of the potential success of various approaches in different sectors of the economy, the root causes of poor conditions, and the economic forces that either inhibit or facilitate the spread of good practices. Solid policy-focused academic research can fill those needs.

This conference will bring together policymakers, representatives of inter-government organizations, and academics to discuss the latest advances in our understanding of these persistent challenges and create the opportunity to discuss effective solutions and policy options.

The conference is sponsored by the International Labour Organization Office for the United States and Canada (ILO-USAC) and the Mosbacher Institute for Trade, Economics, and Public Policy.

For more information >>

For conference registration >>

Bard College Berlin is offering ten scholarships for students from Ukraine. The scholarships will be funded by Bard College Berlin in partnership with private, public and institutional donors and are part of the Program for International Education and Social Change (PIESC). The program has funded students from areas of crisis since 2015. Full scholarships cover tuition and non-tuition costs such as room and board.

For students from Ukraine, the application deadline has been extended until June 1 and applications for both first-year and transfer admission will be considered. We can accept transcripts and recommendation letters in English, German and Ukrainian. The Admissions Office is available for further guidance and advising. Please visit our website or contact admissions[email protected] for details on how to apply. 

Bard College Berlin is a private, nonprofit, German-American liberal arts college offering four-year BA degree programs taught in English. The university is accredited in Germany through the Wissenschaftsrat and in the United States by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. On a residential campus in Pankow, 300 students from 60 countries study the social sciences, arts and humanities. A faculty-to-student ratio of 1:5 allows the college to provide an education of the highest quality, based on small-group teaching and individual advising. Students have access to global study opportunities through the Bard and OSUN networks.
 

In a special issue devoted to education, Moment magazine asked professors, creatives, scientists, and more to weigh in on the most important thing students should know before graduating from college. Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, says, “The one thing that, ideally, every college student should know is how to frame a question that merits an answer. That’s the one universal skill, and it’s not as obvious as it seems.”

Read the full article in Moment >> 

Bard College Executive Vice President Jonathan Becker, who is also a BCB Academic Advisory Board member and Vice Chancellor of OSUN, published an article in The American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U)’s Liberal Education titled “It Takes a Higher Ed Network"

The article calls for a “mosaic of efforts to support students around the world in areas of crisis.” Becker writes that the global rise of authoritarianism is an ongoing threat to the liberal education and liberal arts teaching institutions.  In his role as Vice Chancellor of the Open Society University Network, Becker has played a key role in supporting and relocating students displaced by conflict.  

Becker’s article outlines the historical role that liberal arts institutions have played in supporting scholars during times of conflict and political unrest, and lessons learned.

He writes, “a fundamental design principle of OSUN, is that transnational networks, built on horizontal linkages and shared values, can provide substantive support and resilience to educational institutions in times of disruption and crisis.” He continues with four ways that liberal arts institutions can support scholars whose research and studies have been threatened.

Read the full article from in Liberal Education  here >>
Read more about Bard College Berlin’s partnership with the Open Society University Network (OSUN).

 

BCB Professor of Theater and Performance Nina Tecklenburg and BCB faculty member Ramona Mosse are co-organizing an exhibition and symposium on their collaborative artistic research project "Viral Theatres." The exhibition, Viral Theatres: Pandemic Past/Hybrid Futures explores how hybrid the future of theater is and in what ways the pandemic changed how people work in theater and gather in it as a public space. The symposium and opening takes place from April 28-30, 2022 at the Tieranatomisches Theater, the exhibition runs until June 3, 2022.

The symposium will take stock of how pandemic time has moved from state of exception to new normality between viral outbreak and containment and what that means for theatrical production. The symposium consists of three days of workshops, roundtable discussions and a VR performance.  International theater practitioners and scholars join together to discuss aesthetics, infrastructures, and hybrid as well as digital artistic practices. Among the participants are Anna Krauß (HAU Hebbel-am-Ufer), Rainer Simon (Komische Oper Berlin), Sarah Ellis (Royal Shakespeare Company), Magda Romanska ([email protected]), Christian Rakow (nachtkritik.de), Fintan Walsh (Birkbeck) and the two performance collectives Turbo Pascal und punktlive. In addition, the independent performance group Interrobang will be showing Deep Godot, a one-to-one performance with an AI that explores the ambivalences of artificial intelligence. The performance collective Fevered Sleep will present their project This Grief Thing.

"Viral Theatres" was created by Nina Tecklenburg, Ramona Mosse, Janina Janke and Christian Stein who, together, documented new forms and contents of pandemic theater making and audience experience by creating a Living Archive of interviews, rehearsal shadowing, video documentation and digital interactions in order to chart the ways in which the pandemic shaped the form of theater. The Living Archive includes a section created by Bard College students from Berlin and Annandale, who participated in the network course "Post/Pandemic Theatre in Berlin and New York" in the Fall 2021 semester.

This event is a cooperation of the Research Project “Viral Theatres” (a collaboration of the Free University, the Humboldt University and Bard College Berlin) with the Research Project “Extended Audiences” at the EXC2020 “Temporal Communities,” the [email protected], the Harvard University Mahindra Humanities Centers, and the Open Society University Network. The Project “Viral Theatres” is funded by the VolkswagenFoundation and led by Ramona Mosse, Janina Janke, Christian Stein and Nina Tecklenburg.
 
Find out more about the symposium and exhibition from the program >>

Register for the symposium via Eventbrite to attend in-person or on Zoom to attend remotely. 

Aisha Khurram, an Afghan student who started studying Ethics and Politics at Brad College Berlin in January, was interviewed for an article of the Berlin daily newspaper, the Tagesspiegel on her grass-roots activities with Afghan women.

Aisha was studying law and politics at the American University of Afghanistan, when the Taliban took over Kabul in August 2021. A successful and civically engaged student at her university, Aisha was part of the "Youth Thinker Society" and initiated international conferences and mediations with liberal and conservative forces in the country. In November 2019, she participated in the Model United Nations and won a national UN competition in Afghanistan that lead her to speak before the UN in New York.

With the takeover of the Taliban in 2021 it became apparent that she was no longer safe in Afghanistan and she managed to escape the country via Iran. She is now enrolled full-time at Bard College Berlin with a fellowship from the Gerda Henkel Stiftung.

The article discuses how Aisha and other women are involved in grass-roots initiatives in Afghanistan. With international eyes focused on the war in Ukraine right now, the Taliban have seized the opportunity to increase pressure on the civil society in Afghanistan, making life especially hard for women. Aisha and other women continue to forge ties to young girls and teenagers who are still in Afghanistan and to those who escaped - helping each other distribute information and building networks. Her very big goal, Aisha says, is that at one day “this turns into a revolution”.

Read the full article from the Tagesspiegel (in German) here >>
Read more about the Program on International Education and Social Change at Bard College Berlin.


Photo: Tagesspiegel

BCB faculty member Marion Detjen’s article “Die Barbarei mit der Kunst” (The Barbarism with Art) was published on Zeit-Online on April 5, 2022.  The article explores Germany’s long standing foreign culture policy with Russia and how it was used to appease and to mitigate political and social conflicts. It critically assesses the de-politicization of art and of music, arguing that their presentation and performance are intrinsically linked to politics as “they correspond to the situation in which they are placed.” Detjen urges the German government, in this time of war, to stop instrumentalizing the intrinsic value of art and music for a compensation of political failures, and “to clarify whether and how art and culture can be used sensibly.”

Read the full article on Zeit-Online >>

BCB Professor of Philosophy Katalin Makkai's book Kant's Critique of Taste: The Feeling of Life (Cambridge University Press, 2021) was the subject of an Author Meets Critics panel at the American Philosophical Association Central Division Meeting in Chicago, IL, on February 26. The panel was organized by the Society for German Idealism and Romanticism, which will also publish the proceedings.

Description of Kant’s Critique of Taste: The Feeling of Life (Cambridge University Press, 2021):
Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment is widely recognized as a founding document of modern aesthetics, but its legacy has fallen into disrepute. In this book Katalin Makkai calls for the rediscovery of Kant's aesthetics, showing that its centerpiece, his investigation of the judgment of taste, paints a compelling portrait of our relationships with works of art that we love. At its heart is a scene of aesthetic encounter in which one feels oneself to be 'animated' - brought to life - by an object, finding there to be something in one's experience of it, beyond what there is to know about it, that one wants to explore and articulate. Tracing Kant's insight that to judge is to reveal one's sense of what bears judging, and hence of what matters, Makkai situates Kant's aesthetics within his larger study, begun in the first Critique, of judgment's fundamental role in the life of the mind.

For the full American Philosophical Association Central Division Meeting program >>

BCB Professor of Theater and Performance Nina Tecklenburg and BCB faculty member Ramona Mosse have co-authored a paper on the ways in which theater shifted during the COVID-19 pandemic.  The paper, “Viral Theatres’ Pandemic Playbook - Documenting German Theatre during COVID-19,”  was published in the February issue of the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media.   

Per the abstract, “This document offers an overview of the artistic research project Viral Theatres, which documents the radical changes in theatre aesthetics and infrastructure during the Covid-19 pandemic by building an online multimedia living archive that tracks these developments in interviews, video documentaries, rehearsal residencies, and case studies.” The paper examines five of these case studies to show the radical ways in which theater has had to be reconceptualized in order to cope with the given circumstances of the pandemic.  

The Viral Theatres Research Project is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Read the whole article in the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media >>

BCB Professor of Art and Society Dorothea von Hantelmann is a featured speaker at the Hildegard von Bingen Wellbeing Culture Symposium. The symposium is a collaborative three-day event featuring workshops, performances, and lectures and brings together Artists, scholars, scientists, and activists from around the world. This year, the Wellbeing Culture Symposium centers around the life and work of Hildegard von Bingen.  

From the brochure: Hildegard von Bingen conceives the concept of viriditas to counter the understanding of creation and the human body as obstacles to salvation that was taught by Christianity during her time. This theological notion outlines a dualistic understanding of humanity and nature that with the help of Humanism and Descartes’ worldview would later grow into a definition of humanity in opposition to the rest of the natural world, that is at the root of our ecological crisis and the core topic of the Wellbeing Culture Symposium.

The Hildegard von Bingen Wellbeing Culture Symposium takes place at the Disibodenberg monastery between April1st and 3rd, 2022.  

For more information read the brochure >>

BCB Faculty, Benjamin Hochman will be performing a selection of pieces at the Piano Salon Christophori on March 27, 2022 at 8:00 pm CET. 

Benjamin Hochman is a musician of exceptional versatility who regularly appears in multiple guises as orchestral soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. In recent years he has ventured into the orchestral repertoire as a conductor. His wide range of partners and projects is matched by his curiosity, focus, and ability to communicate deeply with audiences.  
 
Since his Carnegie Hall debut as soloist with the Israel Philharmonic under the baton of Pinchas Zukerman, Hochman has enjoyed an international performing career, appearing as soloist with the New York, Los Angeles, and Prague Philharmonic Orchestras, and the Chicago, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Jerusalem Symphony Orchestras under conductors including Gianandrea Noseda, Trevor Pinnock, John Storgårds, and Joshua Weilerstein.

Benjamin will be performing the following pieces: 
Christopher Trapani: Four Canons (2021-22, partial World Premiere)
Berg: Sonata, Op. 1
Brahms: Vier Klavierstücke, Op. 119
Schubert: Sonata in B-flat major, D. 960

For tickets at the Piano Salon Christophori >>

Music historian, conductor, and president of Bard, Leon Bostein, leads the Met’s Sight & Sound series. This series combines visual art with orchestral music in order to explore the parallels between the art forms and elevate the experience of the audience. The final program “Dvořák, Busoni, and Delacroix: The New World” will focus on European’s fascination with the native peoples of the New World by combining Eugène Delacroix's painting The Natchez and music by composers Ferruccio Busoni and Antonín Dvořák.  The music will be performed by The Orchestra Now and will be conducted by Leon Botstein. 

This event takes place at the Met on Sunday, April 10, 2022 at 2:00 pm EDT.  

From the announcement: 
From their earliest encounters in the New World, Europeans and Anglo Americans were mesmerized by the Indigenous peoples of North America. French artist Eugène Delacroix painted a Native American family forced to flee up the Mississippi River after the massacre of their tribe. American composer Ferruccio Busoni’s Indian Fantasy (1913–14) is based on indigenous melodies and rhythms, and the second movement of Antonín Dvořák's New World Symphony (1893) was inspired by Longfellow's poem "The Song of Hiawatha."

For more information and for tickets: The Met >>

BCB Faculty Michael Thomas Taylor co-curates exhibition TransTrans: Transatlantic Transgender Histories at the Amerikahaus in Munich.  The exhibition runs from Friday, April 1, 2022 until Sunday, July 31, 2022. 

The exhibition showcases a collection of letters and photographs from the early to mid 1900s of and by mostly unknown but influential Americans and Germans who shaped Transgender histories.  

The Amerikahaus promotes the exhibition as follows: Turning medical-scientific history on its head, the exhibition documents the driving role that trans* individuals played in the development of medical concepts and treatments and in the fostering of supportive communities for those seeking affirmation of their gender identities. The exhibition reconstructs personal connections that unfolded across the Atlantic, and it follows the ways in which photographs and other images were made by trans* individuals and that were sent to magazines or doctors for publication, creating communities and making visible their identities in public and private spheres.

Accompanying the exhibition is the book Others of My Kind: Transatlantic Transgender Histories, co-written by Taylor and his colleagues.  The book was recognized as a Choice 2021 Outstanding Academic Title.  Of the nearly 17,000 titles submitted for review in 2021, Others of My Kind: Transatlantic Transgender Histories was one of under 3 percent of books to receive this award.  

For more information on the exhibit at the Amerikahaus >>

For more information on Others of My Kind: Transatlantic Transgender Histories >>

BCB Professor of Economics Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg has coauthored a paper in the journal Kyklos: International Review for Social Sciences.  The paper, “Identity and Well-Being in the Skilled Crafts and Trades,” was written with Professor Martin Binder (University of the Bundeswehr, Munich).  

In the article, Blankenberg and Binder explore the correlation between job satisfaction and occupational identity. They use a novel occupational identity measure that captures identity more broadly by aso considering “personal and relational elements inherent in one’s work.”  Through surveying a large sample size of crafts and tradesmen working in Germany, they found that “higher job satisfaction is related to a stronger sense of occupational identity.”  

The full article can be found in Kyklos >>

BCB Professor of Migration Agata Lisiak has a new podcast on The Dead Ladies Show. In the podcast, Prof. Lisiak discusses the life and legacy of revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. Prof. Lisiak is currently writing a book on the same topic.

From the podcast blurb:
The world is a troubling place, but we hope you can still find some inspiration out there, and in honor of International Women’s Day, we wanted to bring you the story of a woman who fought, loved, and sacrificed, in troubling times of her own — the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. Rosa was a Polish-born Jewish intellectual, socialist, Marxist philosopher, and anti-war activist, whose evocative writing contributed to her legacy. 

The Dead Ladies Show is a podcast and live show celebrating the lives of women throughout history. Find out more on their website >>

Listen to the full podcast on The Dead Ladies Show >>

BCB student Erick Moreno Superlano has published a paper in In:Sights: International Student Journal of Anthropology, 2022, (N°01).  His paper, "The Silencing of Caminantes in the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)'s Official Narrative,"  was originally written as his final essay for Professor Agata Lisiak's A Lexicon of Migration class.  

From the abstract: 
"The aim of this essay is to examine the ways in which Caminantes are silenced by official United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports. For this purpose, [Erick Moreno Superlano] establishes a dialogue between Liisa Malkki's idea of “speechlessness” (1995; 1996) and Walter Mignolo’s idea of “the right of enunciation” (2009). Adopting Mignolo’s argument that the racialized subject has no right of enunciation in a modern/colonial world-system, [he] argues that the UN refugee agency (re)produces a modern/colonial narrative that perpetuates the racialization of Caminantes, and thus the silence referred to by Malkki."

Erick is a fourth-year Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought student, pursuing a concentration in Literature & Rhetoric.

Read the whole article in In:Sight >> 

BCB alumnus and former PIESC scholar Karam Alhamad has published an article in Newsweek on the anniversary of the Syrian revolution. The article, “Eleven Years Later, War Rages on in Syria. It Won’t Stop if the West Remains Silent | Opinion,” is a personal piece documenting Karam’s own experiences in the war, inlcuding the impact being tortured and detained had on him and his family.  

“​​Assad has taken a large portion of our land. He has taken many of our lives. But he will never win the trust of Syrians, and—most importantly—he can never take our stories. This emboldens my belief that art is also a source of hope on the journey toward a free Syria.” 

Karam is a photographer, editor, journalist and activist. He received his Bachelors in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought from Bard College Berlin in 2020. Karam is currently completing a Masters in Public Policy at Yale University.

Read the full article on Newsweek >>

Bard College Berlin’s Program for International Education and Social Change (PIESC), is a scholarship program for students from areas of crisis and conflict. Find our more on the PIESC webpage>>

BCB board member and executive director of Human Rights Watch, Ken Roth, has recently published an article in The Guardian. Roth’s article, “Putin has a history of atrocities. Just how far will Russian forces go in Ukraine?,” examines Russia’s recent history of indiscriminate warfare and how that history might shine light on further developments in the war with Ukraine.  

Even as he suggests the worst of the war is yet to come, Roth believes there is still potential to de-escalate the conflict and achieve justice for Ukraine. He postulates the Russian people are our biggest hope for peace as there is still a chance that Putin might listen to his own citizens.  As hundreds of protests happen across Russia and thousands of protestors are arrested, it’s only a matter of time until the Kremlin feels internal pressure. In a time of fear and xenophobia, Roth challenges us to stand with the Russian people as they “may be the best tool we have for preventing Kyiv and Kharkiv from becoming the next Aleppo and Grozny. 

Read the full article in The Guardian >>

The research paper titled "Self-Nudging vs. Social Nudging in Social Dilemmas:  An Experiment" (by Dr. Johannes Diederich, Universität Heidelberg, and Prof. Dr. Timo Goeschl, Universität Heidelberg, and Prof. Dr. Israel Waichman) was presented at the External Research Seminar of the University of Aberdeen Business School and discusses the trade off between effectiveness and ethicality when people's decision making process is influenced.

From the abstract:
"Exogenously manipulating choice architectures to achieve social ends (‘social nudges’) can raise problems of effectiveness and ethicality. Giving individuals control over their nudge (‘self-nudge’) is a possible remedy, but the trade-offs involved are poorly understood. We examine how subjects self-nudge in a social dilemma setting and whether outcomes differ between the self-nudge and two exogenous nudges (perfect free-riding and full cooperation). Participants recruited from the general population played a ten-round linear public good game online with one daily contribution decision. The nudge is implement by a default choice in case a participant does not log to the experiment in a given day. We find that the average self-nudge is 44% of the endowment and only 7% of participants choose one of the two exogenous defaults. Yet, there is a hard trade-off between ethicality and effectiveness: Self-nudging groups do not perform better than groups under the perfect free-riding nudge. The reason is that non-defaulting subjects contribute less. Groups under the full cooperation default (social nudge) exhibit no reactance against the nudge and outperform both alternative choice architectures."

Associate Dean Prof. Dr. Kerry Bystrom is a discussant at the "Theorizing Through The Global South" workshop, organized by Iracema Dulley and Özgün Eylül İşcen at the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin.

From the organizers:

"How is it possible to theorize not only on the so-called Global South, but also in, from, and through it? What appears as the universal often involves a gesture of generalization, flattening and dominating the particular, predominantly from a Eurocentric perspective.

This workshop will discuss ways to unsettle the very distinction between the general and the particular that underlies claims to universality and simultaneously retain the claim to the universal that makes theorization generative and relevant. In this vein, it will reflect on the following questions: How are theoretical affinities transformed through contexts in the Global South? How can theoretical work be made relevant to the larger audience beyond particular region or area studies? What are possible strategies to present the theoretical impact of one’s work despite its constant peripheralization as a case study? How can one maintain a critique of the Eurocentric gaze without falling into the traps of ethnocentrism? What are the affordances that particular disciplines and institutions could offer to tackle such theoretical and methodological challenges? What methodologies can be employed to expand, if not transform, current understandings of the universal?

Scholars from a variety of fields who undertake such inquiries are invited to jointly develop novel methods, approaches, and styles of knowledge production and circulation."

Dates: March 10-11, 2022
Place: Institute of Cultural Inquiry and online

Full Program here.

Please register here.

BCB Professor of Literature and Film Studies Matthias Hurst has written an essay for the book Alter(n) in der Populärkultur  (Old Age in Popular Culture) edited by Henriette Herwig and Mara Stuhlfauth-Trabert  (published by Transcript, February 2022). 

His contribution to the new book is an essay called “No Country For Old Men: Alter(n) im Westernfilm als Spiegel individueller und kultureller Transformationsprozesse" ("No Country For Old Men: Old Age in Western Films as Reflection of Individual and Cultural Transformation Processes"). The essay explores the theme of aging and age as recurrent topics of Western and Post-Western films that do not only refer to individual characters (in films like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, The Shootist, Unforgiven and Buffalo Girls) but also to an ideological reading of American history and the myth of the frontier and thus play important parts as symbolic representations in a greater discourse of cultural, social, and political transformations in the modern age. At the same time the phenomenon of aging, used in particular films and novels as a dramatic aspect, can be interpreted as a self-reflective comment on or account of the genre itself, its ideological and revisionist functions, and its development as a part of popular culture in general.

For further information, check the publisher: Transcript Verlag >>

Bard College Berlin Faculty member Jean–Rémi Carbonneau and  co-author  Juan Jiménez-Salcedo of Université de Mons have published the article “One-way bilingualism: the obstacles to institutional completeness of Spain languages.”  It was published in both English and Catalan in the 76th issue of the Journal of Language and Law  that includes a monographic section on “one-way bilingualism”, edited by the same authors, with contributors from Spain, Germany and France.  

Carbonneau and Jiménez-Salcedo’s article addresses “one-way bilingualism,” a concept developed in Canadian political science to tackle the issue of unequal power relationships between speakers of different languages in multilingual states.  The two authors examine “the Spanish constitutional framework and the corresponding legislation and case law to see how they have contributed, since the 1980s, to a one-way bilingualism, with Castilian as the ‘common’ and default language of Spain.”  The authors hope that the Spanish State of the Autonomies will adapt its language policies to the needs of its different language groups in order to create a more balanced  situation and thus lay out a path other countries may follow.

Read the full article on Journal of Language and Law >>

Professor of Politics Gale Raj-Reichert has co-authored a paper with Kristoffer Marslev and Cornelia Staritz titled “Rethinking Social Upgrading in the Global Value Chains: Worker Power, State-Labour Relations and Intersectionality.”  It was published by Development and Change on behalf of the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague on February 22, 2022. 

The paper analysis case studies of apparel workers in Cambodia and Vietnam, as part of global value chains, to understand how worker strikes alter the power dynamic between worker and the state and lead to improvements in working conditions. The authors “build on critiques of the concept of social upgrading in global value chain (GVC) research.” By arguing that worker power is shaped by state–labor relations and the intersectionality of worker identities linked to gender, household and community relations.

Read the full article on Development and Change >>  
 

BCB faculty member Laura López Paniagua is curator of the Berlin Schinkel Pavillion’s current exhibition HR Giger & Hans Bellmer.

The exhibition brings together sculptures, early paintings and drawings of the Swiss artist HR Giger (1940-2014), who is known as the creator of the creature from the film Alien, with graphic works and photographs of the German Surrealist Hans Bellmer (1902-1975).

The Schinkel Pavillion promotes the exhibition as follows: "The Schinkel Pavillon presents a second volume of the exhibition dedicated to HR Giger, this time entering a dialogue with the work of an artist who inspired him throughout his​ lifetime: the subversive German Surrealist Hans Bellmer. Their provocative aesthetics, depicting at times explicit sexual acts and repulsive creatures, was for both a form of political resistance and rebellion. The exhibition space turns into a forbidden cabinet of nightmares and taboos which seduce the curious viewer with their alluring poetics​."

The exhibition is a follow up to 2021’s show HR Giger & Mire Lee. Curator Agnes Gryczkowska selected the HR Giger works for both shows. 

Find out more on the Schinkel Pavillion website >>

Professor of Politics Boris Vormann has co-authored a book with Prof. Dr. Christian Lammert  (Freie Universität zu Berlin) titled Das Versprechen der Gleichheit, Legitimation und die Grenzen der Demokratie (The Promise of Equality, Legitimacy and the Limits of Democracy).

In their book Profs. Lammert and Vormann question the assumption that modern democracies are built on a foundation of societal equality, posing the question whether it is possible for liberal democracies to deliver on their promise of equality without exploitation.

The US, a state that is often held up as a pioneer of the democratic principle, serves the authors as a case study, a reputation which they aim to reassess based on the US’s colonial legacy.

Das Versprechen der Gleichheit, Legitimation und die Grenzen der Demokratie is published in German by Campus. An English translation is planned for the future. More information on the Campus website >>

Listen to Profs. Vormann and Lammert discuss the book on the podcast Campus Chat >>

Read Prof. Vormann discussing his book and the crisis of liberal democracy in the article “Le crépuscule des démocraties” (The Twilight of Democracies) in Le Temps >>
 

BCB Professor of Comparative Literature Laura Scuriatti has published an article on Carl Van Vechten’s 1922 novel Peter Whiffle. His Life and Works in the journal Comparative Critical Studies.

In the article Prof. Scuriatti explores the complex intertextual presence of George Moore's Confessions of a Young Man in Van Vechten's novel. Drawing on Adriana Cavarero's and Lucia Boldrini's studies on auto/biographical selves, and on Rebecca Walkowitz's and Homi Bhabha's theories of cosmopolitanism, she argues that Peter Whiffle's emphasis on dialogic subjectivity questions the notion of authorship and creates a problematic, parodic form of cosmopolitanism.

You can access the article on the Edinburgh University Press website >>

BCB faculty member Clio Nicastro has co-edited a book titled: Over and Over and Over Again, Reenactment Strategies in Contemporary Arts and Theory. The essay collection contains a contribution by Dr. Nicastro as well as Director of German Studies Dr. Ulrike Wagner.

The volume collects work by artists, scholars, curators and museum administrators discussing the role of reenactment in contemporary artistic production and theoretical discourse as a strategy to engage with history and memory. Its contributions discuss the mobilization of archives in the struggle for inclusiveness and cultural revisionism; the role of the body in the presentification and rehabilitation of past events and (impermanent) objects; the question of authenticity and originality in artistic practice, art history, as well as in museum collections and conservation practices.

Dr. Nicastro’s contribution is titled “Unintentional Reenactments,” and speaks about different levels of reenactment in the film Yella directed by Christian Petzold. In her essay “Everyday Aesthetics and the Practice of Historical Reenactment. Revisiting Cavell’s Emerson” Dr. Wagner uses the philosopher Stanley Cavell’s readings of Ralph Waldo Emerson as a starting point to explore Emerson’s engagement with contemporary debates concerning the historical reading of sacred and secular literature such as the Bible, Homer and Shakespeare.

The entire book is available as an open access pdf from the ici Berlin website >>

Theater director Marie Schleef (Bard College ’14, BCB Spring ’13) has been named as one of the recipients of the inaugural Chanel Next Prize.
The Chanel Next prize is a new biannual award initiated by the French fashion label as part of the Chanel Culture Fund, which aims to support cultural innovators in advancing new ideas and greater representation in culture and society. 10 artists who are deemed to be redefining their respective fields receive 100,000 EUR prize money and also benefit from access to a network of mentors selected by the brand. The winners hail from a wide range of disciplines, including: music, dance, film, visual arts, and theater.

Marie Schleef completed her bachelor's in Theater and Performance at Bard College and spent the spring of 2013 at Bard College Berlin as part of the Study Abroad Program. She went on to study directing for theater at the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst “Ernst Busch” in Berlin. Schleef directs and produces innovative and unconventional performance theater pieces. Her most newest piece: Die Geschichte einer Stunde//The Story of an Hour recently showed at the Ballhaus Ost in Berlin.

Read more on ARTnews >>
 

BCB alumnus Ido Nahari (EPST '19) wrote comments on the evacuation of Sharbat Gula, subject of Steve McCurry’s famous portrait “Afghan Girl,” from Afghanistan in an article for German newspaper taz.

End of November 2021 Steve McCurry announced that Sharbat Gula had been evacuated from Afghanistan with the help of the NGO Future Brilliance, the Italian government and the NFT Platform Metagood.

In his article Ido Nahari reflects critically on McCurry’s 1984 portrait of Gula well as the commercial success he has enjoyed thanks to the image, arguing that that this has resulted in the glamourizing of Gula’s hardship. He questions involvement of private companies such as Metagood in humanitarian actions stating that it was fame of Gula’s image which motivated her evacuation.

Read the full article on taz.de >>

BCB alumna Wafa Mustafa was recently featured in a BBC World Service audio documentary and interviewed on Channel 4 news.

In the BBC audio documentary titled Gone but not forgotten: Syria's missing persons, Wafa speaks about her father Ali Mustafa who she believes is being forcibly detained by the Syrian regime and how his fate motivates her activism in campaigning for justice in Syria. She also recounts the story of her and her family’s flight from Syria and the journey that lead her to study in Berlin.

The interview with Channel 4 News was broadcast on the day of the verdict of the Al-Khatib Trial in Koblenz which saw a member of Assad's secret police sentenced. In the interview Wafa speaks about how the verdict validates Syrians experiences and confirms that Assad's Syria is a "torture state."

Wafa is a 2020 Humanities, Arts, and Social Thought graduate and a former PIESC Program scholar. She is a journalist and activist, who works together with the organization Families for Freedom, campaigning for the freedom of those who have been detained by the Syrian regime.

Listen to the full BBC World Service documentary here >>
Listen to the interview with Channel 4 News here >>
 

BCB Professor of Politics Boris Vormann spoke to German media outlets Tagesschau and Rundfunk Berlin Brandenburg (RBB) on the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the Capitol Riots which took place in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021.

The Capitol Riots saw a mob of supporters of Donald Trump storm the Capitol Building in Washington D.C. in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election victory of Joe Biden. Professor Vormann spoke to Tagesschau and RBB about the event as a symptom of a democracy in crisis and what the aftermath will mean for American politics.

Watch Professor Vormann's Tagesschau interview on YouTube >>
Listen to Professor Vormann's RBB interview on their website >>

A new performance piece by Bard College alumna and former BCB study abroad student (Spring ’13) Marie Schleef opens on January 13 in the Ballhaus Ost, Berlin.

The piece is titled Die Geschichte einer Stunde//The Story of an Hour and is based on a short story by Kate Chopin and includes themes from Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper.

The Story of an Hour centers around Louise Mallard, who has just learned of her husband’s sudden death in an apparent train accident. In the span of exactly sixty minutes, Kate Chopin’s short story unpacks and determines a utopia of self-determined transformation.

First published in 1894, The Story of an Hour, exemplifies this American writer’s work, but is still little known to readers outside of the United States. It will be performed for the first time on the German stage. For Marie Schleef and her team, the short story, in the form of an hour-long silent piece, becomes the basis for examining new narrative and dream spaces void of the spoken word

Together with the adaptation of the novel To the Lighthouse (Volksbühne Berlin, 2018) and Name Her (Ballhaus Ost, 2020), Die Geschichte einer Stunde // The Story of an Hour completes Marie Schleef’s trilogy dealing with “rooms of emancipation,” in which literature and history are investigated in terms of new and forgotten spaces of possibility.

Marie Schleef completed her bachelor's in Theater and Performance at Bard College and spent the spring of 2013 at Bard College Berlin as part of the Study Abroad Program. She went on to study directing for theater at the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst “Ernst Busch” in Berlin.

Die Geschichte einer Stunde//The Story of an Hour is showing at Ballhaus Ost from January 13 to January 16, 2022.

Further information and tickets on the Ballhaus Ost website >>


 

Fourth-year Economics, Politics, and Social Thought student Sohaib Alzoubi contributed to an article in the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU) quarterly magazine Liberal Education, which asked current students to reflect on their university experience during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Sohaib writes that one of the main challenges at the beginning of the pandemic was the uncertainty and the loss of connection with his fellow students, when he no longer had the opportunity to see them in person every day. Despite the original estrangement caused by only connecting with his peers online Sohaib saw some advantages in virtual learning:

“The ability to divide students into rooms gave more time for group discussion and interaction. Our college’s whole curriculum is based on discussion, argument, and talking.”

The article is titled: "Students navigate the Uncertainty of the Pandemic, Reflections on lessons learned in a time of disruption" and was put together by Nancy Budwig and Emily Schuster.

Read the full article on the AACU website >>
 

Christin Alhalbi (Humanities, Arts, and Social Thought), together with Sondos Zaghari and Raj Chakrapani will perform the collective translation performance Translations on Hospitality as part of the Critical Practice Studio exhibition translations / مشاع. The performance revolves around rituals and storytelling. Audience members are invited to translate the poems, objects, and memories collected during the making of the exhibit which is followed by a recitation of a collective manifesto on translations of hospitality.

The exhibition translations / مشاع showcases artistic, architectural, performative, multimedia and literary works relating to the theme of “translation as a practice of invention/transformation, memory-making, (dis-)location, and healing. It provides a performative space for critical reflections on “translation” as a question that cuts across and undergirds a wide range of realms: linguistic and literal, epistemic and representational, political and social, as well as architectural and artistic. It is hoped that the exhibition will act as a site for performing radical translations and weaving and extending rhizomatic connections.

The exhibition is based on the works of over 30 individuals who were first assembled during the Critical Practice Studio / مشاع للممارسة الناقدة in the summer of 2021. It is supported by the Open Society University Network and is institutionally hosted at Al-Quds Bard College in Jerusalem, Palestine.

translations / مشاع  is running at the Haus der Statistik, Berlin from January 8 to 11, 2022. The lecture performance Translations on Hospitality will take place on January 11 at 5 pm.

Further information and tickets on the Critical Practice Studio website >>

Professor of Politics Gale Raj-Reichert has co-authored an article for the Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS) titled: “Conceptualizing the Regulator-Buyer State in the European Union for the Exercise of Socially Responsible Public Procurement in Global Production Networks.”

Previous research on labor governance in GPNs has mainly focused on private measures, in their article, Prof. Raj-Reichert and her collaborators initiate discussions on the role of the state in governing labor conditions in GPNS by focusing on the less well-known public governance instrument – Socially Responsible Public Procurement (SRPP).

SRPP is the inclusion of social criteria on working conditions in public procurement contracts. Revised European Union (EU) directives on public procurement widened the space to exercise SRPP including for outsourced and offshored production. Understanding how states can exercise SRPP as a labor governance instrument requires a conceptualization of state powers.

The authors present a conceptualization of the hybrid regulator-buyer state and show that an effective SRPP approach requires both strong regulator powers, differentiated as legislative, institutional, judicial and discursive, and buyer power which depend on purchasing volumes and supplier and market characteristics.

Read the full article in Wiley Online here >>
 

Dean of Bard College Berlin and Professor of Literature Catherine Toal publishes a review of two new books from Cambridge University Press by Professor Joe Cleary of Yale University, on Modernism, Empire, World Literature, and on The Irish Expatriate Novel in Late Capitalist Globalization in the Irish Times.

The reviews were published on Saturday December 18, 2021.

Agata Lisiak Professor of Migration Studies participated in a workshop organized by Vietnam Campus Exchange and DAAD Vietnam. The workshop was titled “Service-Learning/Community-Engaged Learning – The Transformation and Emerging Role of Higher Education in the Time of Covid-19.”

The workshop discussed the contribution made by higher education institutions in Vietnam in compensating for the deficiencies in governmental resources by supporting vulnerable communities during the pandemic and beyond.

As part of the workshop Prof. Lisiak held a presentation titled: “Engaged teaching and international collaboration during the pandemic” and participated in a panel discussion titled “Challenges and achievement of HEIs in Vietnam and International in the time of crisis.”

Read more on the Vietnam Campus Engage website >>
 

Professor of Politics Boris Vormann made a guest appearance on the Atlantik Brücke podcast America’s Choice together with Deutsche Welle Journalist Ines Pohl.

The episode was titled: “Präsident in der Krise: Implodiert Joe Bidens innenpolitische Agenda?” (President in Crisis: Will Biden’s Domestic Agenda Implode?). The guests spoke about Biden’s efforts to strengthen and bring together a divided country through domestic reforms and ambitious infrastructure developments and his difficulties with passing his reforms in Congress despite a Democratic majority. They also discussed what the future holds for Biden’s presidency and the Democratic Party post-Biden, as well as the likelihood of Trump running for office in 2024.

Listen to the episode on Spotify >>
 

BCB Professor of Politics and Middle East Studies Hanan Toukan took part in the discussion “Culture and Art in Palestine: Polyvalent Concepts in a Field of Struggle” together with Palestinian researcher and feminist activist Himmat Zoubi. The event was part of the Amsterdam Centre for Middle Eastern Studies (ACMES) lecture series “Narrating the ongoing Nakba: perspectives on Palestine/Israel.”

Prof. Toukan and Dr. Zoubi discussed the entanglement of art and cultural practices, international politics, and neoliberal cultural capital in the context of Palestine and Palestinians. Their conversation centered around the question of the possibilities and limitations of subversive and dissonant practices that are animated by global market economies that reach well into the urban sites of colonial subjugation and anti-colonial resistance, shaping aesthetical and cultural discourses around each. Highlighting the two different, yet also interrelated, Palestinian contexts of the 1967 Occupied Territories and of the 48-Palestinians, the speakers grappled with how artists and activists from those contexts navigate the global and more localized challenges they ultimately must confront.

Read more on the ACMES website >>
 

Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak has been appointed to the editorial board of the Sociological Review. Prof. Lisiak is one of twenty-five international scholars newly appointed to serve a five year term on the journal’s board, joining 35 current members.

The Sociological Review is the UK’s oldest sociology journal. With an international and interdisciplinary focus, it publishes studies that look at issues of the social world through the lens of the sociological imagination. The editorial board members support the work of the journal by refereeing papers, reviewing proposals, participating in events and public engagements as well supporting the organizations mission of building up early career researchers.

Read more on the Sociological Review website >>
 

Based on her published research on Max Pechstein's and Emil Nolde's journeys to the German colonies in the South Pacific in 1913 and 1914, Professor of Art History Aya Soika contributes to “Der weiße Blick – Expressionismus und Kolonialismus” (The white gaze – Expressionism and Colonialism) produced by the cultural public broadcaster arte as well as to the exhibition Whose Expression? The Artists of Brücke and Colonialism at the Brücke Museum Berlin which opens on 17 December.

The documentary chronicles the travels of expressionist painters Emil Nolde and Max Pechstein to New Guinea and the Palau Islands, which were inspired by visits to the ethnological museums in Berlin and Dresden as well as the work of Paul Gauguin. The documentary takes a critical look at Nolde and Pechtstein’s motivations for their travels and their romanticized view of the landscape and its inhabitants as “wild” and “primitive” which did not match the colonial realities at the time.

The exhibition at the Brücke museum looks more broadly at the careers, travels and artistic production of the artists of Brücke in the context of German colonialism. It also presents for the first time the ethnographic collection of Brücke Museum founder Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, on display at the Kunsthaus Dahlem in the exhibition Transition.

Watch the documentary on arte until the February 11, 2022 >>
Find more about the exhibition on the Brücke Museum website >>

Bard College Berlin is delighted to announce this year’s recipient of the DAAD Prize. Vala Schriefer, third-year BA student in the Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought program has been awarded the prestigious prize in 2021.

The DAAD Prize is conferred annually to an outstanding international student who not only has an excellent academic record, but also through their civic and campus involvement demonstrates engagement and responsibility towards their community. Students were first nominated by faculty and then a selection committee involving the Civic Engagement Office as well as the members of the university’s leadership was tasked with selecting a winner among an already outstanding group of nominees.

In choosing Vala, the committee especially praised Vala’s many public outreach activities on campus as well as her unique ability to “think and write across disciplines and methodological divides” that bring together the BCB community. 

Vala is an avid creator in a range of different media - analog painting and drawing, video work and podcasts, and poetry and fiction. 

She has been writing for the BCB blog Die Berliner since her first year at the College and is now a co-editor of the blog, reaching the BCB community every week by carefully curating blog articles on academics, campus life, current events, and happenings in Berlin. She also organizes the blog’s poetry month and creative writing events, as well as a campus film series. About the decision to move the film series online in the early phase of the pandemic, Vala said she wanted to “create a modicum of community in the oppressing distance of those early lockdown days.”

This fall she initiated an oil painting nature workshop for current students and recent alumni that combined observational drawing and color-mixing theory.

During the summer, Vala is a tutor for the Language and Thinking Program at BCB. For her, this is a way to give back, where she endeavors to “recreate the experience I had with my own L&T tutor way back when, who took my ideas and my writing seriously, an invaluable boon to my confidence entering the academic environment at BCB.”

The socially distanced award ceremony was held on December 9 and Managing Director Dr. Florian Becker awarded the certificate. 

Congratulations to Vala on behalf of the entire BCB community.

Dean of Bard College Berlin and Professor of Literature Catherine Toal publishes an essay in the Journal of European Studies on Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia.

The essay considers this classic work of journalism and modernist myth as a displaced examination of the legacy of British imperialism. 

Access the article on Sage Journals Online >>
 

The online journal e-flux has published an essay titled “Cultural Wars and the Politics of Diplomacy,” by BCB professor of Politics and Middle East Studies Hanan Toukan.

The essay is an edited excerpt of Prof. Toukan’s book The Politics of Art: Dissent and Cultural Diplomacy in Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan (Stanford University Press, 2021) and deals with the concept of cultural funding, the term’s translation into Arabic and the discourses about art and its relationship to society that it is embedded in.

Read the full article here >>
 

BCB Professor of Art History Aya Soika will be participating in an upcoming discussion at the German Historical Museum. Together with art historian Anna-Carola Krausse, artist Mischa Kuball, and curator Julia Voss, Prof. Soika will be discussing how the documenta contributed to the rehabilitation of the modernist artists defamed during the Nazi period.

The documenta played a key role in rebuilding the reputation of the artists they chose to show, the panel will question why certain artists were preferred over others and the narrative that was built up surrounding the persecuted artists under the Nazi regime.

The discussion is titled “Die Ermorderten und die Verdrängten: Die documenta und der NS“ (The Murdered and the Displaced: The documenta and the National Socialists) and is part of the German Historical Musuem’s event series accompanying their exhibition on the history of the documenta, a prestigious art exhibition which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany.

The talk will take place on Wednesday, November 10, 2021, at 6:30 pm at the German Historical Musuem. The event is free and open to the public

Register on the museum’s website here >>
 

BCB Professor of Art History Aya Soika appears in Kunst und Kalkül – der ganze Nolde (Art and Calculation – the whole Nolde), a documentary on the German-Danish expressionist painter Emil Nolde, produced by the cultural public broadcaster arte.

The documentary examines how Nolde himself contributed to constructing the image of himself as a defamed artist. It touches not just on his political ideology but also on themes in his work and questions of artistic practice. Attempting to provide a comprehensive introduction, the film also draws on the findings of a research project conducted by Prof. Soika and Dr. Bernhard Fulda which examined the artist's involvement with National Socialism and deconstructed the one-sided Nolde "myth" of being exclusively a victim of Nazi politics due to his prominent position in the "Degenerate Art" exhibition in 1937.

The full documentary is available on the arte website until January 14, 2022 >>

BCB Professor of Macroeconomics Marcus Giamattei has been elected the Managing Director of the German Experimental Economics Association (GfeW).

The GfeW is the world’s oldest association of experimental economics. They aim to further establish experimental research as an important methodology in economics and provide a forum where young researchers have the opportunity to gain experience and connect with their more experienced peers.

As Managing Director Prof. Giamattei will be part of the GFeW leadership team, who are responsible for awarding the dissertation prize, sponsoring young researchers, and providing ethical approvals for research projects.

We congratulate Prof. Giamattei on this exciting opportunity!

BCB faculty member Jean-Rémi Carbonneau has published an article in the journal Revue internationale de politique comparée on how the normalization of the Catalan language is seen Spanish politics.

The article is titled "La normalisation du catalan vue par les partis pan-espagnols" (The normalization of Catalan as seen by pan-Spanish parties). In the context of the decentralization of the Spanish state in 1978 and the associated policy of revitalizing minority languages, the article discusses how this issue is seen in the Spanish political landscape and whether this process is seen as compatible with a pluralist political project or as an affront to a Castilian-speaking nation-state. It first examines the legislation that has facilitated the normal use of Catalan in Catalonia, the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands and Aragon. The article then looks in greater detail at how linguistic normalization is conceived within the main Spanish political formations and their regional branches through an analysis of public policies and party discourses.   

Access the article on the publisher's website >>

Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak will be speaking on a panel in the first part of the event series: Gemeine Stadt – Berlin gemeinsam gestalten (Communal City – Shaping Berlin Together), hosted by the Berliner Landeszentrale für politische Bildung (Berlin Center for Civic Education).

The event series preoccupies itself with the question: how the community can shape public space, housing, transport, and resources in a city such as Berlin. The first installment is dedicated to the street, not just as a means for transportation but also a public, and sometimes political space. Prof. Lisiak will participate in the panel discussion titled: „Kritik des bürgerlichen Blicks auf die Straße“ (Critique of the Bourgeois View of the Street) together with the writer Nadire Biskin, and members of the Friedrichshain – Kreuzberg team of the street work organization Gangway.

The event will take place on October 30 from 2:00 to 6:00 pm. Register on the Berliner Landeszentrale für politische Bildung website here >>
 

BCB’s Professor of Comparative Literature Laura Scuriatti will moderate a discussion of Simona Baldelli’s novel: Alfonsina e la strada (Alfonsina and the Street) at the literary festival Zurich liest on October 31, 2021.

Simona Baldelli’s book is a fictional account of the life of pioneering female cyclist Alfonsina Strada, the first woman to have participated in the Giro d’Italia. Prof. Scuriatti will be discussing the book with the author and professional Swiss cyclist Marlen Reusser.

Further information on the Zurich liest website >>
 

BCB Professor of Art and Society Dorothea von Hantelmann is contributing to a talk series hosted by the German Historical Museum, accompanying their current exhibition “documenta. Politik und Kunst” (documenta. Politics and Art), which chronicles the history of the prestigious art exhibition, taking place every five years in Kassel, Germany.

Prof. Hantelmann’s talk is titled: “Die documenta als Dokument ihrer Zeit“ (The documenta as a Document of its Time) and will give an overview of the past, present, and purpose of the exhibition.

The talk will take place on October 27, 2021 at 6:30 pm at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. The event is free and open to the public.

Register on the museum’s website here >>
All talks in the series will be recorded and are available to listen to on soundcloud >>
 

BCB faculty Marion Detjen (History) discussed memory cultures and forced migration with filmmaker and president of the Academy of Arts, Berlin, Jeanine Meerapfel, at the event “Seismographen des Wandels, Migration, Flucht, Erinnerungen” (Seismographs of Change, Migration, Flight, Memories) hosted by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. The event was moderated by the author Achim Engelberg.

The event was part of a series organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation discussing how the stories of migrants and displaced people hold up a mirror to the conflicts of an era and shape the memory cultures of cities. The event series coincides with the opening of the Documentation Centre for Flight, Displacement, and Reconciliation and the development of an Exile Museum.

Read more on the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation website >>

BCB Professor of Politics and Middle East Studies Hanan Toukan discussed her book The Politics of Art: Dissent and Cultural Diplomacy in Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan (Stanford University Press, 2021) in an interview with the independent news platform openDemocracy.

In the interview Prof. Toukan explains how The Politics of Art discusses the entanglement of art, society and international politics: “it centers it’s analysis on the practices of contemporary art and culture in specific parts of the of the Arabic-speaking world at the turn of the millennium, to uncover how counter-hegemonies are constructed, reproduced and above all understood by the publics from which they emerge. Specifically, it grapples with the site of contemporary art’s making and its circulation and reception, to understand how art and what I refer to as “neoliberal cultural funders”, as well as art critics and artists, feature in our thinking about the role of resistance and dissent in cultural production.”

Read the full interview at openDemocracy >>

Professor of Politics, Boris Vormann, will be a panelist at the symposium "Demokratie in der Krise? Alte und neue Herausforderungen für eine freiheitliche Gesellschaft" ("Democracy in crisis? Challenges old and new for a free society") organized by the Deutsche Gesellschaft e.V.. The Symposium serves as a platform for voices and actors from political science and civil society to discuss best practices for strengthening democracy and preventing extremism and racism.

Professor Vormann will speak together with panelists Prof. Dr. Fabian Schuppert (Universität Potsdam) and Prof. Dr. Gary S. Schaal (Bundeswehr-Universität Hamburg) on the panel: “Democracy in Crisis? Challenges, Paths for Action, and Opportunities.”

The event is sponsored by the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community.


October 25, 2021: 10 am - 5 pm
Hessische Landesvertretung, In den Ministergärten 5, 10117 Berlin

Watch the livestream on youtube >>

Find Prof. Vormann's book (written together with Chrisitan Lammert) Democracy in Crisis, The Neoliberal Roots of Popular Unrest (2019) on the Penn University Press website >>

BCB Professor of Art History Geoff Lehman is a guest on the podcast On the Green Track hosted by BCB alumna Ditke Grønvald (Humanities, Arts, and Social Thought ’18). The podcast explores the topics of travel and tourism from a intersectional and philosophical point of view, touching on the cultural and social aspects as well as issues of sustainability.

In the first of a two part episode, titled: “Travel and the Imagination” Prof. Lehman discusses how our dreams and internal life, including our response to art and media, influence us our travel choices and experiences.

Listen to the first part on Spotify here >>
Find out more about Dikte’s work on travel and tourism on the On The Green Track website >>
 

BCB alumnus and former PIESC scholar Sam Zamrik (HAST ’21) curated a three day writing and music workshop series at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) museum in Berlin.

The workshop series titled “The Pen and the Beat” and running from October 8 to 10, 2021, was part of a series of events dealing with migration, asylum, and exile, coordinated by the HKW to run alongside its oral history installation Archiv der Flucht (Archive of Refuge).

The first two workshops “Listening Critically” and “Between Weimar and Now” involved reading and free writing exercises and focused on creating space for the exchange of migrant and refugee narratives and the (re)definition of legal terminology surrounding asylum. In the third workshop “Refubeats” participants produced audio compositions on their smartphones inspired by the stories from the Archiv der Flucht installation.

The workshops were co-hosted by Sam Zamrik, BCB faculty member Ariane Simard, BCB alumnus Anas Maghrebi (Humanities, Arts, and Social Thought '21), and Syrian journalist Dima Kalaji.

Sam works as a freelance writer, poet and musician. Find out more about his work here >>
 

BCB Professor of Middle East Studies and Politics Hanan Toukan is a panelist at the conference: “Environmental Diplomacy: Exploring Transprofessional Contributions to Global Survial” hosted by The Grace School of Applied Diplomacy at DePaul University Chicago.

The conference explores the diplomatic challenges presented by the global climate crisis as well as the strategies and solutions being proposed and employed by practitioners and scholars of diplomacy.

Prof. Toukan is speaking on the panel “Diplomacy and the Arts in the Age of the Anthropocene” together with Jessica Horton (University of Delaware, Newark), and Hameed Khasawnih (Über den Tellerrand, Berlin).

The conference will be taking place from October 13 to 15, 2021. Prof. Toukan’s panel begins at 8 pm CEST on October 14.
Register with Eventbrite here >>
 

The performance collective Interrobang (a cooperation between BCB Professor of Theater and Performance Nina Tecklenburg, Till Müller-Klug, Peggy Mädler, and Lajos Talamonti) have developed a new interactive digital experience titled Deep Godot.

Deep Godot is an AI developed by Interrobang which participants interact with through microphone and headphones in a one-on-one booth. Through the performance, Interrobang explores the limits and possibilities of individual agency and social solidarity in a world increasingly shaped by A.I. What is the relationship between profit-oriented promises of progress and emancipatory potentials? At the same time, communication with Deep Godot enables a personal and poetic confrontation with one’s own transience.

Deep Godot can be experienced on October 9, 2021, on the hour: 4:00 - 10:00 pm and October, 13 -17 2021, on the hour: 6:00 to 10:00 pm.

Further information and tickets on the Sophiensaele website >>
More projects from Interrobang on their website >>

Professor of Politics Gale Raj-Reichert is a panelist on the online seminar series “Business and Human Rights Network, a framework treaty on business and human rights: Interdisciplinary insights,” hosted by the Institute for Social Sciences Research (ISSR) at the University of Dundee. The series explores the human rights impacts of corporations and the regulatory frameworks being developed to address them.

Prof. Raj-Reichert is participating in the fourth seminar of the series titled: “Business and human rights: governance challenges in an era of transition” which will take place on Wednesday, October 6, 2021 from 12:00 am to 1:30 pm.

Further information on the event series and registration on the University of Dundee website >>

BCB Professor of Politics and Middle East Studies Hanan Toukan will be discussing her book The Politics of Art: Dissent and Cultural Diplomacy in Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan (Stanford University Press, 2021) as part of the course “Introduction to Arab Studies” held at Stanford Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity.

In The Politics of Art Prof Toukan discusses the intersection of art and politics in the Arab Middle East. Read more on the Stanford University Press website >>

Further details on the seminar on the Stanford Center for Comparative Studies in Race & Ethnicity website >>
 

BCB 2021 Humanities, Arts, and Social Thought alumnus and PIESC scholar Sam Zamrik has published articles commenting on the 2021 German national elections in the German newspapers Frankfurter Rundschau and Tagespiegel.

Published on the eve of the election and titled “Es kostest nichts mit Empathie zu wählen” (It costs nothing to vote with empathy), Sam’s article in the Frankfurter Rundschau is addressed to the voting population. Writing from the perspective of a migrant living in Germany, unable to vote, but who because of his refugee status is profoundly affected by the political decisions resulting from the elections, Sam encourages those that have a vote to make use of it. He appeals to those that vote, to “vote with empathy,” bearing in mind the precarity and stigma that many displaced persons in Germany live with.

In “Wenn sich nichts ändert“ (When nothing changes) published on the front page of the culture section of the Tagesspiegel on Wednesday, September 29, 2021, Sam gives his take on the outcome of the election. Sam sees in the outcome of the election a continuation of the centrist stability orientated politics, which have governed Germany for generations, for him a sign of stagnation: “We don’t live today like we did a hundred years ago. The ideologies haven’t kept up. That’s why its not just ill advised but dangerous to put forward the same solutions for new problems.” He voices his concern, that this stagnation means that the situation for displaced persons such as himself will not improve with the next government.

Sam Zamrik is originally from Damaskus, Syria. He writes prose and poetry in English and German, amongst others for the creative writing project Weiterschreiben.jetzt. His first poetry collection “Sophistry of Survival is set to be released with Hanser Berlin Verlag in 2022. Sam is currently completing his master's at the Freie Universität Berlin in Interdisciplinary Studies of the Middle East. 

Read “Es kostest nichts mit Empathie zu wählen” in the Frankfurter Rundschau here >>
Read “Wenn sich nichts ändert“ in the Tagespiegel here (restricted access) >>

BCB Professor of Migration Agata Lisiak is a guest on an upcoming live recording of the the Women’s History podcast The Dead Ladies Show. Prof. Lisiak will be speaking about the life and legacy of revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. Other historical women featured on the episode are African-American sex researcher Dr. June Dobbs Butts and architect Zaha Hadid.

The Dead Ladies Show is a podcast and live show celebrating the lives of women throughout history. Find out more on their website >>
Get tickets for the live recording on eventbrite >>

BCB Professor of Theater and Performance Nina Tecklenburg and faculty member Ramona Mosse spoke on a panel at the EASTAP (European Association for the Studies of Theatre and Performance) conference “New spectatorship in post-covid times: theatre and the digital,” hosted by Vilnius University, which took place September 23-24, 2021. Co-panelists where: Dr. Christian Stein (Humboldt University) and Janina Janke.

In the panel “Audiences at play – the role of gaming in the making of digital spectatorship” Prof. Tecklenburg and Dr. Mosse and their co-panelists explored how the relationship between performer and spectator is altered through gamification and participative formats when theater is moved from the physical into the digital realm. 

In the discussion the co-panelists drew on examples from their research project Viral Theaters, funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, which is building a living archive of post/pandemic theatre realities.

Further information about the EASTAP conference on their website >>
Find out more about on the Viral Theaters Project on the project website >>
 

BCB faculty member Ramona Mosse and co-organizers have launched Performing Water, a project devoted to how the study of theater, art and the performing arts engage with the element of water in its various forms.

Alongside a research platform which will gather range of resources including art works, artists and multimedia tools, the project will include a series of zoom seminars. Under the themes of “Currents,” “Underwater,” and “Waves” the seminars will are designed to bring scholars and artists in conversation with each other around water and its political, ecological, and artistic dimensions.

Dr. Mosse is co-organizing the event with Prof. Dr. Anne Laure Fourtin-Tournes, Dr. Anna Street, and Kamila Mamadnazarbekova of Le Mans University (France).

The next seminar is titled "Waves" and will take place on December 14, 2021 at 6:00 pm CET.

Find out more about the project and sign up to the seminars on perfomingwater.org >>
 

Over 40 participants will be taking courses at Bard College Berlin as part of the Socrates Project. The Socrates Project is a new educational program which provides free university level courses to adults in Berlin communities whose higher education opportunities have been limited.

The evening courses in English or German are taught in various academic disciplines, such as history, literature, philosophy, sociology, or political thought. In small discussion groups participants explore the theme ‘Freedom and Society’ from the different perspectives and receive guidance in academic writing.

The project is supported by the Open Society University Network and is a collaboration between Bard College Berlin and the Central European University (CEU). Courses are offered in Berlin, Vienna and Budapest.

Find out more about the Socrates Project here >>

BCB faculty member Dr. Aysuda Kölemen will be participating in an online information session hosted by the InSPIREurope initiative.

The event titled “Supporting Afghanistan’s scholars: Information for higher education institutions in Europe,” aims to provide answers to the practical questions institutions may have about hosting an at-risk scholars from Afghanistan. The event brings together experts from organizations specialized in supporting at-risk scholars, including Dr. Kölemen who is responsible for coordinating the OSUN Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative.

The InSPIREurope (Initiative to Support, Promote and Integrate Researchers at Risk in Europe) initiative brings together ten European institutions who aim to work together to coordinate and develop their activities in supporting scholars at risk.

The event takes place on September 30, from 3:00 to 5:00 pm CEST. Registration is available over InSPIREurope partner Maynooth University (Ireland) >>
 

BCB instructor Paul Festa has published an essay titled, "Cancellation of the Gods," in the Los Angeles Review of Books. The essay personalizes the debate over the composer Richard Wagner, whose strident antisemitism made him a hero to the Nazis, an early target of cultural cancellation, and a vexed and shunned figure to Festa as a young Jewish violinist.

Inspired by Alex Ross's new book Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music, Festa embarks on a project of listening to Wagner’s eleven major operas in succession. He chronicles these encounters in a listening and reading diary that combines history, contemporary controversies, and his own personal conflicts over art, politics, and identity.

Read the full article in the Los Angeles Review of Books >>
Listen to Paul Festa discuss Wagner on the Trilloquy podcast >>
 

Bard College Berlin's Associate Dean Prof. Dr. Kerry Bystrom has co-edited a new essay collection titled The Cultural Cold War and the Global South, Sites of Contest and Communitas.

The volume investigates the cultural sites of the Cold war, and the encounters that took place between writers, artists, filmmakers, and intellectuals from or aligned with the Third World as they navigated the ideological and material constraints set by superpowers and emerging regional powers. 

Pushing forward recent scholarship that tracks the Cold War in the Global South and draws on postcolonial approaches, the contributors use archival, secondary, and ethnographic sources to trace the afterlives and memories of key figures and to explore meetings that performed cultural diplomacy.

The Cultural Cold War and the Global South: Sites of Contest and Communitas is published by Routledge, find out more on their website >>

Professor of Politics Boris Vormann has contributed an article to the newly published Research Handbook on International Law and Cities (Edward Elgar Publishing 2021).

In his contribution, titled: "Global city networks and the nation-state: rethinking a false tradeoff," Prof. Vormann challenges contemporary discussions which state that city networks have a greater importance for global flows of trade than states, arguing instead that the relationship between city and state is complementary and not a tradeoff.

Access the article on Elgaronline >>
 

BCB Professor of Economics Israel Waichman has published a paper in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. The paper is titled “Challenging conventional wisdom: Experimental evidence on heterogeneity and coordination in avoiding a collective catastrophic event” and co-authored with Till Requate, Markus Karde, and Manfred Milinski.

The paper is motivated by the argument that differences between actors (i.e. countries) in factors such as wealth and potential damage caused by environmental catastrophes represent a major obstacle to a cooperative climate policy.

Prof. Waichman, Prof. Requate, Mr. Karde, and Prof. Milinski conducted an experiment with human participants in a simplified environment to experimentally study the effect of differences in wealth and potential damage from a climate related catastrophe on success in preventing such a catastrophe. The main finding is that heterogenies per se do not necessarily hinder cooperation in preventing a catastrophe.

Read the full paper on Science Direct >>
 

Flash fiction pieces created by BCB students as part of the course “Writing African Futures” have been published by the online magazine Warscapes. The course was taught by BCB Associate Dean Prof. Kerry Bystrom and Dr. Aedan Alderson (York University) in the Spring Term of 2021 and brought together BCB students with students pursuing a remote BA through the Borderless Higher Education Program based at the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya.

Students reflected together with their peers from Dadaab on science fiction as a genre and how it can enable hidden experiences to be seen and different futures to be imagined. Warscapes editor Bhakti Shringarpure and writer Kiprop Kimutai helped students develop future-orientated creative responses to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The project was funded by the OSUN Hubs for Connected Learning initiatives and the Open Society University Network Center for the Human Rights and Arts.

Warscapes is an independent online magazine that provides a lens into current conflict across the world. Read the students’ pieces on the Warscapes website >>
 

BCB faculty member Dr. Gavin McCrea has released a new novel titled The Sisters Mao. The novel follows the parallel narratives of the wife of Chairman Mao, Jiang Qing, a former actress who is rehearsing a politically motivated ballet and two sisters in London, members of a radical performance collective, planning an attack on a West End theater.

Following on from his debut novel Mrs Engels, a fictional account of the life of Frederick Engel’s wife, The Sisters Mao continues with Dr. McCrea's literary account of the development of communism in the 20th century, whilst also covering the everyday familial struggles of the women at the center of the plot. 

The Sisters Mao is published by Scribe and released on September 9. Dr. McCrea is currently working on a memoir titled Cells about the relationship with his mother, which is set to be released in September 2022.

Further information about The Sisters Mao on the Scribe website >>
Interview with Dr. Gavin McCrea in the Irish Times >>
 

Bard College Berlin welcomes Dr. Maria Anderson-Long who joined the college as Head of Student Life this term.

Student Life complements students' academic experience, aiming to sustain and further develop an open, vibrant, intellectually curious, supportive and diverse community atmosphere. Student Life comprises several areas, including Residential Life & Housing, Orientation, Career Services, Student Organizations and Clubs, Internships, Student Wellness, and more. The Student Life team supports BCB students and foster their growth and independence.

Dr. Maria Anderson-Long received her Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University in Higher & Postsecondary Education. She received her Master's in Higher Education Student Affairs from The Ohio State University and her Bachelor’s in Women & Gender Studies and Theater Arts from Clark University. Her primary research interests focus on how higher education responds to societal changes, specifically focusing on the creation of policies that better serve marginalized students. Her dissertation utilized organizational theory to understand institutional responses to normative disruption of the gender binary to better support transgender students. Maria has worked in student life for over a decade, with most of her career focused in residential life, academic advising, and student activities. She has also been an assistant adjunct professor at Teachers College for the last several years teaching courses on student development theories and the history and policies of American higher education.

Further information about the Student Life department on the BCB website >>

Bard College Berlin has collaborated with development and project management firm DBI Projects and New York-based architecture and interiors studio Civilian to develop new student residences. Informed by Berlin’s rich architectural and design history, they help foster student living and learning in the artistic, political, and economic center of Europe. The residences are scheduled to open in September 2021 at the start of the new academic year when students from all over the world will take up residence at Bard College Berlin.
 

Context

Set in the city’s leafy Pankow neighborhood, the former East Berlin embassy district, and arraying 39 apartments that will be home to 120 students, the twin red and gray brick buildings reflect the heterogeneous architectural character of Berlin, and create permeable connections with their surroundings. The buildings delineate the corner lot on which they are erected, forming a spacious patio that serves as an informal community gathering place and providing a gateway between the adjacent Intelligenzberg Park and Bard College Berlin’s campus. Working closely with development manager DBI Projects and their local partner AVP, Civilian has overseen the architecture, interiors, furniture and landscape design for the project together with a team of local professionals.
 

Architecture

Civilian’s design reimagines contemporary communal living in a city that developed the progressive housing estate during the Weimar era. The project draws inspiration from German architect and urban planner Bruno Taut and the Metropolis-era masonry Expressionist architecture of the 1920s which was known for its use of dense color, surface quality of materials, multidisciplinary approach in architecture, interiors, furniture and emphasis on light and air. The buildings are also set in dialogue with the 1970s Neo Bauhaus architecture of the surrounding neighborhood.
 
The lounge and study areas on the ground floor of each building are connected by a landscaped courtyard creating a spatial social hub between the two residences and the recently converted former embassies that are now academic buildings adjacent to the project.
 

Interiors

The layout of the public spaces supports student learning and social exchange by providing a mix of study zones geared toward a range of uses from individual study to group or project-based work. While visually connected through a common material palette, the study lounges are distributed across both buildings. One is convivial in nature and built out with a small coffee bar that accommodates events with cafe seating while the other is introspective and quiet.
 
Mindful of creating a flexible environment for open social exchange, living and learning, Civilian has made a suite of custom furniture that takes inspiration from the pared down utility of 1920s furniture by Dutch designers Gerrit Rietveld and Ko Verzuu, as well as artists Donald Judd and Andrea Zittel. In the private living spaces, multifunctional bedroom furniture made from European birch plywood maximizes storage and comfort, while incorporating high quality materials. The beds contain drawer storage for clothing, a back and armrest to be used as a chair and a pull-out night table with a power source and lockable compartment. Individual mirrors have an adjustable light source and lip to house family photos or postcards. Desks have an additional built-in shelf and a wardrobe provides additional open storage. Each piece of furniture has been CNC cut, flat packed, and can be easily assembled or adapted for future use. Refinished vintage furniture from the 70s and 80s contrasts with the custom millwork and paneling that has been placed throughout the public lounge and cafe spaces.
 
 The buildings were conceived to meet Germany’s progressive energy and sustainability standards, including an innovative a courtyard design that incorporates all rainwater runoff into a series of gardens planted with drought-hardy indigenous perennial plants. For the interiors, a combination of refinished, vintage and custom furniture using minimally processed, sustainably harvested materials were sourced throughout.
 
The new residences provide students with a thoughtfully-designed living and studying environment that has incorporated the rich local history and that will further enhance the shaping and functioning of the close-knit intellectual community that is Bard College Berlin.
 
"By partnering with developers, Bard College Berlin was able to leverage its land assets with private investment to ensure that its growing international student community could continue to reap the benefits of a residential campus that offers students the opportunity to study and live together. Characteristic of a liberal arts education, it is a trait that is rare to find in Europe. The newly constructed student residences will be home to 120 international students who are enrolled in one of the two four-year BA programs that Bard College Berlin offers,” said Florian Becker, Managing Director of Bard College Berlin in Berlin.”
 
“The project shows that functional student housing can tackle sustainability concerns, be aesthetically advanced, and act as a community and social hub all at once. Designed with a nod to both Bauhaus and the "Kreuzberg brick" in their modern facades, these highly energy efficient units aim to honor the past while fully incorporating today's environmental requirements. In a city that is a palimpsest of European history, this is a project truly coming full circle, as former East-German embassies are flanking two brand-new residences that will serve a student community of over sixty nationalities," added Taun Toay, Bard College Berlin’s Managing Director based in Annandale.
 
“Civilian is honored to work with Bard College Berlin on this project, which we hope will serve as a dynamic new gathering place that facilitates the exchange of ideas on campus,” said Civilian’s principal and co-founder Nicko Elliott. “Our goal was to create a range of convivial public lounges across both buildings for both individual study and collaboration while designing flexible private living spaces for maximum comfort and personalization.”
 
“We partnered with Bard College Berlin to develop high-quality yet affordable facilities for the college that address their need for more student housing while creating significant added value through intentional design and thoughtful execution," said Ofer Ohad, Managing Partner at DBI Projects. "We are excited to see students now accessing housing that stimulates learning and socialization and enhances their overall academic experience.”

For further information visit the civilian projects or dbi projects website.

Media Coverage
"Minute On Design," in Monocle >>
"Berlin student housing designed with co-working spaces", in Icon >>
"Apartment interior design: outstanding spaces around the globe", in Wallpaper* >>
"Berlin student residences by Civilian foster wellbeing and togetherness", in Frame >>
"In Berlin, A Student Residence That's Far from Sterile," in Azure >>
"Bard College Berlin – dieses Studentenwohnheim setzt auf starke Farben und gutes Design," in AD-Magazin >>
"Bard College Student Housing in Berlin by Civilian," in Yellow Trace >>
"Der Kontext im Kaleidoskop, Das Bard College ist Berlin's schönste studentische WG," in baunetz id >>
"How to design a humane dorm," in Fast Company >>

BCB Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak is to give a talk at the second Emma Goldman Awards hosted by the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna and presented by the FLAX Foundation. Her talk is titled “Recalcitrant: Emma Goldman, Rosa Luxemburg, and the Politics of Waywardness.” Prof. Lisiak was previously IWM junior fellow from 2013 to 2014.

The talk will take place on September 2, 2021 at 6:00 pm CEST.

Further details on the IWM website >>

In an article titled “Die Verletzlichsten” (the most woundable) for Zeit Online, BCB alumna Maheen Atif (EPST ’19) sheds light on the situation of the Afghan Hazara minority in the context of the recent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.

Outside of Afghanistan the largest Hazara group can be found in Pakistan. Originating from Pakistan herself, Maheen feels a strong affiliation to Afghanistan and the Hazara.

In the article Maheen outlines the history of the Hazara diaspora in Pakistan, discusses the challenges facing them in other countries, and lastly draws attention to the imminent danger facing them due to Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.

Maheen Atif is a 2019 BCB Economics, Politics, and Social Thought graduate. Her thesis titled: “Migration Culture and Survival Memory among the Hazaras of the World” is dedicated to the Hazara people.

Read the full article on Zeit Online >>
 

Dear friends of Bard College Berlin,

We wish to express our deep concern for our Afghan students and their families at Bard College Berlin, Bard College (USA), the American University of Central Asia (AUCA), Bard’s long-time dual-degree partner, and the American University of Afghanistan (AUAf), our partner institution in the Open Society University Network (OSUN).  
 
The leadership of Bard College in New York is now working to find safe havens for students and graduates. President Leon Botstein has offered that Bard would immediately take in as many as 100 students in Annandale, as well as threatened scholars. Vice President Jonathan Becker has arranged for The American University of Central Asia to offer scholarships through OSUN to up to 120 graduates, in addition to its 120 Afghan undergraduates, and a home to another 100+ AUAf students. Several other OSUN partners have stepped forward and offered to take students and faculty through OSUN’s Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative (TSI), of which Bard College Berlin is a member.
 
Bard College Berlin is committed to providing scholarships for Afghan students at risk and to offering these students a personal and academic sanctuary here in Berlin.

While most Afghans are trapped at the moment, we need to be prepared to act as soon as possibilities to leave the country become available. We are urgently inviting donations now so that Afghan students will be able to enroll at our college once pathways are clear. Donations will be matched with funds from the OSUN Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative.
 
Sincerely,

Dr. Florian N. Becker
Managing Director, Bard College Berlin

BCB faculty member and artist John Kleckner will be exhibiting his work in a joint show with Maximilian Arnold at the goeben gallery in Berlin.

Titled Sidesteps: Roughly Edged, this is the first show in which Kleckner and Arnold have exhibited together. The two artists share many formal and conceptual ideas about painting and through the process of selecting works for the exhibition it can be said that they are holding a visual conversation, the topics of which range from formal issues of color, texture, and shape to more conceptual themes, such as: the imprecision of memory, illusionism of surfaces, (dis)locations, interior/exterior, and the joy of ambiguity and not knowing.

The vernissage of Sidesteps: Roughly Edged will be taking place on Friday, July 23, from 6:00 to 10:00pm and is open to the public. The exhibition will be showing a the goeben gallery from July 24 to August 28, 2021.

John Kleckner’s works have been exhibited internationally and can be found in prominent public and private collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Charles Saatchi Collection in London. 

BCB alumna Wafa Mustafa spoke to the Guardian about the disappearance of her father Ali Mustafa, a human rights activist, who was detained by the Syrian Regime in July 2013 and has not been heard from since.

In the interview she reflects on how this family tragedy has affected her activism as well as her personal life. She also speaks about her experiences protesting during the Syrian revolution in 2011 and being detained in a Syrian government prison herself.

Wafa is a 2020 Humanities, Arts, and Social Thought graduate and a former PIESC Program scholar. She is a journalist and activist, who works together with the organization Families for Freedom, campaigning for the freedom of those who have been detained by the Syrian Regime.

Read the full interview on the Guardian website >>
 

BCB Professor of Literature and Film Studies Matthias Hurst has published an essay on renowned German director Wim Wenders and his film Don't Come Knocking (2005) in a new book: Kontinuität im Wandel. Begegnungen mit dem Filmemacher Wim Wenders (München: edition text + kritik, 2021), edited by Jörn Glasenapp.

The essay is called "How The West Was Lost: Don't Come Knocking und der lange Abschied vom Amerikanischen Traum" and explores Wenders's ambivalent relation to, and perception of, the American myth and the American Dream, and the specific presentation of this topic in the Post-Western Don't Come Knocking (2005), co-written by Sam Shepard and starring Shepard, Jessica Lange, Sarah Polley and Tim Roth.

Wenders has been influenced by American pop culture and American movies since his youth ("Is 'America' not an invention of the movies? Would there be the dreaming of America, all over the world, without the  movies?" -- Wim Wenders) and in many of his films we see his critical vision of the American Dream in contrast to social reality in the US. In Don't Come Knocking Shepard plays an aging cowboy actor of trite Western movies who realizes the superficiality and meaninglessness of his hedonistic lifestyle and wants to reconcile with his 'family' that he actually never had. Inspired by classical Western films and road movies, the visual art of Edward Hopper, and a bitter sense of fate and irony, Wenders presents a postmodern meta-Western of a very special kind that shows both his love and his critical, disillusioned stance towards America, and "the Western's double movement of yearning and mourning" (Neil Campbell).

Bard College Berlin is delighted to announce that Prof. Dr. Gale Raj-Reichert will be joining the faculty as Associate Professor of Politics with a focus on public policy and policy analysis.

Prof. Raj-Reichert joins BCB from the Queen Mary University of London, where she held a lectureship in economic geography. She received her PhD in development studies from the Manchester Global Development Institute.

Prof. Raj-Reichert comes with a research background in labor governance in global production networks, specializing in the Asia Pacific region. In the fall semester, students at BCB will be able to attend her seminar on "Global Public Policies and their Impact on the Global South."

We are looking forward to welcoming Prof. Raj-Reichert on campus!
 

Bard College Berlin is proud to announce that rising fourth-year Economics, Politics, and Social Thought student Sohaib Alzoubi has won a highly competitive Studienstiftung fellowship. Besides having demonstrated excellence in his studies, Sohaib has worked with international NGOs on projects focused on Syria and has contributed to the establishment of a number of Syrian organizations and civil society coalitions.

Bard College Berlin was able to nominate Sohaib through its DAAD sponsored Integra Program that provides support for displaced and international persons in the form of academic workshops and seminars.

The Studienstiftung is one of the oldest, largest, and most prestigious scholarship foundations in Germany that supports young scholars with exceptional talent who can be expected to make a meaningful contribution to society.

As the standard application process is geared towards German speakers, the Studienstiftung initiated a cooperation with the DAAD in 2017, through which Integra course leaders would be able to nominate their students for the selection process, therefore giving those with refugee status a fair chance at winning the coveted fellowship.

Congratulations to Sohaib on this tremendous achievement!

BCB Professor of Politics and Middle Eastern Studies Hanan Toukan discussed her book The Politics of Art: Dissent and Cultural Diplomacy in Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan with other scholars as part of the EUME "Berliner Seminar." The "Berliner Seminar" is hosted by Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe (EUME), a multi-disciplinary research program at the Berlin based Forum Transregionale Studien.

The other discussants were Diana Abbani (EUME Fellow of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation 2020/21), Amal Eqeiq (Williams College/EUME Fellow 2029-21), and Zeina Maasri (University of Brighton).
 

BCB faculty member and artist John Kleckner was amongst the recipients of the 2021 Pollock-Krasner Foundation artist grants.

Through its individual artist grants, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation supports working artists by providing the financial resources to cover expenses, such as: art supplies, studio space, exhibition preparation etc. Since its founding in 1985, the foundation has awarded 5,000 grants, totaling $82 million, to recipients in seventy-eight countries.

John Kleckner’s works have been exhibited internationally and can be found in prominent public and private collections, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Charles Saatchi Collection in London. Kleckner will be opening the exhibition: Sidesteps: Roughly Edged together with Maximilian Arnold at the goeben gallery in Berlin. The exhibition will be showing from July 24 to August 28, 2021.
 

BCB Professor of Theater and Performance Nina Tecklenburg and BCB faculty member Ramona Mosse are involved in the organization of a day of public online workshops under the title "Staging Viral Theatres."

The event will investigate the changes to theater infrastructures and aesthetics during the pandemic. The three sessions will be an exploration of how the shift to digital forms has affected the notion of liveness, what constitutes participation in the digital sphere, and how the current moment can be creatively documented.

The focus will be on putting specific pandemic projects by Berlin theater institutions and performance makers in dialogue with a series of international guest artists and scholars, in order to capture and compare the forms of attention brought to digital theaters.

Viral Theatres is a practice-based research project and a collaboration between the Freie Universität Berlin, the Humboldt University Berlin, and Bard College Berlin. It is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.


The event wil take place on July 1, 2:00 - 8:00 pm CEST. 
Further information available on the Viral Theatres website >>
 

BCB student residences Henry Koerner Hall have been nominated for a further architectural prize, they are in the running for the DAM Prize awarded by the German Architecture Museum.

The nomination announcement notes how the residences' stacked maisonette apartments seek inspiration from Le Corbusier's “Immeuble Villa.” Despite the functional design, the buildings' apartments are spacious, the large windows and surrounding trees making for a peaceful and pleasant living environment.

Henry Koerner Hall was designed by Rotterdam-based Atelier Kempe Thill, the inauguration took place in May 2019. The residences have previously been nominated for the Architekturpreis Berlin.

Further information on the prize nomination on the DAM website >>
Download brochure on Henry Koerner Hall here >>
 

BCB Professor of Philosophy Katalin Makkai has published a new monograph, Kant’s Critique of Taste: The Feeling of Life (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment is widely recognized as a founding document of modern aesthetics, but its legacy has fallen into disrepute. In this book Katalin Makkai calls for the rediscovery of Kant’s aesthetics, showing that its centerpiece, his investigation of the judgment of taste, paints a compelling portrait of our relationships with works of art that we love. At its heart is a scene of aesthetic encounter in which one feels oneself to be “animated”—brought to life—by an object, finding there to be something in one’s experience of it, beyond what there is to know about it, that one wants to explore and articulate. Tracing Kant’s insight that to judge is to reveal one’s sense of what bears judging, and hence of what matters, Makkai situates Kant’s aesthetics within his larger study, begun in the first Critique, of judgment’s fundamental role in the life of the mind.

Bard College, which has worked to spread liberal-arts education around the globe, has been designated as an “undesirable” organization by the Russian government, prevented from all activity and operations in the country. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office announced the blacklisting on June 21, saying that Bard’s work “threatens the constitutional order and security of Russia.”
Read Leon Botstein's message to the College community here.

BCB faculty member April Gertler and Adrian Schiesser have co-founded a new exhibition space WIRWIR, situated in the heart of the Neukölln area in Berlin. 

WIRWIR joins the Berlin project space scene in 2021 with the inaugural exhibition series WIR BAUEN EINE NEUE STADT (June 10 - September 10 2021). Taking its title from the eponymous song by the Palais Schaumburg, the exhibition/event series considers how community can be built, supported and understood and examines metaphorical and lyrical ideas of creating a city through the three chapters of the series, titled BUILD, IDENTIFY and ACTIVATE.

WIRWIR is part of DÉRIVE UG, which is an umbrella organization that has hosted a wide variety of projects over the years, such as: SONNTAG, PICTURE BERLIN, DETLEF, and IN SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS.

Upcoming Events:

BUILD

June 23, 7:00 pm: Soydivision - Jendela Sonorama: Listening session

June 26, 7:00pm: Onur Ceritoğlu - 7m3: Sound performance

June 27, 7:45pm:  Andrew J. Burford - I think I’m done with the kitchen table, baby: Artist walk


Find out more about WIRWIR's upcoming events on their website >>

BCB Professor of Art History Aya Soika is participating in an online panel discussion organized by the Association for Art History.

The event is titled: “Curating Art of Curating Artists, the Thorny Question of an Artists Biography” and will be discussing the question: “How much should an artist’s life be used to frame our understanding and experience of their artwork?” As well as examining the role and responsibilities of the curator in engaging with artist’s biographies in their work.

Further panelists are: Eleanor Nairne: Curator at Barbican Art Gallery, Bernhard Fulda, Fellow and Director of Studies in History, Cambridge University, Oscar Murillo: Turner Prize winning artist, and Louisa Buck: art writer and broadcaster.

The Association for Art History leads the collective effort in the UK to advance the study and practice of art history.
Further information here.

The event will take place on June 22, 2021 at 8:30 pm CEST, further information on the Association for Art History website >>
 

BCB alumnus and former PIESC scholar Ahmad Mobayed helped lead a Q&A with 2019 Nobel Prize Laureate in chemistry Stanley Whittingham as part of the 2021 Nobel Prize Summit: "Our Planet, Our Future" (26- 28 April, 2021).

In his questions Ahmad focused on what role youth and education could play in the transition to renewable energy sources. Further guests on the panel were Nobel Prize Laureate in physics David Gross and Beatie Wolfe, artist and innovator for UN Women.

Originally from Syria, Ahmad completed his Bachelors in Economics, Politics ,and Social Thought at Bard College Berlin in 2019 and is now enrolled in a Masters of Public Policy at the Hertie School in Berlin. During his studies Ahmad has worked for Kiron, an NGO that offers free online learning opportunities to displaced persons and underserved communities. He is co-founder of the Syrian Youth Assembly, who work to empower young people to participate in the peace process in Syria.

Read more about Ahmad's story on the Hertie School website >>
Watch a recording of the Nobel Prize's YouTube channel >>
 

In an event hosted by the international online seminar "Lirica & Teoria", William Franke (Vanderbilt University) will discuss his book Dante’s Paradiso and the Theological Origins of Modern Thought: Toward a Speculative Philosophy of Self-Reflection (New York, Routledge 2021) with BCB faculty member Francesco Giusti. The event takes place on June 25 at 5:00 pm CEST, online. The opening conversation will be held in Italian, but questions in English or German are welcome. 

The seminar "Lirica & Teoria" is coordinated by Francesco Giusti and Christine Ott (Goethe University Frankfurt). The seminar brings together a group of scholars based in different countries to discuss questions of lyric as well as new approaches to the lyric, with a particular focus on the Italian poetic tradition. On the occasion of the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, the seminar will also host events open to the public and related to Dante’s lyric poetry.

Join the event on Zoom >>

BCB faculty member Francesco Giusti and Benjamin Lewis Robinson co-edit the recently published volume of essays: The Work of World Literature.

The contentious discourse around world literature tends to stress the ‘world’ in the phrase. This volume, in contrast, asks what it means to approach world literature by inflecting the question of the literary. Debates for, against, and around ‘world literature’ have brought renewed attention to the worldly aspects of the literary enterprise. Literature is studied with regard to its sociopolitical and cultural references, contexts and conditions of production, circulation, distribution, and translation. But what becomes of the literary when one speaks of world literature? Responding to Derek Attridge’s theory of how literature ‘works’, the contributions in this volume explore in diverse ways and with attention to a variety of literary practices what it might mean to speak of ‘the work of world literature’. The volume shows how attention to literariness complicates the ethical and political conundrums at the center of debates about world literature

Dr. Giusti contributes the essay: Transcontextual Gestures: A Lyric Approach to the World of Literature to the volume. The Work of World Literature is published by ICI Berlin Press and is available as an open access download here>>

Last Saturday, on May 22, 2021, Bard College Berlin celebrated the graduating Class of 2020/2021 in an online Commencement ceremony.
This year’s commencement speaker was Arjun Appadurai, Goddard Professor in Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. Addressing approaches to issues like climate change, forced migration, and inequality in his commencement speech, Professor Appadurai stressed that learning is a collective endeavor: “…because one joins a conversation between minds, books, works of art and music and literature, which bridges continents, centuries and cultures,” Appadurai said and encouraged graduates: “You are now part of this ceaseless conversation. You will never be alone.”
For a second year in a row, friends and family were invited to join the BCB Community online to honor the achievements of the graduating cohort of OLIve students, Academy Year students, and Bachelor students. While we could not share a physical space to mark the occasion, the virtual gathering drew attendants of all ages from near and far to reminisce about the past four years and cheer graduates on for all their future endeavors. Families had prepared heartfelt video messages, fellow students contributed musical performances, and faculty recollected moments of hard work, joy, and shared learning.

Congratulations to the graduating class of 2020/2021!

The theater project Interrobang ( a cooperation between BCB Professor of Theater and Performance Nina Tecklenburg, Till Müller-Klug and Lajos Talamonti) has created a new interactive digital piece for Impulse Theater Festival.

The Impulse-Phone can be accessed through a smart phone or a computer and allows users to navigate through 31 years of archive sound material from the Impulse Theater Festival. The online archive will grow during the course of the festival and can be expanded and shaped by user contributions.

The Impulse-Phone will be available throughout the duration of the Impulse Festival 2021 which runs from June 2 to June.

BCB alumna Natalia Irina Roman (Visual Arts ’08) has developed and will be moderating a discussion panel as part of the Hertie Summit 2021 online conference.

Titled “Community living projects and the New European Bauhaus: what role will they play in the future?”, the panel will discuss co-housing and communal living projects in Berlin, what role they play in the city society, what participatory structures make new housing projects possible and what cooperation models the city of the future needs.

Guests are Wenke Christoph, State Secretary for Housing of the State of Berlin, Dr. Michael LaFond, expert on communal living communities and Caroline Rosenthal, Consultant for “Mietshäuser Syndikat”. The event will be broadcast live from the Spreefeld Cooperative.

Natalia Irina Roman completed the Visual Arts graduate program at Bard College Berlin (then known as ECLA) in 2008. She now works as a visual artist as well as an art consultant to the Hertie School.

You can register for the Hertie Summit by May 31, 2021 on their website >>
 

BCB alumnus and former PIESC scholar Karam Alhamad has been profiled on the online media outlet Influencive.

The article charts Karam’s career in Syria as a photographer, editor, journalist and activist. After obtaining his Bachelors in Economics, Politics, and Social Thought from Bard College Berlin in 2020, Karam will be completing a Masters in Public Policy at Yale University.

Karam also has a great passion for technology: he is CEO of Ze.Fi, a blockchain-centric media, marketing and education company and recently co-founded Phoenix.io, a blockchain strategy, advisory, solutions and investment collective. He sees great potential in blockchain as a tool in the rebuilding process in Syria: “blockchain might be one of the strongest pillars that helps Syria stand again after we get rid of the dictatorship, decentralization is the answer for all our struggles”.
Read the full article here>>

Bard College Berlin’s Program for International Education and Social Change (PIESC), is a scholarship program for students from areas of crisis and conflict. Find our more on the PIESC webpage>>
 

BCB students are participating in the cross-university campus program PAF Campus run by the Performing Arts Festival Berlin 2021.

PAF Campus during the 2021 Berlin Performing Arts Festival is organized by LAFT – Landesverband freie Darstellende Künste Berlin e. V. in cooperation with Bard College Berlin, the Free University of Berlin, the Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin, the Technical University of Berlin and the Berlin University of the Arts.

PAF Campus is an innovative format situated between art and education open to students from all participating universities.

Preceding the festival, students attended half-day workshops with artists from the independent performing arts community in order to become acquainted with the working methods of artists from various performative genres. During the festival week the students will attend performances together and reflect artistically upon the productions they have seen.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic the festival is planned to take place entirely online, with the option for a hybrid itinerary if realizable.
 

BCB faculty member Joshua Paul has published the article: “'Because for us, as Europeans, it is only normal again when we are great again': metapolitical whiteness and the normalization of white supremacist discourse in the wake of Trump," in the journal Ethnic and Racial Studies.

This article analyzes the resurgence of a mainstream white nationalism following the 2016 presidential election using data drawn from websites, interviews with and publications by the alt-right. Through the concept of metapolitical whiteness, it argues that a new conjuncture of white racial politics has emerged since 2016. This is predicated on the normalization of white supremacist discourse which utilizes novel forms of disseminating its message to a younger demographic. Ultimately, it contends that white supremacist discourse is re-entering mainstream political discourse and popular culture through ironic comedy and differentialist discursive strategies borrowed from the French new right.

Access to the full article on Taylor & Francis Online >>
 

BCB German Studies instructor Andreas Martin Widmann has compiled a forum on contemporary German literature in a global context as guest editor for the journal German Quarterly.

Published in the Winter 2021 issue, the forum brings together exclusively commissioned articles from ten German writers, among them, winner of the Deutscher Buchpreis 2020 Anne Weber, American-born translator and novelist Isabel Fargo Cole, as well as Matthias Nawrat, recent recipient of the EU Prize for Literature, critically acclaimed multilingual poet and essayist Uljana Wolf, and Deutscher Buchpreis 2019 and 2020 nominees Emanuel Maeß and Roman Ehrlich.

In their contributions, the authors reflect on their own aesthetics in relation to experiences of writing in German in a globalized literary sphere and marketplace. Widmann’s own essay “Global schreiben: Deutschsprachige Gegenwartsliteratur und ein Sense of Planet” contextualizes voices and positions within the global literature paradigm, the rise of English, and links forms of storytelling aimed at multinational audiences to the possibility of a new ecological awareness through writing.

You can access all articles on Wiley Online>>

The theater project Interrobang (a cooperation between BCB Professor of Theater and Performance Nina Tecklenburg, Till Müller-Klug and Lajos Talamonti) showed their interactive livestream Familiodrome at the Internationales Figurenfestival Erlangen and WUK Verein zur Schaffung offener Kultur- und Werkstättenhäuseron, Vienna on May 14 and 15 and their interactive digital game Soulmachine at FFT (Forum Freies Theater), Düsseldorf from May 5 to 8, 2021.

Familiodrome is inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, or On Education and explores the greater fundamental questions of humanity and empowerment behind our ideas on education. During the live stream Interrobang raises a child together with the online-audience, who have the option to intervene, vote to influence the development of the child, ensuring a different outcome for every performance.

Soulmachine is a mobile interactive game in which six passengers steer a specially adapted people carrier through an artificial intelligence program on a tablet. The computer creates the journey based on the collective decisions and behavior of the passengers taking them on an allegorical life journey, from childhood to old age. The Soulmachine’s next stop will be the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin in fall 2021.
 

BCB Professor of Politics Boris Vormann appeared as a guest on the Heidelberg Center for American Studies’ podcast Quo Vadis USA?

In the episode “Zwischenbilanz Biden – Ist der Interventionsstaat zurück?“ ( Assessing Biden – Has the interventionist state returned?) Boris Vormann looks back on President Biden’s first 100 days in office as well as his ambitious future plans to invest large sums in infrastructure, the employment sector and housing whilst also funding subsidies for childcare, paid parental leave and expanding the care sector.

Quo Vadis USA? is a bi-weekly podcast produced by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies touching on topics surrounding American society, politics, culture, economy and science. Listen to the episode featuring Boris Vormann on the Heidelberg Center for American Studies website >>

BCB Professor of Politics and Middle Eastern Studies Hanan Toukan has published a new book: The Politcs of Art, Dissent and Cultural Diplomacy in Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan (Stanford University Press, 2021).

In The Politics of Art Hanan Toukan offers a look into the entanglement of art and international politics in Beirut, Ramallah, and Amman to understand the aesthetics of material production within liberal economies. Hanan Toukan outlines the political and social functions of transnationally connected and internationally funded arts organizations and initiatives, and reveals how the production of art within global frameworks can contribute to hegemonic structures even as it is critiquing them—or how it can be counterhegemonic even when it first appears not to be. In so doing, Toukan proposes not only a new way of reading contemporary art practices as they situate themselves globally, but also a new way of reading the domestic politics of the region from the vantage point of art.

BCB Professor of Economics Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg and former BCB Professor of Economics Martin Binder have written a chapter in Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics (Springer, 2021).

“Self-Employment and Subjective Well-Being” discusses the evidence and explanations as to why self-employment is positively associated with job satisfaction, despite often going hand in hand with longer hours, less pay and more stress.

German news outlet taz reported on BCB Faculty Aaron Tugendhaft’s talk at the Einstein Forum on April 20, 2021, in which he spoke about his book The Idols for ISIS, from Assyria to the Internet (University of Chicago Press, 2020).

In the talk Dr. Tugendhaft focused on the key point of his book: that through the destruction of ancient artifacts at the Mosul Museum in 2015, the so-called Islamic State were not just fulfilling their mission to cleanse the world of idolatry but creating new images with which to spread their ideas online.

Read more on the taz >>
Watch the talk on YouTube >>
 

BCB Professor of Literature and Film Studies Matthias Hurst has published an essay on the Horror Homeroom website as part of a special edition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the classic British Folk Horror film The Blood on Satan's Claws (1971).

In his essay "The Judge With no Name and Rebels Without a Cause? Uncanny Evil in The Blood on Satan's Claws" Professor Hurst offers sociological and psychoanalytical interpretations of the film that is about "a cult of young people involved in wicked games, sexual frenzy and sacrificial rituals" in the English countryside of the early eighteenth century.

Read the article on Horror Homeroom >>

Bard College Berlin is proud to announce that third-year student Noor Ender (BCB ’22) has won the competitive fellowship by Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes.

The Studienstiftung is one of the oldest, largest, and most prestigious scholarship foundations in Germany that supports young scholars with exceptional talent who can be expected to make a meaningful contribution to society. Noor was first nominated by the College and then passed through several rounds of a very competitive selection process.

“As a non-native German speaker, the application process was rather distressing,” Noor said. “But the support of my peers encouraged me to persevere through the uncomfortable and daunting parts of the process.“

Noor is a third-year Literature and Rhetoric student in the HAST program, who joined BCB in 2018. “I came to BCB because of its wonderful interdisciplinary, highly communicative, and deeply enriching approach to education.” In her free time, Noor likes to write, interweaving her wide range of interests from opera, literature and philosophy, to quantum physics.

Congratulations, Noor!

The Journal of the German Association for American Studies has published an open-access special issue: "Common Grounds? American Democracy after Trump" guest-edited by BCB Professor of Politics Boris Vormann.

The issue brings together over forty renowned scholars, writers, and poets from both sides of the Atlantic to examine the legacy of Donald Trump’s presidency in a wide variety of contexts. BCB faculty is strongly represented: Aysuda Kölemen discusses the power of the left wing discourse in the Democratic Party in "No, Your Other Left! The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party;"  John von Bergen proposes a radical restructuring of the Democratic Party in "74 Million Questions;"  and Michael Weinman negotiates the relationship between US memorials and American exceptionalism in "Twilight of American Idols? Statue Politics between the Movement for Black Lives and Trumpisms." 

In the form of short contributions (essays, poems, and interviews), the volume probes how the Trump Presidency has crystallized histories of injustice and inequality that still characterize the current state of U.S. democracy.

They tackle questions such as: How do enslavement and settler colonialism continue to impact the democratic order? In what ways can the master narrative of American liberal democracy be reconceptualized along intersecting lines of race, gender, class, sexuality, and ecology? How does the outcome of the 2020 elections change domestic and international political agendas? Can a new, more equitable social contract be negotiated and a “common ground” be recovered and re-invented—and at what cost? 

Read the full issue at the Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg>>

BCB Professor of Art and Society Dorothea von Hantelmann commented on the growing popularity of immersive art installations in the Economist.

According to Dr. von Hantelmann the trend is a sign of “the shift from object to experience”, which results from the excess of material goods in western society, as well has a younger generation with a different aesthetic and way of thinking: “a new kind of thinking which one might call ecological thinking, which is to think in connections, in relations”.

Read the full article on the Economist >>
 

Every year the initiative Zürich liest ein Buch (Zurich reads a book) encourages the people of Zurich to engage in a shared reading experience. This year's book: Während wir feiern (While We are Celebrating) by Ulrike Ulrich, takes inspiration from Virginia Woolf’s classic Mrs. Dalloway, whilst tackling the politics of migration and asylum against a contemporary European backdrop.

BCB Professor for Comparative Literature Laura Scuriatti will be speaking to Ulrike Ulrich on the parallels of her book to Mrs Dalloway on Tuesday, April 27, at 8pm.

Registration details on the initiative's website>>
 

German news outlet Tagesspiegel spoke to BCB faculty member Aysuda Kölemen on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the founding of the Philipp-Schwartz-Initiative.

The Philipp-Schwartz-Initiative was founded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in cooperation with the German Foreign Office in 2015 with the aim to assist academics facing persecution in their home countries, by enabling them to continue their research in Germany.

Dr. Kölemen is one of the 175 academics to receive a fellowship, allowing her to continue her university career at Bard College Berlin after she was let go from the Altinbas University in Istanbul for signing a peace declaration criticizing Erdogan’s attacks on Kurdish settlements.

Today aside from her teaching duties, Dr. Kölemen coordinates the newly launched Threatened Scholars Integration Initiative. The initiative is funded by the Open Society University Network (OSUN) and provides scholars that are threatened by persecution in their home countries with fellowship at OSUN institutions, thus widening the global support network for academics at risk. The program offers 25 fellowships in Europe but also other countries such as Columbia, Ghana, Kyrgyzstan and Bangladesh, hence also creating positions open to non English and German speaking academics.

BCB Professor of Theater and Performance Nina Tecklenburg together with Mario Simon (Akademie für Theater und Digitalität) will be hosting a workshop on the dramaturgical and technical questions of hybrid theater productions.

The closure of theaters in the wake of the pandemic has prompted theater and performance makers to experiment with new theatrical formats, one of which is currently practised under the label of "Hybridtheater" (hybrid theater) and combines digital and analog elements.

The workshop focuses on such formats in relation to dramaturgical and technical questions: How does the dramaturgy change when switching to digital? How do you address the audience, which is partly sitting in the room and partly watching via live stream? How do you get both together, or has it long since become irrelevant that there are multiple dramaturgies and events happening simultaneously?
What possibilities does hybrid theater offer for questioning traditional theater, social interaction, and political implications of digital culture?

The participation slots are fully booked but the workshop can be watched live on the website Nachtkritik >>
 

BCB faculty member Aaron Tugendhaft will discuss his book The Idols of ISIS. From Assyria to the Internet (University of Chicago Press, 2020) with BCB Professor of Politics Boris Vormann in an online event in cooperation with the Einstein Forum.

The book discusses the destruction inflicted by the Islamic State on the artifacts of Iraq’s Mosul Museum, unpacking three key political facets of the event: idolatry as a political charge, the museum as an institution that produces political meaning, and the internet as a space for both image circulation and algorithmically governed iconoclasm.

Drawing connections across the millennia, with discussions ranging from Assyrian palace reliefs, to medieval Islamic philosophy, to first-person shooter video games, the book investigates the perennial impulse to destroy images and the concomitant practice of producing images that depict that destruction.

The Idols of Isis compels readers to reconsider the political power of images from multiple perspectives and ask whether political life is possible without idolatry.

Register for the event on the Einstein Forum website >>
 

The theater project Interrobang ( a cooperation between BCB Professor of Theater and Performance Nina Tecklenburg, Till Müller-Klug and Lajos Talamonti) has created a new digital performance piece.

The Müller-Phone brings the legendary GDR poet, writer, essayist and theater director Heiner Müller back to life. Through the analysis, sound montage and digitalization of the extensive Müller audio material Interrobang, have created an artificial Müller intelligence who the audience can phone up from a virtual telephone box.

Callers can decide on a topic by selecting a key and then listen to Müller’s comments on a wide variety of topics from social inequality to the current theater landscape.

Callers can reach Heiner Müller on the Müller-Phone website until April 30 >>
 

Bard College Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was asked to share his analysis of Joe Biden’s announcement of a two trillion dollar stimulus package to overhaul infrastructure in the US.

Prof. Vormann discusses the political challenges facing Biden when implementing the scheme and sheds a light on the historical background over large scale infrastructure undertakings in the US.

Watch the full interview on the Deutsche Welle >>
 

BCB faculty member Frank Wolff has published a history of the General Jewish Labour Bund in migration titled: Yiddish Revolutionaries in Migration, The Transnational History of the Jewish Labour Bund (Brill, 2021). The book investigates the organization’s transformation from a revolutionary protagonist in early twentieth-century Russia to a socialist institution of secular Jewish life in North and South America. The book follows the paths of activists from the shtetls of Eastern Europe, to the working class Yiddish neighborhoods of New York and Buenos Aires.

This book is a revised translation of Neue Welten in der Neuen Welt: Die transnationale Geschichte des Allgemeinen Jüdischen Arbeiterbundes, 1897-1974 (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), which was awarded the Humanities International Award in 2016.

Further details on the Brill website >>
 

Fourth-year Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought student Sam Zamrik has published a literary essay under the title of “I am starch, water and fat” on the online portal weiterschreiben.jetzt. In the essay he recounts how food connects to his experiences growing up in Damascus, as well as his time spent in refugee camps in Germany.

weiterschreiben.jetzt is a project run by the non-profit Wir Machen Das, which collects work from writers from regions of crisis and conflict.

Sam is a student of the Program for International Education and Social Change (PIESC) which enables students from areas of crisis and conflict to earn a bachelor's degree in the humanities or social sciences. 

Read Sam's essay on the weiterschreiben.jetzt website >>
 

BCB Professor of Art and Society Dorothea von Hantelmann will be moderating the upcoming talk with artist Sean Scully at the American Academy in Berlin.

Sean Scully will be discussing his belief that the “dry, linear thinking” behind conceptual art has detached the natural world from the world of art. Scully is an American-Irish artist. His work is displayed in museum collections worldwide and has twice been nominated for the Turner Prize.

“Sean Scully: By Hand” will be hosted online by the American Academy in Berlin on April 26 at 7:00pm CET.

Further details on the American Academy in Berlin website >>
 

Fourth-year Humanities Arts and Social Thought and PIESC student Sam Zamrik has been featured by Deutschlandfunk Kultur.

Sam speaks to Deutschland Funk about the roles that metal music and writing poetry play in his life as well as his experiences studying in Damascus during the Syrian Civil War.

Read the full article on Deutschlandfunk Kultur >>
 

In a long form essay for the Heinrich Böll Foundation third year Economics, Politics, and Social Thought and PIESC student Ameenah Sawwan looks back on the 10 years since the beginning of the uprisings in Syria and reflects on her experiences of this time of conflict.

Read the full essay on the Heinrich Böll Foundation >>
 

Unrest in Syria began on March 15 2011 as part of the Arab Spring protests which escalated into the ongoing Syria Civil War. To mark 10 years passing since these events Euronews spoke with BCB ’20 Humanities, Arts ,and Social Thought alumna Wafa Mustafa.

In the interview Wafa speaks about her involvement with the protests and the impact the Syrian revolution has had on her and her family, as well as her disappointment in the international community for not intervening in the conflict to prevent human rights abuses.

Wafa is a journalist and human rights activist. She is involved with Families for Freedom who aim to find and free those who have been detained by the Syrian Regime. Wafa’s work is motivated by the disappearance of her father Ali Mustafa, a human rights activist who was detained in July 2013.

BCB faculty Marion Detjen has published a literary essay on Zeit Online reflecting on the significance to of the potato in German culture.

Inspired by the satirical Media Award the Goldene Kartoffel and the pejorative use of the word “Kartoffel” to refer to Germans, she reflects on how the image of the potato ties to subjects of German identity and immigration as well reminiscing on her own childhood culinary memories.

Read the article on Zeit Online >>
 

Ibrahim al-Kasem, originally from Syria is currently a student at the BCB OLIve Program and a researcher at the European center for Constitutional and Human rights (ECCHR). He is also executive director of the Caesar Files Group, whose aim is to bring attention to the human rights abuses in Syria and to prosecute the perpetrators of these crimes. The Caesar Files Group takes its name from one of its members, the defected military photographer “Caesar” whose photographs make up the key evidence in the currently ongoing Al-Khatib Trial in Koblenz. Of the two former Syrian secret service agents on trial, the first was convicted to 4 and a half years imprisonment on February 24, 2021.

Read more about the al-Khatib Trial on France24>>

BCB student Ehab Badwi and BCB Alumni Karam Alhamad will be speaking at the 2021 Institute of International Education (IIE) Platform for Education in Emergencies Response (PEER) Forum. The three day event (March 23 - March 25 2021) will be discussing the future of higher education in states of emergencies.

On the first day of the event Ehab Badwi will be on a panel discussing higher education initiatives in the Americas and Europe. Ehab is a current Economics, Politics, and Social Thought student (class of ‘22) and CEO of the Syrian Youth Assembly.

Karam Alhamad will be holding the opening remarks on the second day of the of the event, which focuses on higher education initiatives in the Middle East and Africa. Karam is a 2020 graduate of the EPST program at BCB. Karam is a Syrian entrepreneur, international development professional, and policy advocate.

Further Information about the event can be found on the IIE Peer website >>

The University Alliance for Refugees and At-Risk-Migrants (UARRM) has featured Bard College Berlin in a series of case profiles showcasing higher education institutions who are doing exemplary work to support displaced persons in higher education.

The report highlights Bard College Berlin's Program for International Education and Social Change (PIESC) that “offers pathways to reduce barriers to higher education.” 

Bard College Berlin currently provides full scholarships to 32 students from areas of crisis and conflict, which includes full tuition, room and board, health insurance and a public transportation ticket.  The College provides 70% of the tuition funding and raises the remaining costs with the help of individual donors and partner organizations. 

“Most importantly,” the report notes “ the branch campus in Germany has provided an alternative safe, legal pathway around the travel ban that prevented displaced students whose education has been disrupted by war from getting into Bard in the U.S.,” and praises the psychosocial support the College provides beyond a mere tuition waiver.

Read the full UARRM publication on the Higher Ed Immigration Portal >>

BCB Professor for Middle Eastern Studies Hanan Toukan is one of the winners of the 2020 OSUN contest for Innovative Assignment Design. Faculty were asked to submit online assignments and activities that they had found to be particularly effective in a remote learning environment.

In her assignment Prof. Toukan asked students to produce an essay reflecting on the visual politics of the Covid-19 Pandemic and how it has affected issues such as border security, right wing nationalism and neoliberalism. She asked the students to think critically about the significant moment in history they were witnessing and their role in shaping its narrative. The resulting essay is titled “Thinking Solidarity in a Global Pandemic: What the Crisis Uncovers and What Remains Unseen.”

Nina Tecklenburg, Professor of Theater and Performance, Ramona Mosse (Bard Guest Faculty/Free University Berlin), Christian Stein (Humboldt University Berlin) and Janina Janke (free artist) win Volkswagen Foundation research grant for their joint practice-based project Viral Theatres: Performing Pandemic Cultures in the Anthropocene. The grant is part of the Volkswagen Initiative Corona Crisis and Beyond - Perspectives for Science, Scholarship and Society which aims to support “research projects from all disciplines whose findings not only contribute directly to overcoming the crisis, but can also provide impetus for overcoming major societal challenges in the medium to long-term."

In Viral Theatres, Nina Tecklenburg, Ramona Mosse, Christian Stein and Janina Janke combine digital making, creative practice and scholarly research in a highly interdisciplinary project that investigates the current radical transformation of theatrical performance. It does so by building a living archive, consistent of an online platform and a performance installation that documents and creatively reflects the current pandemic and newly emerging interactions between digital and analog worlds. The living archive addresses a novel split: while the consumption of creative content via digital media has accelerated due to lockdown, the production of such content in standard modes of presence and collaboration has undergone a drastic arrest, threatening particularly the performing arts in their dependence on embodied exchange. Viral Theatres considers how these substantial shifts change work processes, institutional infrastructures, and the future of going to the theater. 

Nina Tecklenburg and Ramona Mosse will also co-teach a practicing arts seminar at BCB in the Fall 2021 as part of the project to include students in the processes of creative archiving and reflecting the post/pandemic culture.

You can find the project summary at the Volkswagen Foundation >>

BCB Comparative Literature Professor Laura Scuriatti has published a piece on British born Modernist artist and poet Mina Loy, in the blog of Italian Feminist literature collective l’Orique. The piece is accompanied by audio clips of Scuriatti reading Loy’s Poetry (the main article is in Italian, the readings in English).

In the piece Scuriatti gives an account of the life of Mina Loy and the reasons she has remained forgotten as a Modernist for such a long time. She also analyzes Loy’s poems on Florence, as well those covering the subjects of giving birth and the aging female body, showing how Loy gives original accounts of the objects of her poetry and the radical way Loy puts the female body at the center of lyrical discourse. The piece is accompanied by audio recordings of Scuriatti reading some of Loy’s poems in English.

Laura Scuriatti has published a book on Mina Loy’s Critical Modernism, in which she focuses on the influence of the Italian avant-garde on Loy’s work.

Access the full article on l'Orique >>

BCB Professor for Art and Society Dorothea von Hantelmann will be discussing the new art work Future Fossil together with Andy Merritt (one half of creator duo Something & Son) and architectural theorist and editor Nick Axel. The discussion is the second in a series of online events leading up the the unveiling of the art work in April.

Future Fossil is a public artwork located in Oxley Park, Milton Keynes. The installation features a section of an ordinary house rising from the ground as if excavated, “fossilized” through the passing of time. The intention is to create a new public space around the art work, where community activities and cultural programs can take place.

Tickets available on eventbrite >>
 

BCB Faculty member Aysuda Kölemen was asked to comment on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's intentions to change the Turkish constitution by media outlet France24.

Read the full article on France24 >>
 

BCB Professor of Politics, Boris Vormann discussed the currently ongoing impeachment proceedings against former president Donald Trump in an interview with German national news broadcaster Tagesschau.

In the interview he explained the procedure and possible political consequences of the impeachment process set into motion by the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. 

Watch the full interview on tagesschau.de >>

Bard College Berlin congratulates Marie Schleef on her performance piece NAME HER. Eine Suche nach den Frauen + being chosen to be part of the "10er Auswahl" at Theatertreffen Festival 2021.

Theatertreffen takes place every May in Berlin and is one of the most prominent German speaking theater festivals. The festival showcases remarkable productions from German speaking countries as well as international young talent. At the heart of the festival program is the “10er Auswahl” (selection of 10). Every year an independent expert jury visits hundreds of productions in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and chooses the ten best to be shown in Berlin.

In her piece Marie Schleef unearths a hidden female history. Forgotten women are called to the stage by their name, independent of their social and cultural background, in encyclopedic fashion from A-Z. Schleef and her collaborator Anne Tismer tell their stories through video, music, dialogue and dance, shedding a light on the erasure of women and opening up discussions around the relation between given names, gender, power, and stigma.

Marie Schleef completed her bachelor's in Theater and Performance at Bard College and spent the spring of 2013 at Bard College Berlin as part of the Study Abroad Program. She went on to study directing for theater at the Hochschule für Schauspielkunst “Ernst Busch” in Berlin. NAME HER. Eine Suche nach den Frauen + is her first independent theater production.
 

BCB Professor of Literature Laura Scuriatti will give a talk about her book Mina Loy's Critical Modernism (University Press of Florida, 2019) at the British Institute of Florence.

"When the British-born Mina Loy (1882-1966) moved to Florence from Paris in 1907 with her husband, the painter and illustrator Stephen Haweis, she was a budding young artist who had made it into the Salon d'Automne. She lived in Florence until 1916, at first with her husband and then just with her children, and in this period she developed into an extremely original avant-garde poet and writer, whose work was published in the most renowned literary magazines in the US. She learned to speak Italian and responded in her works both to the politics and aesthetics of the vociferous Futurists and to the vital intellectual debates internal to the Anglo-American expatriate community."
 
Laura Scuriatti will discuss Loy's aesthetic and feminist commitment to the nascent avant-garde in the context of her life in the Tuscan capital, and show how Florence functioned as a vibrant international nexus for the exchange and elaboration of modernist art.


To join this lecture with Zoom (no reservation necessary), simply click on this link at 6:00 pm on Wednesday, February 3. 
 
There is no charge to attend the event on Zoom, the British Institute asks that you consider making a donation to support the Institute and its beautiful library if you wish to attend an event.

Helen Wolff’s autobiographical novel Hintergrund für Liebe (Background for Love) tells the story of a young woman’s emancipation in the early 1930’s. BCB faculty member Dr. Marion Detjen, who is Helen Wolff’s great nice, published the novel posthumously almost ninety years after it was written and will give a talk about the book and its author at the Literaturhaus Köln.


Event: Thursday, January 28, 7.30 pm CET, Literaturhaus Köln, online
Please register for a ticket to the online conversation between Marion Detjen and Bettina Fischer.

The Book: Helen Wolff, Hintergrund für Liebe, edited and with an essay by Marion Detjen, Weidle, Bonn 2020 >>


For a review of the book please see:
"Julia Schröder empfiehlt Helen Wolff: Hintergrund für Liebe" - Clip and article on the "Lesenswert Quartett" on SWR2 >>
"Die Priesterin" - Article in Süddeutsche Zeitung >>
"Nach Saint Tropez, der Liebe wegen" - Article on Deutschlandfunk >>
"Ein Sommerhaus für sich allein" - Article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung >>
 

Bard College Berlin welcomes Dr. Aslı Vatansever (PhD University of Hamburg, 2010), a sociologist of work and social stratification from Turkey. Dr. Vatansever’s two year research position is made possible through a competitive fellowship by the Philipp Schwartz-Initiative for threatened scholars. In Turkey, Dr. Vatansever was dismissed from her office as associate professor at a private university in Istanbul and was banned from public service for having signed the Peace Petition of the Academics for Peace in 2016. She was subsequently hosted as a guest researcher at the Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient (October 2016-May 2017) and at the Centre Marc Bloch (June-July 2017). She was a Scholar Rescue Fund Fellow at the Department of Political Science, Law, and International Studies at the University of Padova (September 2017-August 2018), a research associate at the Re:Work Institute of the Humboldt University, Berlin (September 2018-August 2020), and a guest lecturer at the University of Padova (October-December 2020).
Dr. Vatansever’s work has a particular focus on precarious academic labor. At Bard College Berlin she will conduct research on recent mobilizations of precarious scholars asking: What are the main types of academic anti-precarity movements across Europe? How do migration trajectories and academic mobility figure in the constellations of academic labor activism? How do the various anti-precarity initiatives respond to forced internationalization and occupational migration?

Her books include Ursprünge des Islamismus im Osmanischen Reich. Eine weltsystemanalytische Perspektive (Hamburg: Dr. Kovač, 2010), Ne Ders Olsa Veririz. Akademisyenin Vasıfsız İşçiye Dönüşümü (Ready to Teach Anything. The Transformation of the Academic into Unskilled Worker, Istanbul: İletişim, 2015 – co-authored with Meral Gezici-Yalçın), and At the Margins of Academia. Exile, Precariousness, and Subjectivity (Brill: 2020).

Dr. Vatansever will co-teach the Internship Seminar in the Fall Semester 2021 and will also be available as a thesis supervisor for senior students at Bard College Berlin.

The Philipp Schwartz-Initiative
Named after the Austrian Jewish pathologist who lost his professorship in 1933 in Frankfurt, the Philipp Schwartz-Initiative was founded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the German Federal Foreign Office. It supports scholars at risk who are unable to work in their home country because of prosecution and enables them to continue their work and research at German institutions.
The Initiative works closely together with the Scholars at Risk Network, the IIE Scholar Rescue Fund, and the Council for At-Risk Academics and has been made possible through generous support from the Federal Foreign Office, the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Klaus Tschira Foundation, the Robert Bosch Stiftung, the Stifterverband, and the Stiftung Mercator.

Scholars at Risk Network
Bard College Berlin is a founding member of the German chapter of the "Scholars at Risk," together with 19 other German academic teaching and research institutions. Kerry Bystrom, Associate Dean of Bard College Berlin and Professor of Human Rights & English Literature, is a member of the German SAR's Steering Group.

Bard College Berlin is proud to announce that third-year student Lucas Engel of the Economics, Politics, and Social Thought Program has won a highly competitive Studienstiftung fellowship.

Lucas came to Bard College Berlin looking for an environment that encourages open discussion and an approach to education that pushes beyond the boundaries of a narrow major. Thanking his classmates for the numerous discussions they have had since he started at the college, Lucas said: "my admission to the Studienstiftung is due in no small part to our spirit of critical examination and the inspiration that comes with the pursuit of a broad base of knowledge.”

The Studienstiftung is one of the oldest, largest, and most prestigious scholarship foundations in Germany that supports young scholars with exceptional talent who can be expected to make a meaningful contribution to society. Lucas was first nominated by his Professor Boris Vormann and then passed through several rounds of a very competitive selection process.

Congratulations, Lucas!

Bard College Berlin Professor of Migration Studies, Agata Lisiak, will discuss international collaboration, challenges and opportunities under Brexit at the online event "Art, International cooperation and Brexit" that is hosted by Centrala - a space for Central and Eastern European art and artists located in Birmingham, UK. Prof. Lisiak will be joined by Centrala's director Alicja Kaczmarek, Simina Neagu (Iniva - Institute of International Visual Arts), and Piotr Michalowski (European Network of Cultural Centres).

Join the discussion on Facebook Live>>

For more information visit Centrala and Centrala Berlin>>

Bard College Berlin congratulates Agata Lisiak, Professor of Migration Studies, on winning a Volkswagen Stiftung research grant for her project “Migration, Space and Power: Learning from Rosa Luxemburg and Doreen Massey. The grant is part of the Volkswagen Stiftung's initiative “Original - isn’t it? New Options for the Humanities and Cultural Studies" that awards outstanding researchers funds to explore “‘original', ‘new’ or ‘innovative’” topics that "contradict the established knowledge or generally accepted intuition.” It encourages researchers to develop new approaches to research, form new hypotheses and theories, observe new phenomena, and discover knowledge gaps.

In her book-length project, Professor Lisiak proposes to radically rethink migration with the help of two exceptional scholars, teachers, and activists: Rosa Luxemburg and Doreen Massey. As the conceptual and political commonalities in their work have not been recognized to date, this project will not just be the first attempt to bring Luxemburg and Massey into conversation, but also the first exploration of the profound possibilities that their complementary theorizations of space, capital, and power provide to rethink migration in the 21st century. Rejecting neat, linear theories of development, both Luxemburg and Massey repudiated binary models that juxtaposed the West and the rest, reform and revolution, global and local. Rooted firmly in feminist epistemologies, the project considers Luxemburg’s and Massey’s intellectual contributions in their full scope, reading their work in light of their positionalities and life stories. In doing so, Professor Lisiak will focus on how their vivid examinations of economic exploitation, structural inequalities, solidarity, and democracy can help us rethink migration in ways that go beyond the usual focus on human mobility, and acknowledge the importance of movements of capital, goods, and ideas.

Prof. Lisiak will update and share her findings throughout her year of research (2021-22) with the BCB Community.

Read the German project description at the Volkswagen Stiftung >>

Together with Prof. Graf Lambsdorff from the University of Passau, Bard College Berlin Professor of Economics Marcus Giamattei has developed classEx, a tool to create experiential learning situations. The tool allows the instructor to run experiments, interactive surveys, and quizzes online and in the physical classroom space. Students are assigned roles and groups in which they interact. They make their decision via their smartphones or the computer and results are immediately shown on the instructor's screen and can be discussed in class.

"Students are put in the perspective of the decision maker, they interact and they relate their decisions to emotional feedback about the outcome which is shown live,” says Giamattei, who regularly uses the tool in his own teaching. "This allows an interactive approach to models, problems or polls. Rather than just discussing the results of others, students are confronted with their own behavior and decisions.”

Currently, the tool is used in 68 countries around the world at over 500 institutions and is expanding. The team is working on more companion material for the ready-made experiments (e.g. with CORE Econ in the UK and at https://econclassexperiments.com/) and they have expanded  the use to high school teaching in Germany under the name [email protected] Instructors can make use of the experiments and surveys that are already available but they can also adapt the tool and develop their own games with a simple click-together environment. The tool is free of charge and can be used by signing up at classEx.de.

Prof. Giamattei will offer introductory workshops on classEx for interested faculty from all disciplines at on January 14 and January 20.

More information about the January 14 and the January 20 events>>
 

Bard College Berlin Professor of Politics Boris Vormann has commented on the storm of the US Capitol in German news outlets.

In a roundtable on SWR2 with Dr. Josef Braml (German Council on Foreign Relations) and Prof. Dr. Christiane Lemke (Universität Hannover) he discussed the current situation, its causes, and its consequences.

Listen to the full discussion on SWR2 Forum>>


In a conversation with the WDR aktuell, Vormann assesses the role of the capitol police during the attack.

Watch the conversation at WDR Aktuell>>


Vormann talked to RBB and discussed the possibility of removing President Trump from office.

Listen at the RBB Radio Eins>>

Bard College Berlin is honored to announce that Michael Adam Hardacker is the recipient of this year’s DAAD award. Adam is a third-year BA student in the Economics, Politics, and Social Thought Program at Bard College Berlin.

The award goes to an international student who has demonstrated academic excellence and has shown initiative for civic and cultural engagement beyond their studies. Students were first nominated by faculty and then a selection committee that involved the college’s leadership as well as the Civic Engagement Office had the difficult task of choosing one winner.

In selecting Adam, the committee was especially impressed with his impeccable academic record and the testimonies of his professors that reveal Adam to be not only a hard working but als a very interested and attentive learner, who goes to great lengths to help others in the BCB community strive. Besides having been involved in several community outreach activities in the Pankow neighborhood to teach English, Adam volunteers several hours each month at BCB to review essays and schoolwork from other students, providing constructive feedback, improving their language skills, and helping them with math and programming.

Managing Director Florian Becker awarded the DAAD certificate during a private and pandemic friendly award ceremony.

The award comes with a  monetary prize of 1000 EURO that is part of DAAD funding in the STIBET program. 

Congratulations, Adam!  

BCB student Ameenah Sawwan (EPST '22) and BCB alumna Wafa Mustafa (HAST ’20) spoke to the Neue Züricher Zeitung about their experiences in Syria, their activism in Berlin and their determination to change Syrian from exile.

Wafa Mustafa’s father disappeared in 2013, when he was arrested and detained. She has been actively campaigning ever since and joined the Families for Freedom group in Berlin that advocates for the release of detainees held by the Syrian government.
Driving political change from exile, Ameenah works with the international organization The Syria Campaign that raises awareness about the crimes of the Assad regime and supports the Civil Society in Syria by collecting donations.

Ameenah and Wafa have both studied at Bard College Berlin through the Program for International Education and Social Change (PIESC). The program provides full four year scholarships to outstanding students from regions of crises or conflict to complete a BA degree at BCB.  

Read more about both women’s experience in the Neue Züricher Zeitung >>

BCB Professor of Theater Studies Nina Tecklenburg and her company Interrobang will be showing Familiodrom - an interactive livestream performance inspired by Jean-Jaques Rousseau's Emile, or On Education.

The show will be performed at Sophiensaele and transmitted via interactive livestream:

"In Familiodrom, Interrobang gives birth to a child together with the online audience. Immediately the freshly baked parents' collective is stuck in the ideological swamp of cloth diapers, ready-to-eat porridge, sleep training, shame and guilt. Does our child go to the multicultural day care center, or to the white Waldorf kindergarten with individual talent development? Is our child allowed to decide for itself when it wants to brush its teeth? In the moral war about the pacifier, it's all about the whole: What is the human image behind our idea of education? Inspired by Rousseau's classic Emil or About Education, Interrobang advocates a performative empowerment in which basic social questions are negotiated. At crucial points in the narrative, the online audience can intervene, vote and influence the child's development. The outcome of this educational experiment is different every evening. Does it lead to a new family hell or to a better society? And how does the child feel about it?"

Performances will take place on:
Dec 8 + 9, 7:30pm
Dec 12 + 13, 4pm
Tickets can be bought through Reservix>>

INTERROBANG include Till Müller-Klug, Nina Tecklenburg, Lajos Talamonti and Guests. The group develops new theatre formats in order to discuss current social phenomena and questions. In installative theatre spaces and participative game settings, the audience can experience, test and reflect on new scenic communication models. Playing with theatrical community thus becomes playing with present and possible future social forms and value systems.
 

BCB Professor of Political Thought, Ewa Atanassow, interviewed Geoffrey Galt Harpham on his new book on the concept of freedom and the practice of scholarship (Scholarship and Freedom, Harvard University Press, 2020). Both scholars have served and met as Fellows at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, the Institute for Human Sciences, (IWM) in Vienna. In the interview they dissect the relationship between scholarship and truth, and its complicity in producing a post-truth discourse. Discussing the tensions between truth and interpretation Atanassow asks what research institutes can do to sustain both scholarship and freedom.

Read the full article on the IWM website >>

Fourth-year HAST student Hesham Moadamani was recognized as the “Best Community Storyteller in Travel 2021” by the Lonely Planet this week. We congratulate Hesham and the Refugee Voices Tours organization for the international recognition of their incredible work!⠀ ⠀

Hesham uses his own personal experience of displacement to show landmarks in Berlin and parallel the historical displacement of 15 million people during WWII with the current, ongoing conflict in Syria. ⠀
⠀
“When I arrived, the discourse changed from a sympathy-based discourse of ‘People are fleeing war, they are as human as we are, they are in need of our help,’ into the securitization narrative of ‘Our security is the priority, they are all Muslims, extremists with terrorist backgrounds,” says Hesham. But “[c]onflict is not exclusive to Syrians from Muslim backgrounds … Germany witnessed such migration with people fleeing from it – and moving to it – in different historical periods of time.”⠀ ⠀

Read the full article on Lonely Planet>>
Article on the Deutsche Welle >>
Coverage on I am Expat>>
 

On November 15, 2020, Bard College Berlin’s Migration Studies Professor Agata Lisiak participated in a round table discussion at TOP: Transdisciplinary Project Space in Neukölln. The event accompanied Korhan Erel's solo exhibition “Scarecrow” and offered a platform for sharing experiences, observations, and theorizations on the sonic politics of border.

Read more about the even here >> 

BCB faculty member Marion Detjen has published an article on the diaspora’s condition of being separated of one’s family in Zeit Online.

In the article she reflects on the causes and consequences of forced migrants having to witness the suffering and sometimes dying of their loved ones at home without being able to help them. She searches for the traces of that experience in German memory culture, literature and politics, including her own family history. 

Read the article on Zeit Online>>

Bard College Berlin Global Teaching Fellow Dr. Simona Toroţcoi, presented a paper on Roma representation in Moldavian textbooks at the “Kontroverse Themen unterrichten - Teaching Controversial Issues” seminar organized by the Moldova Institut Leipzig between October 28- November 1 in Chişinău, Moldova.

Toroţcoi’s paper analyses curriculum and educational environments that alienate minority students by reinforcing false narratives and stereotypes, and standardizing social interest and values of the dominant society. Textbooks represent a fundamental element in the educational process - they have the ability to instill attitudes, values, and models of behavior. Toroţcoi argues that experiences in the educational system that create a separation of Roma students’ values and backgrounds from that of the dominant society, will limit Roma students’ ability to develop higher educational aspirations, and their overall academic and social integration both in the school environment and in the society.

The study is part of a larger research project coordinated by the Council of Europe, the Roma Education Fund and Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research that investigates Roma representation in European lower und upper secondary education systems.
 

Erick Moreno Superlano was a finalist in the Pupiales International Short Story Contest run by the Gabriel García Márquez Foundation for his story "The Laughter of the Medusa”. In its fifteenth year, the competition had no less than 3022 entries from 41 countries on five continents that the jury - made up of the writers Claudia Piñeiro from Argentina, Luis Carlos Mussó from Ecuador, and Fernando Ayala Poveda from Colombia - reviewed.

Erick based his story on the essay "The Laugh of the Medusa" by Hélène Cixous that he used in Clio Nicastro’s Critical Theory seminar last semester. The story takes the form of a fictional film review in which a woman’s silent public protest draws a violent attack by the men in her town.

Read more about the contest and its winners in the Colombian publication Las2Orillas >> [in Spanish]

BCB Professor of Art History, Aya Soika, comments on the rbb kultur on sculptors Arno Breker and Bernhard Heiliger’s works at the Kunsthaus Dahlem. The Kunsthaus was planned as part of the remodelling of Berlin as the Reichshauptstadt Germania under Albert Speer and served as a studio for Arno Breker. Breker was one of the most privileged artist in Nazi Germany, who built monumental sculptures that elevated Nazi ideals in many public spaces.

After the war, Breker’s student, Bernhard Heiliger, took over the space for his abstract sculptures. Soika comments that like unlike any other space, the Kunsthaus Dahlem embodies the "continuities and ruptures of Germany's history of sculpture, the history of Berlin and the artistic production. It is now run by Dorothea Schöne, who has taught classes at BCB in the past.

Watch the full video on rbb kultur >>

It’s not a typical Election Night, but in the United States it is traditional to host an Election Night Party at home or at a bar. American director and BCB Theater Studies faculty Julia Hart and a cast of US citizens have produced a performance to spend Election Night with them.  “Election Night” is a performance, Election Night party, and a trip through time. With a mix of personal stories, scenes, and songs Julia Hart and her ensemble of Americans abroad reflect the most significant moments, impressions, and feelings from the last four years while the latest election results and forecasts come together.

Third Year student Sohaib Alzoubi, who studies in the Economics, Politics, and Social Thought (EPST) track at BCB and majors in Politics and Economics, has just published an article with the London School of Economics Research Online. The research is part of LSE’s Conflict Research Program that is funded by the UK Department for International Development to provide research and policy advice on how the risk and impact of violent conflict might be more effectively reduced through development and governance interventions.

Sohaib’s paper, entitled "Deraa Province: Conflict Dynamics and the Role of Civil Society," analyzes the war dynamics in Syria, and focuses on Syrian civil society organizations. Using primary and secondary data, the report explains the organizations' roles and how they developed within the dynamics of the conflict in order to provide the necessary conditions to ensure their sustainability in the future.

The paper then presents a set of suggestions for developing local governance mechanisms in Syria. After analyzing the main weaknesses in the existing governance systems, the providence Daraa Governorate is used as a case study for government recommendation.

Sohaib studies at Bard College Berlin through the Program for International Education and Social Change (PIESC) and has been working with Syrian civil society organizations like Citizens for Syria and Olive Branch since 2011.

The full paper can be downloaded at LSE Research Online >>

BCB Faculty Aaron Tugendhaft discusses his new book The Idols of Isis that was just published by the University of Chicago Press.

On October 30, 2020 at 12:00am CET/October 29, 6:00 pm CT Tugendhaft is in conversation with Bruce Lincoln, Professor Emeritus of the History of Religions at the Divinity School at the University of Chicago at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. 

More information and registration for the virtual event>> 




On November 1, 2020 at 6pm CET Tugendhaft will be joined by artist Michael Rakowitz, writer Rijin Sahakian, and art historian Wendy Shaw to discuss the book in an event organized by Cabinet Magazine and co-sponsored by the Vera List Center. 

More information and registration for the virtual event>>


 

With the conclusion of US President Donald Trump's four years in office, the Handbuch Politik USA (Handbook on US Politics), co-edited by Boris Vormann (BCB Professor of Politics), Christian Lammert (FU Berlin) and Markus B. Siewert (TU München), Springer is issuing a new and completely overhauled and extended edition of the compendium. In 44 contributions, Social Scientists and experts on US politics provide insight into the fundamental structures, agents, and mechanisms of US politics and locate them within their context. The compendium serves as a resource for students and teachers of Political and Social Sciences, representatives of politics and the media, as well as the interested public.

The podcast Through the Gates at the University of Indiana invited BCB Professor of Philosophy Michael Weinman to talk about his new co-edited book The Emergence of Illiberalism. Understanding a Global Phenomenon. The volume has recently been published by Routledge and was co-edited together with BCB Professor of Politics Boris Vormann. In conversation with James Shanahan, Dean of the Media School at Indiana University, and Professor of Practice Elaine Monaghan, Weinman talked about similarities in different forms of illiberal politics in the US and in Europe, and discussed how we can understand trends away from liberal politics and policies and what we might expect to replace them.

Listen to the podcast here>>

The Emergence of Illiberalism>>

After BCB’s latest campus addition, the Henry Koerner Hall was nominated for the Architekturpreis Berlin, media outlets have spoken to the Rotterdam based architects at the Atelier Kempe Till about the project. The online magazine German Architects discusses with André Kempe the challenges of designing multipurpose student housing that is sustainable, architecturally interesting, and functional.

The dutch architecture magazine Architectenweb especially stresses the flexibility of the apartments - both in terms of design and layout as well as its functionality.

"The design of the façade follows a very marked rhythm, added to the large windows placed in most of the front, seeking to generate an interior-exterior connection that is clear throughout the project," marvels Metalocus, and architecture magazine based in Madrid.

Read the full interview with André Kempe on german-architects.com >> (in German)
Read the full article on architectenweb.nl >> (in Dutch)
Read the full article on metalocus >> (in English)

BCB student Sam Zamrik was featured on arte in last week’s episode of the culture magazine Twist. Sam, who studies as part of BCB’s Program for International Education and Social Change (PIESC), is a poet and musician from Syria. On Twist, Sam discusses how he started writing, what life in Syriah as a metal artist was like and how he continues his writing and studies in Berlin despite many obstacles.
Sam was recently signed by WEITER SCHREIBEN, where he published his poem "Patchwork" as part of a collection of poetry called Sophistry of Survival.

Watch Sam's feature on arte (start at 22.20) >>

BCB faculty Marion Detjen was a panelist on "Thinking through Repair” at the Rhinoceros Salon. The program that is curated by the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (“House of the World’s Cultures) offers a platform for conversations on open society and asks "How can we shape living together in a divided world without first questioning the damaged?"
Together with writer and filmmaker Emily Dische-Becker and human rights attorney Wolfgang Kaleck, Detjen discussed the legal and historical conditions of reparations.

On Friday, October 16, Aya Soika will be presenting her paper on "Dealing with Art Forgery - an account from the art historian's perspective" at Albertinum Dresden - a two-day event organized by the members of the catalogue raisonné association (Arbeitskreis Werkverzeichnis) of which she is a founding member. Her paper reviews a prominent art forgery case ten years ago - which she helped to uncover together with experts from different fields (then taken over by the police) - and reflects on issues related to art authentication and art historical practices today. 

BCB faculty member Aaron Tugendhaft's article "Ignorant Antiquities," first published last year in Critical Muslim, has just appeared in Arabic translation in the online Egyptian newspaper Mada Masr. The article explores the politics of iconoclasm, the fascinating history of Baron Max von Oppenheim's excavations at Tell Halaf, and the subtle intelligence of Rayyane Tabet's contemporary artistic practice. The essay treats themes further explored in Tugendhaft's forthcoming book, The Idols of ISIS: From Assyria to the Internet (Chicago, 2020).

You can read the original version of the essay on the Critical Muslim website and its Arabic translation at Mada Masr. 

BCB Professor of Economics Martin Binder and Dr. Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg (Universität Göttingen) have published a study on workers' satisfaction in the trade and crafts sector in Germany.

The study that interviewed 2000 craftsmen and -women in Germany found that unlike other employment sectors, manual workers feel a strong sense of satisfaction for their work, which positively influences their wellbeing and happiness. 79 % of participants indicate that their job is an important part of their identity; 84 % are proud of their work; 66 % are passionate about their job; 65 % affirmed that their job is a vocation.

Workers in trade and crafts professions can see the finished product of their work as a whole - and not just in parts -, which is why they perceive their work as useful and valuable. Since in a lot of employment sectors, work is increasingly perceived as meaningless, it is significant to understand, which facets of work allow to identify with an occupation so that work is perceived as meaningful and satisfying.

A summary of the study (in German) can be found at the University of Göttingen >>
The full study (in German) can be downloaded here >>

 

BCB faculty member Marion Detjen has published a new article on "Intersectionality" in the Zeit Online.

In the article she outlines the historical background for the concept of intersectionality and portrays how it has been used and adopted in German and in international discourse. Asking how an intersectional analysis would have to look like, Detjen negotiates the interaction of privilege and discrimination and discusses issues of justice, inequality and identity.

Read the article on Zeit Online>>

BCB’s Director of Studio Arts John von Bergen is participating in the group exhibition WÄNDE | WALLS curated by Dr. Anne Vieth at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. The installation “Anti-Precious Moment” presented for this exhibition has also recently been acquired for the museum's permanent collection, which will be on display at the museum after the "WALLS" exhibit. From the curator’s text:

“The exhibition WÄNDE | WALLS, brings together works from 1966 to today, in which the special boundary of the wall is thematized on various levels of meaning. In their works, artists such as Monica Bonvicini and Yoko Ono highlight the most fundamental functions of walls - that of inclusion and exclusion. On the one hand, walls stand for the protection of the individual, while on the other hand they can confine and deny access. As a space-creating architectural element, they help to determine our living spaces and are involved in identity-forming processes. Artists such as Ernst Caramelle and Bruce Naumann visualize this by giving it human characteristics. In turn, works by Jeewi Lee and Sol LeWitt, among others, address the so-called white cube as a common form of presentation of modern and contemporary art. They demonstrate how the white walls of the exhibition space influence the effect and perception of art.”

WÄNDE | WALLS
September 26, 2020 - January 31, 2021
Participating artists:
William Anastasi, Mel Bochner, Monica Bonvicini, Daniel Buren, Ernst Caramelle, Maurizio Cattelan, Elmgreen & Dragset, Parastou Forouhar, Robert Gober, Douglas Huebler, Sophie Innmann, Anne Marie Jehle, Emily Katrencik, Joseph Kosuth, Jeewi Lee, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, Brian OʼDoherty, Yoko Ono, Charlotte Posenenske, Klaus Rinke, Gerwald Rockenschaub, Michael Sailstorfer, Martin Bruno Schmid, Felix Schramm, Thomas Schütte, Ulay / Marina Abramović, John von Bergen, Lawrence Weiner

In addition to this exhibition, John von Bergen has also recently been awarded the Rechecherstipendien Bildende Kunst 2020 (Fine Arts Research Grant 2020) from Berlin's Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa, which involves project research in collaboration with scientists from the Museum für Naturkunde.

 

Sam Zamrik, poet, musician, and fourth year PIESC student in the Humanities track at BCB, has been signed by WEITER SCHREIBEN. WEITER SCHREIBEN, a project by the non-profit WIR MACHEN DAS, is a portal for literature from areas of war and crisis where international writers collaborate with German authors and texts are published in the original as well as in a translated version. Sam, who identifies as a neo-Decadent writer, composes limerick-like, lyric poetry about identity, mental health, immigration, and spirituality.

His recently published poem “Patchwork" (edited by Patty Nash and translated into German by poet Monika Rinck)  provides a first glimpse into his longer collection of poetry Sophistry of Survival. He is represented by the Elisabeth Ruge Agentur.

Sam will also be featured in an upcoming episode of Twist, a new arte production on culture, urbanism and current events, where he will discuss his poetry, his music, and how his work in Berlin differs from his work in Damascus.
 

BCB Professor of Theater Studies, Nina Tecklenburg and Interrobang (of which she is a founding member) are presenting two performances on tour this month.

SOULMACHINE at autofreier StadtTraum 2020, Bremen, Sep 19 - 22, 2020:

“Soulmachine is a mobile interactive game with a group of passengers and artificial intelligence. Six passengers take a seat in a specially adapted people carrier, controlling the automobile together with an artificial intelligence program on a tablet computer with voice recognition. … SOULMACHINE probes the micro-political situation between passengers and machine, asking questions about which direction this (auto)mobile society will take in the future. The passengers are confronted with the moral consequences of delegating and giving up their moral responsibilities as active and liable subjects. What ethical standards do we adopt as a society in the face of transferring more and more agency to artificial intelligence?"

Event information>>
Project information>>



EMOCRACY - A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT at Meyerhold Center Moscow, Sept 29 - 30, 2020:

"In these times of populist challenges, fundamental social questions are revised. How do we want to live together in the future? … In Emocracy, the audience can feed its feelings, desires and convictions directly into the gameplay. Two performers develop a panorama of lifestyle possibilities and scenes of everyday precariousness. The audience can react in real time, directing and assessing the narratives through voting and direct action. What resonates with me? What aggravates me? What repels me? What am I swept along with? By interacting with everyone present, a different emotional/political micro society is created every night.
 
Event information>>
Project information>>



Nina Tecklenburg will also be speaking at Contagion, an online series of curated conversations and presentations that is hosted by the Pickle Factory. Together with Firenza Guidi (Wales) and Samik Bandopadhaya (India) she will discuss: How does performance connect the social, the political, and the human? And why do we need it?

Sept 26, 2020, 7pm IST, Kolkata time / 3.30pm CET, Berlin time
Please register in advance to participate online.



 

Martin Andreas Widmann, faculty and coordinator of the German Studies Program at BCB, will participate at the internationales literaturfestival berlin.

On Thursday, September 17, BCB Widmann will speak at the panel »VISIONS OF BIOECONOMY: The Economization of Nature«, where he will present a literary essay commissioned by the Wissenschaftsjahr. Widmann will be joined by Barbara Unmüßig (Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung) and Steffen Richter (FU Berlin) to discuss how more and more institutions are using the conservation of species and their habitats as financial offsets.
More information >>
 
 
On Friday, September 18, Widmann will read from his novel “Messias” (Rowohlt, 2018) as part of the “Literatures of the World” series at the internationales literaturfestival berlin.  For the event hosted by the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek Widmann will be joined by the editor and translator Milena Adam to talk about the writing process as well as the novel’s depiction of the global advertising industry and the protagonists’ search for redemption.
More information>>

 

On Wednesday, 9 September 2020, Professor Agata Lisiak will be speaking at Humanifesta in Hamburg — an event organized by the research project “The Value of Humanities” (HafenCity University, University of Lichtenstein, and University of Graz) and PARKS, an experimental space bringing together civil society actors, local residents, and city officials. Lisiak will be speaking about the practice of unlearning in pedagogical and urban contexts.
 

Professor of Politics Boris Vormann gave an interview on the Deutsche Welle analyzing the campaigns for the upcoming US presidential election. He compares the different approaches on race relations in the Trump and Biden campaigns and discusses Trump's Law and Order message, while stressing that voter suppression remains a pressing issue in the November election.

You can watch the full video on Deutsche Welle >>
 

Henry Koerner Hall, the latest addition to the BCB campus that was designed by the Rotterdam-based Atelier Kempe Thill, has been nominated for the Architekturpreis Berlin 2020. The architectural prize is awarded every three years for ambitious and exceptional architectural buildings and spaces honoring creative architecture, technical innovation, and sustainable design in the urban landscape of Berlin.

Assimilating to and expanding the style of the former embassy buildings that mark the majority of the BCB Campus, Henry Koerner Hall is a highly streamlined and standardized building with a generous structure that features two story tall ceilings. The adaptable and open floor plan offers grand views over Waldstraße for students and serves as a space to connect and to think, to cook and to discuss.
 
You can vote here for public choice award that is issued in addition to the jury prize.

BCB faculty member Aaron Tugendhaft’s book The Idols of ISIS: From Assyria to the Internet will be published by the University of Chicago Press in October 2020. The book unpacks the aftermath of a video that was released by the Islamic State in 2015, showing ISIS members smashing ancient sculptures in Iraq’s Mosul Museum in an effort to cleanse the world of Idolatry.
Tugendhaft discusses in his book the role of images in our life, the political importance of museums, and the efficacy of videos in furthering an ideological agenda through the internet, asking whether there can be any political life without idolatry at all.

In her review in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Erin L. Thompson, praises the breadth of Tugendhaft’s analysis that draws on theorists from Max Weber to Plato to the 10^th-century Baghdadi philosopher Abu Nasr al-Farabi, and points out how timely the topic is: The book “comes at a time when the media is once again flooded with images of destruction of art — this time, of the statues being toppled by protestors around the world.”

Aaron Tugendhaft, The Idols of ISIS: From Assyria to the Internet, University of Chicago Press, 2020 >>

Read Erin L. Thompson's review "Smashing Statues, Building Community" in the Los Angeles Review of Books >>
 

BCB Professor of Politics Boris Vormann and Professor of Philosophy Michael Weinman published an edited volume on The Emergence of Illiberalism that examines illiberal and authoritarian trends as a global phenomenon.

Analyzing liberal democracies from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, the first part of the book provides a historical perspective on the roots of illiberal tendencies. In the second part, the contributions discuss in several case studies whether populist movements have a common core or whether they differ from one another in kind.

BCB Professor Ewa Atanassow, Dr. Aysuda Kölemen, and Roger Berkowitz, Professor of Political Studies and Human Rights at Bard College, contributed with articles on Tocqueville, on Electoral Autocracy in Turkey, and on Technocratic Prejudice, respectively.


The Emergence of Illiberalism. Understanding a Global Phenomenon, edited by Boris Vormann and Michael Weinmal, Routledge, London 2020 >>
 

"A fairytale from Southern France that is not kitchy, but light, cheerful, and yet very smart”, says Julia Schröder in the "Lesenswert Quartett" about Helen Wolffs recently published autobiographical novel Hintergrund für Liebe, that was edited by BCB Prof. Marion Detjen.

Talking to Gesa Ufer at the Deutschlandfunk Kultur about the novel, the author, and her life, Detjen explains that Wolff was an excellent linguist, who – together with her husband Kurt Wolff – brought authors like Max Frisch, Günter Grass, Uwe Johnson and Jurek Beker to American audiences. Wolff took on a nurturing role for the authors that she published and admired. At the same time, Wolff worked in four languages and was responsible not only for a textual but also a cultural translation of the texts and their authors.
Her autobiographic novel takes place in the early 1930’s and tells the story of a young woman and her lover, who is twenty years her senior. According to Detjen, the charmingly written text provides intricate insights into the time, but also presents contradictions of Wolff’s earlier self-representations. It paints the picture of a “woman who works and wears the pants, but who ultimately subordinates herself to a man in her conception of a love-relationship… which ultimately allows her to exercise influence."
 
Listen to the interview with Marion Detjen on the Deutschlandfunk Kultur >>

Helen Wolff, Hintergrund für Liebe, edited and with an essay by Marion Detjen, Weidle, Bonn 2020. >>


For a review of the book please see:

"Julia Schröder empfiehlt Helen Wolff: Hintergrund für Liebe" - Clip and article on the "Lesenswert Quartett" on SWR2 >>
"Die Priesterin" - Article in Süddeutsche Zeitung >>
"Nach Saint Tropez, der Liebe wegen" - Article on Deutschlandfunk >>
"Ein Sommer in Saint Tropes. Helen Wolffs Hintergrund für Liebe" - Article on Der Spiegel >>
"Ein Sommerhaus für sich allein" - Article in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung >>

On July 23, 2020, Wafa Mustafa, 2020 graduate of Bard College Berlin, delivered a testimony to the UN Security Council on the situation of detained people in Syria. Wafa is not only a civil activist with Families for Freedom, she is also still searching for her father who disappeared in Syria in 2013 without a trace.

Watch the full recording of the briefing here - Wafa's statement starts at 0:16:14.
http://webtv.un.org/watch/the-situation-in-the-middle-east-syria-security-council-open-vtc/6174480033001/

The link below summarizes Wafa's testimony:
https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/07/1068931

 

What remains of the Welcome! banners and signs that greeted asylum seekers at German train stations in the summer of 2015? BCB Professor of History Marion Detjen discusses the universal claim for human rights in the German constitution in her new article that was published by the Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, the Federal Agency for Civic Education, in: "Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte”.

In "'Wir schaffen das' oder 'revolutionäres Bewusstsein'? Überlegungen zur Willkommenskultur 2015” (“'We can do it’ or ‘revolutionary consciousness’? Thoughts on the Welcome-Culture in 2015”), Detjen reports on volunteer and welcoming structures for asylum seekers in the 1990’s and compares the political and cultural landscapes that enabled such structures to institutionalize during the so called "refugee crisis" in 2015. Discussing the relationship between state authorities and civil society, reaching back to the 1990s, and also drawing on experiences at Bard College Berlin, Detjen asks under what conditions such a culture of inclusion is „mainstream“ or „revolutionary“ and how migration pushed Germany to reexamine the scope of its constitution.

You can read the article online at the Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung >>
(Text in German)

BCB student Ehab Badwi was featured with an interview in IIE PEER on his activism for Syrian youth participation in politics and peace-building.

Ehab, who studies at BCB with the Program for International Education and Social Change (PIESC) thanks to a scholarship from the Institute of International Education (IIE), founded the Syrian Youth Assembly - SYA to connect Syrian youth around the world and amplify their voices.

Reed the full interview at IIE PEER >>

A historic trial is taking place in Koblenz, Germany where, for the first time, charges have been brought against a senior Syrian military official who is accused of human rights abuses and the torture of detainees during the Syrian conflict. BCB graduate, activist, and journalist, Wafa Mustafa, has traveled to Koblenz, in order to campaign for justice and demand the release of detainees held by the Syrian government - among them Wafa's father who was imprisoned and has been missing for over seven years.

Watch the coverage on channel4 >>

Erick Moreno Superlano has been honored with second place in the prestigious Venezuelan short story contest, the “Concurso de Cuento Policlínica Metropolitana para Jóvenes Autores 2020” for his short story “There Will Be Blood”. Erick, who has been writing fiction for more than ten years and studies at BCB with a South American Scholarship in Literary Arts, first drafted the short story in Clare Wigfall’s Fiction Writing Workshop in Spring 2019 and then later reworked it into his native Spanish. He has chronicled his experience of writing and especially of writing in a foreign language in a blog post for Die Bärliner.

"There Will Be Blood" is the story of a middle-class Venezuelan's attempt to write a film script about the crisis in his homeland and alleviate his difficult economic situation in his adopted home of Argentina. He has met a European producer who seeks to capitalize on Venezuela's grim situation. In the process of scriptwriting, however, an ethical question gives the young writer pause: is it ok to commercialize the suffering of the people?

The jury especially praised the “inventive use of meta narrative and cinematographic discourse as a distancing mechanism to narrate the painful reality of the mass exodus of Venezuelans.”
 

Professor of Art History Aya Soika, who co-curated the exhibit Emil Nolde – A German Legend. The Artist in the Nazi Regime at the Hamburger Bahnhof in 2019, was in conversation with the artist Norbert Bisky and the director of the Hamburger Bahnhof, Dr. Gabriele Knapstein, on the relationship between art, artist, and historical context. The vivid discussion on the limits of separating artist and work the interview – held in German – provides insight into how the audience reacted to the Nolde show, how museums can deal with works of 'problematic' artists, and what the lively debate on Nolde can tell us about the future of curatorial discourses in the 21st century.

You can read the interview in the yearly reports of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz >>
 

Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was invited by several German news outlets to comment on the escalating protests in the US following the death of George Floyd.

On the SWR2, Vormann discussed the precarious situation of US democracy and provided insight into the historical roots of racism in the US. Listen to the interview on SWR2 >>

On Tagesschau24, Vormann elaborated on the structural and systemic reasons of the violence and the role of US President Donald Trump in the conflict. Watch the interview on Tagesschau24 >>

On the RBB Inforadio, Vormann analyzed how the current violence is a result of three overlapping crises and weighs what effects the situation might have for the upcoming US presidential election in the fall. Listen to the interview on RBB >>

On the Deutsche Welle Vormann comments on US president Donald Trump’s handling of the ongoing protests and the reactions in his own party as well as the military. Watch the interview on Deutsche Welle >>
 

“On behalf of the entire Bard College community, I want to express our solidarity with all who grieve for the deaths, with all who live in constant fear of the brutality of racial discrimination, and with all who find themselves without hope in these dark and violent times. [...] Something has to change in a way that actually helps the lives of our fellow citizens and neighbors of color.” —Bard College President Leon Botstein
Read More>>
 

Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was interviewed by the RBB radioeins about US Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, who announced on May 25, 2020 that he will resign from his post in the upcoming weeks.

In the interview, Vormann discusses the importance of the position for intercultural communication and mediation between the US and Germany and reflects on how the transatlantic relationship might change with a new appointment.

Listen to the interview on radioeins >>

Diving into a world of Wild West nostalgia when visiting the International Country Festival in Berlin in February, recent BCB graduate Mandula van den Berg wrote an article on “Die ostdeutschen Cowboys” (The East German Cowboys) that was published in the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit. Therein, van den Berg describes the strange admiration for cowboys and "Amerika", which is especially prevalent in East Germany, and discusses the often conflicting and sometimes problematic representations of classical American tropes in Germany. In her article, she locates the historical roots for the nostalgia with the emergence of Karl May adventure novels that were published at the end of the 19th century and that rose to a newfound popularity after the Second World War and fascinated young and old for decades to come. Their narratives and symbolism has been appropriated differently throughout Germany’s divided history, and has provided easily identifiable templates of oppressor and oppressed, and good and bad for a political spectrum that ranges from the far right to the far left.

Comparing the debates around the confederate flag in the US and its usage in Germany that reminds her of a requisite rather than a political symbol, van den Berg asks whether the German Cowboys trivialize US history and racist ideology or whether there is (also) something that we can learn from an approach to history that imagines new, more complex and ambiguous orders and more self-determined forms of communal interaction.

Read the article in the Zeit >>

On this year’s International Museum Day, May 17, BCB Professor of Art History Dorothea von Hantelmann gave an interview to the Deutschlandfunk about what strategies museums undertake to open up their gates again in times of a pandemic. Discussing the history of the exhibition as a form - from a place of solitary contemplation to an immersive space of experience - von Hantelman touches upon museums as status symbols, signature buildings and places of of branding, and talks about issues of global museum culture, and the question of the canon.

Von Hantelman presents art as a form of experiment and exploration, as an “applied philosophy of open and liberal society” that "offers suggestions and models on how societies may evolve.” Do we go to the museum in order to look at images or to produce images ourselves?

Listen to the interview on the Deutschlandfunk >>

On Saturday May 16, the Bard College Berlin Community came together to celebrate the achievements of the Class of 2020. Graduates and fellow students, faculty and staff, and families and friends gathered online to take a trip down memory lane. With heartfelt speeches, live music performances, picture collages, videos and lots of shout outs and toasts by family members young and old, the community congratulated the 46 seniors from 21 countries on completing their coursework and Senior Projects in the midst of the pandemic.

Kimberly Marteau Emerson, member of the Board of Governors at Bard College Berlin, attorney and human rights advocate was interviewed by Chelsea Spieker for her podcast series "The Americans.” Marteau Emerson moved to Berlin in 2013 with her husband John Emerson, who served as the US Ambassador to Germany under the second Obama administration. She resides between Berlin and Los Angeles and is currently in "creative isolation" in Berlin, working on her memoirs. 
The differences between the American and German approach to the Corona crisis, female leadership, and the challenges of being the partner of a diplomat are some of the topics being discussed. 

Professor of Economics Israel Waichman recently published his experimental research in an article entitled “The effects of contemporaneous peer punishment on cooperation with the future” in Nature Communications. The paper was co-authored with Dr. Johannes Lohse from the University of Birmingham and studies a collective-action problem, in which those individuals who bear the cost of cooperation do not benefit from it. There are many examples of collective-action problems. A recent one can be seen in the attempt to slow the rapid spread of the Covid-19 virus. Urgent pleas to flatten the curve by “staying at home” and “cooperating with social distancing measures” are voiced almost daily. Yet many still find it hard to fully comply with these strict rules. While the general public is astonished and outraged by this behavior, it hardly comes as a surprise to anyone familiar with the Prisoner’s Dilemma or other collective-action problems.

Waichman studies a specific collective-action problem, where those individuals who bear the cost of cooperation do not benefit from it (which, for example, is the case with global climate change). The experiment analyzes whether contemporaneous peer punishment can facilitate successful cooperation with the future. The results of an experiment with human participants show that (i) in the absence of punishment, cooperation with the future is difficult, and (ii) punishment is only partially successful in sustaining future generations.

Read the article in Nature Communication>>

Professor of Literature Laura Scuriatti’s book Mina Loy's Critical Modernism (University Press of Florida, 2019) has recently been reviewed in the Italian journal Letteratura e Letterature, 14 (2020), by Prof. Daniela Caselli (Manchester University). In the English publication, Caselli praises the book as an “original and welcome intervention in modernist studies” that offers a “genuine international perspective” and an "impressive commitment to the published and unpublished work of Loy” by “engaging with the ‘genius’ woman writer (…) and by exploring the sustained preoccupation between artistic object and the economics of art.”

You can order a printed version of the journal here.
For a previous review of Scuriatti’s book in the Times Literary Supplement, please follow this link.

In the same edition of Letteratura e Letterature Scuriatti published a review of the edited volume Shattered Objects. Djuna Barnes's Modernism (edited by Elizabeth Pender and Cathryn Setz), in which she emphasizes the “significance of unfitting authors” that is discussed in the volume. 

Faculty Agata Lisiak and Elena Vacchelli (University of Greenwich) co-edited a special issue of Discover Society on urban youth and the right to the city.

BCB student Karam Alhamad's essay on walking in Berlin (originally submitted as an assignment for Lisiak’s All That Is Solid Melts Into Air class in Fall 2019) is featured in the special issue alongside contributions from international scholars including Jin Haritaworn, Linda McDowell, Naaz Rashid, and Sara Abbas. The authors aim at overcoming the polarity between viewing urban space as necessarily disabling or enabling for young people of various genders and draw attention to the complex dynamics in which urban belonging is negotiated through daily practices.

The articles were written and are based on research conducted before the COVID-19 outbreak, and thus do not engage with the new lived realities of urban youth in a global pandemic. Yet Lisiak and Vacchelli hope and believe that the discussions presented in the collection will continue to be relevant in rethinking urban futures in the years to come.

Read the introduction here>>
 

The monthly German-language art magazine Art – Das Kunstmagazin nominated the show Emil Nolde: The Artist during the Third Reich, co-curated by BCB’s Professor of Art History Aya Soika together with Bernhard Fulda and Christian Ring at the Neue Nationalgalerie / Hamburger Bahnhof in 2019, among the twelve best art exhibitions in Germany, Austria and Switzerland in 2019. This qualifies the Nolde exhibition for the Art magazine’s Curator Prize, which is selected from the twelve entries by a panel of experts.

The jury praised the Emil Nolde show for its “meticulous research effort” and for being “impressively prepared.”

Earlier this year, the Emil Nolde exhibition was considered the best Berlin art show by a jury of nine journalists for a top created by tip Berlin. Seven of the nine journalists rated the show as “exceptional.”

Bard College Berlin is proud to announce that third year student Hannah Scharmer won a highly competitive Studienstiftung fellowship. The Studienstiftung is one of the oldest and most prestigious scholarship foundations in Germany and supports young people who have demonstrated outstanding academic talent in their studies and research and who have shown initiative, responsibility, and commitment to make exceptional contributions to society.

Hannah was proposed for the award by her advisor Prof. Dr. Agata Lisiak and then successfully passed several rounds of assessment and selection. The fellowship will support Hannah through her entire academic career and in addition to a monthly stipend, it will allow her to share her ideas and projects with a community of scholars through summer academies, research groups, workshops and mentoring opportunities.

Please join us in congratulating Hannah for her tremendous achievement!

Bard College Berlin is proud to announce that graduating senior Sabrina Slipchenko (Class of 2020) was awarded the prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, a one-year stipend of $36,000 that allows fresh college graduates to pursue a project “of personal insight, perspective and confidence that shapes the arc of the fellows’ lives.” The project is fully conceived and developed by the fellow, and it must involve exploration outside their country of origin or residence. 

Sabrina is the first-ever student from a Bard Network campus other than Annandale to win a Watson. Her project, “"Outing" Orthodoxy: Religious, Jewish, Queer Histories and Futures,” will explore crossovers of queerness and Orthodoxy in Jewish social life, in Austria, Greece, Ukraine, Argentina, and Turkey. 

More about the Watson Fellowship>>

The article Emil Nolde in the Federal German Chancellery. The Mutability of Historical Evaluations by art history faculty Aya Soika was recently published in Historical Judgement, the magazine of the German Historical Museum. 

In the article, Soika discusses the recent controversy regarding Expressionist painter Emil Nolde in the German public sphere, in particular the debate surrounding the removal of Nolde's paintings from Angela Merkel's office in the Federal Chancellery in April 2019. Soika stresses how closely the history of the reception of Nolde's art was connected to post-war German history, and to what extent it mirrored attempts to come to terms with the nation's Nazi past. Up until recently, Emil Nolde was regarded primarily as a victim of Nazi art policies, whilst Nolde’s firm belief in Hitler and his antisemitism were largely ignored.

Nolde's role during the Third Reich and his post-war legacy were presented in an exhibition at the Neue Nationalgalerie/Hamburger Bahnhof in 2019, co-curated by Soika together with Bernhard Fulda and Christian Ring. Together with the show Flucht in die Bilder at the Brücke Museum, also co-curated by Soika, the exhibition was credited to have revised previous narratives regarding early 20th century German modernism, as stated in the annual review of the art journal monopol, entitled "Deep Scars in the Picture of Modernism."

Read more about Historical Judgement>> 

BCB’s Professor of the Practice of Theater Nina Tecklenburg and the performance group Interrobang will present the premiere of their new production “Soulmachine - The Self-Learning Robo-Taxi” at Schauspiel Leipzig on March 11, 2020. 

"Soulmachine" is a mobile interactive game with a group of passengers and artificial intelligence. It probes the micro-political situation between passengers and machine, asking questions about which direction this [auto]mobile society will take in the future. 

Upcoming performances
Schauspiel Leipzig: March 11 (premiere), 19, 20, 25, 26 - more info>>
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin: May 7, 10, 16, 17 - more info>>

More information about "Soulmachine">>

The novel Hintergrund für Liebe [Background for Love] written in 1932 by the European-American publisher Helen Wolff (1906-1994) was recently published for the first time thanks to the research and editing work of BCB faculty member Marion Detjen. 

The novel, which focuses on the beginning of a love story against the backdrop - which the protagonists try to escape - of the rise of Hitler in Germany, could not be published at the time of its writing due to its autobiographical character and to the historical circumstances. 

Detjen discovered a version of the novel among the papers that Helen Wolff had left to her son, and a second version in the Zurich Central Library. She edited the work with an audience in mind and added an essay about the material, cultural and political conditions of writing for a young woman who didn’t want to compromise in times of fascism and war, at the intersection of the private and the public. 

Read more about the novel>> 

The essay "Star Trek: Discovery - Where No Star Trek Series Has Gone Before?" by faculty member Matthias Hurst was recently published in the volume Im Blick des Philologen. Literaturwissenschaftler lesen Fernsehserien, edited by Hans Richard Brittnacher and Elisabeth K. Paefgen (edition text + kritik, Munich 2020). The volume explores new TV shows from a specific philological point of view. Chapters are on diverse TV series such as "Fargo," "Gilmore Girls," "Firefly," "Boardwalk Empire," "Babylon Berlin," "Real Humans," "The Sopranos," "Mr. Robot," "Damages" and "The Man in the High Castle."

In his essay, Hurst discusses the "Star Trek" franchise with all its incarnations in TV, cinema, and literature as a "multimedia megatext" and highlights its origins in a concept that preceded the modern categories of "quality TV" (Robert J. Thompson) and "auteur series" (Christoph Dreher). A special focus is on the idea of utopia and how "Star Trek" - in its different appearances - has promoted its agenda of progress, tolerance, diversity and inclusivity through a pattern of thematic and narrative repetitions and variations and within the transformation from an episodic style of storytelling to a more serialized format of TV entertainment/streaming. An important part here is played by the latest series in the franchise, "Star Trek: Discovery," a series that has provoked both enthusiastic praise and harsh criticism for its new interpretation of typical "Star Trek" themes and motifs and its unusual representation of the utopian idea that is inherent in "Star Trek." Does "Star Trek" still convey a utopian vision of our future or has it become grittier, more "realistic" and darker in the light of our contemporary political and social reality? 

Read more about the volume>>

Alumna Aya Ibrahim (BA 2015), currently a news reporter for the international broadcaster Deutsche Welle, recently interviewed Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok at the Munich Security Conference 2020. 

The interview focused on the Sudan uprising, the unique cooperation in Sudan between civilians and the military, the pending trial of Sudan’s former President Omar al-Bashir, and the future of Sudan-Germany relations. 

Watch the interview>>

The paper "Rebel Group Attrition and Reversion to Violence: Micro-Level Evidence from Syria" co-authored by Bard College Berlin student Karam Alhamad with PhD students Vera Mironova (Harvard University) and Sam Whitt (High Point University) was recently published in International Studies Quarterly. 

From the paper's abstract:
The purpose of this research note is to inform the scholarly community on rebel incentives to remobilize for violence, a topic which has been underexplored in the literature, using evidence from an ongoing conflict: the case of volunteer ex-combatants in the Syrian civil war. In late 2014 to early 2015, we conducted surveys with 196 ex-fighters who served with different rebel group brigades linked to the Free Syrian Army as well as moderate Islamist and jihadist groups. […] Our results illustrate how rebel fighters might quickly remobilize when disciplined, well-organized rebel groups emerge on the scene, as evidenced by the rapid ascent of the Islamic State (ISIS).

Read more>>

From February 19 through March 22, 2020, artist and BCB arts instructor Caitlin Berrigan will participate in the group exhibition PART OF THE PROBLEM in the Berlinale’s Forum Expanded section, hosted at the Betonhalle silent green Kulturquartier. 

Berrigan will present her video installation “Imaginary Explosions, episode 2, Chaitén" (USA/Germany, 2019). 

The work investigates how deep time and interspecies communication could assist us in radical planetary transformation. Artists and scholars whose real-life work pushes the limits of science and culture depict fictionalized versions of themselves in the videos and collaborate on the scores, narratives, and sculptures.

More info>>

On February 20, 2020, BCB’s Head of Student Life Brian Gallagher will co-present together with Elizabeth Coder (Verto Education Oceania) the webinar “U.S. Student Affairs Professionals Working Abroad.” 

In this free webinar, Gallagher will share advice on obtaining a Student Services position abroad, drawing on his own experience of working in Student Affairs roles in multiple countries. 

The webinar is part of the series “Around the Globe” co-hosted by the American College Personnel Association’s Commission for Global Dimensions of Student Development, the Association of College Unions International, and the Interscholastic Association of Southeast Asian Schools. 

Learn more / register>>

On February 27, 2020 from 7:30pm at diffrakt - centre for theoretical periphery, faculty member Michael Weinman will launch the volume Plato and the Moving Image (Brill, 2019) co-edited with Shai Biderman from the Tel Aviv University.

Entitled "Platonic Repercussions: Deleuze’s Film-Thinking," the event will bring together Biderman, Alexandra Heimes, Noa Levin and Weinman to discuss and expand upon some of the key arguments regarding Plato, cinema and philosophy developed in the book. 

Event description from the diffrakt website:
What might Plato – one of the deadest of the “dead white men” that (still) largely constitute the canon – have to say about some open questions in cinema studies? And what might film-philosophy, a discourse that is still emerging and remains (for some) at best marginal to the real work of cinema and of philosophy, teach us about rethinking Plato as a canonical figure? These were the questions that motivated Shai Biderman and Michael Weinman in Plato and the Moving Image. The conversation, building on but also extending and challenging key arguments developed there, explores how the readings of Platonic anamnesis in Meno offered by Benjamin (prologue to the Trauerspiel book) and Deleuze (in Difference and Repetition) relate to the ways in which each thinker mobilizes cinema for purposes relevant for ethics (especially pedagogy) and ontology. Anamnesis (literally, remembering again) is what has generally been canonized as “Plato’s theory of recollection.” But is it a theory at all? Or is it rather a practice? A practice of re-membering, in which real and virtual (after-)images are decomposed and recomposed in the construction of new possibilities?

Exploring these Platonic themes, Benjamin’s as well as Deleuze’s work will be carefully connected to the role of virtuality and the actualisation of memory in their philosophising of the moving image, specifically their conceptualisations of montage. In this way, the conversation will open up new vistas for a radically different determination of what Platonism as a form of constitutive idealism might yet come to be, after Benjamin and Deleuze.

On February 13, 2020 BCB faculty member Marion Detjen will participate in the panel discussion “Die Teilung neu denken?” [“Rethinking the division”] at the Berlin Wall Memorial. 

The panel participants will discuss two recent publications that address how the post-war narratives about divided Germany came about: a book by Stefanie Eisenhuth (Leibniz Center for Contemporary History Research Potsdam), which discusses the divide from the point of view of the transatlantic relations between West Germany and the USA, and a book by Frank Wolff (University of Osnabrück), which argues that the Wall defined two countries and two populations, and was not just a boundary.

Read more>> 

Academy Year 2004/2005 alumnus and film director Danilo Caputo’s film Semina il Vento (Sow the Wind) has been selected to have its world premiere in the frame of the Panorama program at the 2020 Berlinale film festival (Feb 20 - March 1, 2020). The Italian drama showcases environmental issues and the human exploitation of the Earth, and it is the director's second feature film.

Sow the Wind is set near IIva, one of Europe’s largest steelworks that has been continuously poisoning Apulia’s environment for years. Nica, a young passionate scientist, is fighting to save her family’s olive grove. She searches for a sustainable solution going against the wishes of her profit-oriented father.

More about the Panorama program>>

BCB faculty member Martin Binder recently published the paper “Does it have to be a sacrifice? Different notions of the good life, pro-environmental behavior and their heterogeneous impact on well-being” co-authored with Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg (University of Goettingen) and Jorge Guardiola (University of Granada) in the journal Ecological Economics. 

From the article’s abstract:
Our well-being is influenced by our notion of what constitutes a good life, a vital part of our identity. While pro-environmental behavior is often found to be positively related to individuals' well-being, our research delves into the extent to which this relationship is influenced by individuals' identity, measured both as green self-image and their notion of the good life in general. Using survey responses from Spanish university students (n= 640) and paying close attention to the subjective perception of what it means to be “satisfied with their lives”, we find that green behavior is negatively related to life satisfaction in our sample. In contrast, green self-image is positively related to life satisfaction.

Link to article>>

On January 31, 2020, BCB guest faculty member Daniela Crăciun presented a paper at the fourth edition of “The Future of Higher Education – Bologna Process Researchers’ Conference” held on January 29-31 in Bucharest, Romania. 

Considered a landmark in the European higher education environment, the conference aimed to provide a unique forum for dialogue between researchers, experts and policy makers in the field of higher education. 

Crăciun’s paper, “Does international student mobility increase graduate employability? The labor market outcomes of Erasmus students,” co-authored with Kata Orosz (CEU, Austria) and Viorel Proteasa (West University of Timisoara, Romania), was presented in a panel on the internationalization of higher education.

Read more about the conference>>

On February 3rd, 2020, faculty member Laura Scuriatti will launch her monograph Mina Loy’s Critical Modernism (University of Florida Press, 2019) at the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds. 

Chaired by Richard Brown (Leeds University), the event will bring Scuriatti in conversation with Juliette Taylor-Batty (Leeds Trinity) and Gigliola Sulis (Leeds).

From the book's description:
Mina Loy’s Critical Modernism provides a fresh assessment of the works of British-born poet and painter Mina Loy. Laura Scuriatti shows how Loy’s “eccentric” writing and art celebrate ideas and aesthetics central to the modernist movement while simultaneously critiquing them, resulting in a continually self-reflexive and detached stance that Scuriatti terms “critical modernism.”   
Offering new insights into Loy’s feminism and tracing the writer’s lifelong exploration of themes such as authorship, art, identity, genius, and cosmopolitanism, this volume prompts readers to rethink the place, value, and function of key modernist concepts through the critical spaces created by Loy’s texts. 

Read more about the event>>

On February 1, 2020 Professor of Art and Society Dorothea von Hantelmann will give a talk at the 2020 Verbier Art Summit in Switzerland, focused on the theme “Resource Hungry: Our Cultured Landscape and Its Ecological Impact.” The Summit participants - artists, curators, academics, and leading innovators - will ask how to envision a way forward in finding harmony between art, ecology, and resources.

Von Hantelmann’s presentation will explore the pertinent and expanding power of art in global societies.

Read more>> 

The article "Urban multiculture and xenophonophobia in London and Berlin" co-authored by BCB Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak with Les Back (Goldsmiths, University of London) and Emma Jackson (Goldsmiths, University of London) was recently published in the European Journal of Cultural Studies. 

The article argues that, in the context of the rise of nationalism and increasing inequalities across European metropolises, developing an attentiveness to the sounds of the city can be utilized to unpack individual and collective claims to entitlement and belonging. Focusing on London and Berlin, and using the concept of xenophonophobia - the fear of foreign sounds - the authors examine racism beyond words to understand how belonging and boundaries between ‘us’ and ‘them’ are created in these cities.

Link to article>>

On January 23, 2020 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, philanthropist George Soros publicly announced the foundation of the Open Society University Network (OSUN) and his pledge of 1 billion dollars to this educational initiative. 

Spearheaded by Bard College and the Central European University, the Open Society University Network will function as an international platform of universities involving partner institutions around the world, including Bard College Berlin and other campuses in the Bard network. 

"Open societies around the world are facing grave threats, and climate change threatens our very civilization. Global education can help us address these challenges," commented Soros on social media in advance of his speech at Davos. 

Access to education, public space, and civic engagement are some of the pillars of OSUN, which plans to develop in the next phases network courses as well as joint degree programs and research projects. 

Watch George Soros's announcement of the founding of OSUN>>

OSUN website>>

Media features
Soros Commits $1 Billion to Educational Initiative, Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2020
Soros gives $1bn to fund universities 'and stop drift towards authoritarianism, The Guardian, January 23, 2020
Soros university network ‘to build resilience and sustainability’, Times Higher Education, February 11, 2020

On Jan 23-26, 2020, BCB Professor of the Practice of Theater Nina Tecklenburg and her interdisciplinary theater group, Interrobang, presented a premiere of their audio-performance "Die Philosophiermaschine" at Sophiensæle in Berlin. 

Telephone conversations with philosophers of the 20th century: The "Philosophy Machine" is an artificial intelligence device that brings to life dead thinkers. Utilizing algorithmic original voice* montage, the past and present collide and merge. The audience can enter into lively dialogues by telephone with Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Jeanne Hersch, Theodor W. Adorno, James Baldwin, Ernst Bloch and others, deliberating over urgent topics such as freedom and censorship, dissidence and utopia. What playfully emerges is a spectrum of collective social discourse and action, transmitting philosophical strategies of the 20th century into the present.

Read more about the performance>>

On January 24, 2020, theater studies guest faculty Julia Hart's original performance "Yellow and Pink" ("Gelb und Rosa") premiered at the Fundus Theater in Hamburg.

Two small wooden figures made of wood were lying out in the sun one day on an old newspaper. One was short, fat, and painted pink; the other was straight, thin, and painted yellow. They wake up wondering and singing about who they are and where they come from. "Yellow and Pink" transforms one of the biggest philosophical questions into a theatrical debate that invites children and adults alike to ponder these questions with them. 

Watch a trailer of the performance>>

On January 13, 2020, Academy Year 2007 alumnus Hannes Klöpper was appointed CEO of the digital health start-up for online psychotherapy HelloBetter, as part of the announcement of a new management team and of a first round of financing. 

HelloBetter was founded as a university spin-off in 2015 under the name GET.ON Institut and has since become a pioneer in the field of evidence-based digital interventions, providing access to online courses for people with various mental health conditions. It is currently one of the leading providers of online psychological health trainings in German-speaking countries. Klöpper joined the company in January 2019 to scale the business, investing heavily in product, tech, sales and marketing. 

More about HelloBetter >>
Handelsblatt feature >>

Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was invited by several media outlets to comment on the impeachment proceedings initiated by the US House of Representatives against President Donald Trump. 

The media contributions include:

• a panel discussion with Vormann, Benjamin Wolfmeier (Republicans Overseas Germany), Emily Lines (Democrats Abroad Germany), and Sudha David Wilp (German Marshall Fund of the United States) moderated by Anke Plättner on the German public broadcast service phoenix
• an interview for Deutsche Welle in which Vormann outlines the process & timeline of the impeachment case, and its potential effects on the US presidential elections in November '20 (source: dw.com)
• an interview for RBB Inforadio in which Vormann focuses on the divided political & media landscape in the US, and on the loss of confidence in US politics

The study "Who inflates the bubble? Forecasters and traders in experimental asset markets," led by Bard College Berlin Professor of Macroeconomics Marcus Giamattei and originally published in the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control (2019), was featured in the article “Financial bubbles: a new study suggests a paradox” which appeared in horizons, a Swiss research magazine. 

The article sheds light on the paradoxical findings of Giamattei’s study, namely that accurate forecasts by financial analysts play a role in stock price increases and equity market bubbles. 

Read the article here>> 

Bard College Berlin is honored to announce Bíborka Béres as the winner of the 2019 DAAD Award. Bíborka is a third-year Hungarian student who is enrolled in the B.A. in Humanities, the Arts, and Social Thought at Bard College Berlin.
 
The selection committee reviewed the nominations that were handed in by faculty members and after an intense deliberation decided to offer the Award to Bíborka whose academic as well as civic engagement achievements reveal an excellent, hard-working, academically and civically deeply committed student. Bíborka’s studies, free time, life and work are connected through the thread of being engaged, alert, and always in exchange with both the near and greater outside world.  

Bíborka has been working as one of the Civic Engagement Office’s student assistants at Bard College Berlin. In this role, she organizes events around current issues in the political, social and humanitarian realm, and assists with student projects while bringing the Bard College Berlin community into closer contact with Berlin as well as a more global community. She also explores these issues in her academic work as she writes papers and engages in research revolving around these topics. To complement these efforts, she further participates in numerous conferences that enable her to contextualize and advance her knowledge in an international and interdisciplinary context. 

Florian Becker, BCB’s Managing Director, awarded the DAAD certificate to Bíborka​​​​​​​ during “Winterzauber,” the traditional end-of-year celebration held on December 16, 2019 and open to the entire campus community.

The DAAD Award is a monetary award of €1000 that is part of DAAD funding in the STIBET program. It honors outstanding international students in Germany with an exceptional record of engagement for social, political, cultural or humanitarian causes.

On Monday, December 16, 2019 Professor of Art and Society Dorothea von Hantelmann will give a talk entitled “Live Art in Dead Institutions - What comes after the exhibition?” at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts.

The talk will focus on understanding museums and exhibitions as modern ritual places with a social function, due to the values and concepts they help bring into society. By situating museums in the context of Western liberalism, von Hantelmann argues that we can grasp the transformations which currently affect the ritual of exhibition and performance, and we can discuss whether our present asks for a new type of ritual. 

Read more>> 

In a ceremony that took place on Friday, December 6, 2019 at the Bremen City Hall, Roger Berkowitz, founder and academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, and Jerome Kohn (present via video), trustee of the Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust and editor of many volumes of Arendt's posthumous work, were awarded the 2019 Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought  from the Heinrich Böll Foundation. 

Among those who spoke in praise of Berkowitz and Kohn was Antonia Grunenberg, Professor Emerita of Politics at the University of Oldenburg, who noted that the prize is thus returning to its origins. Ellen Ueberschär, President of the Böll Foundation, further commented, in light of the German-US relation, that the awarding of the prize to two US scholars is a sign. Funded by the state government of Bremen and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the 10,000 EUR prize recognizes the crucial role the work of Berkowitz and Kohn plays in preserving the political ideas of Hannah Arendt. 

Read more (Bremer Nachrichten)>>

London Review of Books recently published a review of the catalogue Emil Nolde: The Artist during the Third Reich, co-edited by Bard College Berlin Professor of Art History Aya Soika with Bernhard Fulda (Cambridge University) and Christian Ring (Nolde Stiftung Seebüll), and published for the exhibition of the same name which ran at Berlin’s Hamburger Bahnhof from April 12 to September 15, 2019. 

The article traces the extensive research carried out by Fulda and Soika in the archives of the Nolde estate in Seebüll. Their revised narrative of the painter’s life challenged entrenched postwar myths about Nolde and prompted a fervent discussion in the German chancellery, where two of Nolde’s paintings had been previously displayed. 

You can read the review here>>

On November 19, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was the moderator of a lecture on "How automation is transforming the German labor market" delivered by Laura Tyson at the ESMT Berlin. Tyson is the Richard Holbrooke Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin and a Distinguished Professor of the Graduate School and Faculty Director of the Institute for Business & Social Impact at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley. The lecture discussed the impact of automation on work and the labor market in Germany.

You can watch a recording here>>

On November 29-30, 2019 faculty member Daniela Crăciun held a workshop in the frame of Timișoara Workshops on Research Methods, an annual series organized by the West University of Timișoara. 

Crăciun's workshop aimed to survey a family of research methods for systematically extracting information from textual data for scientific purposes known as content analysis.

The event brought together participants from several international academic institutions to discuss quantitative text analysis, more specifically the conceptual, analytical and visual tools to systematically extract meaning from text for social research.

More information>> 
 

Bard College Berlin Professor of Macroeconomics Marcus Giamattei has recently published together with Ted Bergstrom (University of California-Santa Barbara), Humberto Llavador (Pompeu Fabra University and Barcelona GSE) and John H. Miller (Carnegie Melon University) a free web-book with materials and software to run experiments in economics classes with the use of mobile devices. 

Based on a book originally published by Bergstrom and Miller, the experiments collected as web resources start from the authors’ observation that ”conducting economic experiments in the classroom, with discussions before, during, and after the experiments, is an effective way of getting students to use economics to think about the world around them.”

Resources for each experiment include instructions for faculty & students, exercises, warm-up quizzes, and tools to evaluate participation & performance. They are freely available at https://econclassexperiments.com/. 

On November 13, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann gave an interview on Inforadio about the first public hearing in the Trump impeachment inquiry. He argued that the chances Trump would be removed from office are very low and that the impeachment process might actually backfire on the Democrats. At the same time, Vormann noted, the fact that an impeachment inquiry takes place could be an advantage for the Democrats and for the institution of democracy. 

Listen to the interview>> 

On November 12, 2019 BCB’s Professor of Art and Society Dorothea von Hantelmann will participate in a panel discussion entitled “Was Ihr Wollt! Die Neuen Auftraggeber: Klappe halten? Handeln in Zeiten lärmender Rhetorik” at the Volksbühne, Berlin. The discussion is part of the series "Whatever You Want! The Art of the New Patrons," which presents the projects of the New Patrons program and discusses civil society’s underestimated ability to take its cultural needs into its own hands. 

Von Hantelmann will be joined in conversation by artists, activist and art professionals to debate the ways in which action can transform communities much more effectively than noisy rhetoric.  

More info about the event>>

Jens Reich, Chair of the BCB Board of Governors, and his wife Eva were awarded the Federal Cross of Merit (Bundesverdienstkreuz) for the formation of the regime-critical "Friday Circle."

They received the award together with 23 other GDR civil rights activists and former opposition figures from Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier at Schloss Bellevue on Wednesday October 2, the day before German Unification.

For more information, please visit the site of the Bundespräsident.

On November 8, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann will give a presentation entitled “Trumpism as a Global Phenomenon?” at the Annual Meeting of the Political Science Section of the German Association for American Studies, held on November 7-8 at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies. 

The topic of this year’s meeting is “The Corrosion of the Liberal Democratic Order? Transatlantic Perspectives in Perilous Times.” Participants will aim to address current challenges to the democratic order with a focus on the USA or in a comparative perspective.

Vormannn will present in a panel on the “Faultlines of Liberalism? Democracy in the Age of Trump” whose further speakers include scholars from Charles University (Prague), Schiller University Jena, and Hamburg. 

Guest faculty Daniela Crăciun recently published a chapter entitled "Internationalization with Adjectives" in the volume Intelligent Internationalization: The Shape of Things to Come, edited by Kara A. Godwin and Hans de Wit (Brill | Sense). 

In the chapter, Crăciun discusses the rise of internationalization in the recent years in higher education around the world and argues this has resulted in a proliferation of conceptual labels through which scholars attempt to understand the diverse manifestations of internationalization. She further suggests that strategic internationalization documents could be used to understand how higher education systems and institutions engage with internationalization. 

Read more about the volume>>

On November 4, RBB radio aired a documentary that featured the demonstration that took place on Alexanderplatz on November 4, 1989. Initiated by theater professionals from East-Berlin, this peaceful gathering was described by Chair of the BCB Board of Governors Jens Reich - one of the speakers during the event and one of the interviewees for the story - as "the most beautiful day of the GDR and its swan song."

You can listen to the interview here>>

The essay “Archaeology and Jihad” by guest faculty Aaron Tugendhaft was recently published in Cabinet Magazine. In the essay, Tugendhaft traces the role of Baron Max von Oppenheim in excavating the ancient Syrian site of Tell Halaf and the fate of the museum he founded to display the findings. 

Read the essay>>

On November 5, 2019 artist and BCB guest instructor Dafna Maimon, writer, art historian and curator Victoria Camblin, and Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak will participate in a conversation on art historical perspectives as well as social dynamics around motherhood, held at the Grüner Salon, Volksbühne.

The event is part of Volksbühne’s performance series ASSEMBLE, which commissions new live artwork for cultural institutions throughout Berlin. The discussion zooms in on Wary Mary, a performance which Maimon recently created for ASSEMBLE and which was followed by a solo exhibition Mutating Mary at Künstlerhaus Bremen. For both pieces, Maimon has been researching contemporary forms of social pressure on women to reproduce and care, a research process inseparable from personal contemplation of motherhood and experiencing the environment’s treatment of women who are not mothers.

More information and tickets>>

BCB Professor of the Practice of Theater Nina Tecklenburg and her interdisciplinary theater group, Interrobang, will present their interactive audio-installation based on audio-material from Heiner Müller, "The Müllermatrix,” at Hellerau - European Center for the Arts, Dresden, as part of the festival "89/19 - Before/After."

The festival runs from October 24 to November 2, 2019 and is dedicated to questions of coming to terms with the past, contemporary analysis and visions of the future in social times of transformation and upheaval.

In the frame of the festival, Interrobang will also participate in a discussion on the current potential and reception of Heiner Müller’s texts and political thinking on October 27.

More information>>

On October 9, 2019 faculty member Marion Detjen participated in the panel "Kontroverses erinnern? Perspektiven auf DDR-Grenzsoldaten 30 Jahre nach dem Fall der Berliner Mauer" ["Controversial Remembrance? Perspectives on East German Border Guards 30 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall"] at the Berlin Wall Memorial. 

The panel aimed to discuss today's views on East German border guards who were killed in the line of duty, beginning from the case of Egon Schultz, who was accidentally shot dead by a colleague during an escape action and whose story had been concealed by the SED leadership until 1989. The panelists reflected on the controversies that surrounded these situations in the past and how they have transformed in the present. 

More information>> 

The chapter "When Inequalities Matter Most: The Crisis of Democracy as a Crisis of Trust" co-authored by BCB's Professor of Politics Boris Vormann and Christian Lammert (FU Berlin) was recently published in the volume Mobilization, Representation, and Responsiveness in the American Democracy, edited by Michael Oswald (Palgrave Macmillan).

The volume investigates America’s  transforming democracy as it faces the challenges and developments of the 21st century—challenges and developments that have brought deep dissatisfaction, cultural fragmentation, and economic indignation.

In their chapter, Lammert and Vormann shift their attention from the macro factors of democratic crises to the micro level. They seek to develop an analytical model to better understand how trust in politics, as a central pillar of democratic legitimacy and stability, is not simply imposed from the top down, but built from the bottom up. 

Read more about the volume>> 

Faculty member Laura Scuriatti's chapter "Modernism and the Baroque: Two Strange Bedfellows in Mario Praz's Oeuvre" has recently been published in the volume Mario Praz, Voice Centre Stage edited by Elisa Bizzotto (Oxford: Peter Lang). The volume is the first collection of essays in English on Italian writer Mario Praz (1896-1982) and is based on pluri- and interdisciplinary critical approaches by a variety of specialists.

Scuriatti's chapter discusses how Mario Praz's attention for the baroque and mannerism, expressed in particular, but not exclusively, in the collection Il giardino dei sensi (1971), is linked to the renewed interest, in the second half of the nineteenth and the first decade of the twentieth century, in two connected and problematic stylistic labels: Mannerism and the Baroque. The chapter maps the way in which Praz's writings present the subtle interdependence of mannerism, the baroque and a specific version of modernist aesthetics; it also positions Praz's dialectic versions of modernism and the baroque in relation to the early twentieth-century perspectives on the art, literature and culture of the late 16th and 17th century.

Read more about the volume>> 

On September 25, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann gave an interview to RBB Inforadio on the recent launch of an impeachment inquiry of US President Donald Trump. 

In the interview, Vormann notes how the Democrats are trying to speed up the development of the situation, in comparison with the slow tempo of the Mueller Report. If the impeachment procedure is initiated, Vormann further comments, the process could be a lengthy one and could pose certain risks to the Democracts due to the possibility of it backfiring. 

Listen to the interview>> 

Faculty member Matthias Hurst participated in the 10th Annual Conference of the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung [Association for Research in the Fantastic], held on September 18-21, 2019 at FU Berlin and organized by the research group Cinepoetics and the Department of Film Studies.

The topic of the conference was "The Romantic Fantastic," offering a critical look into the relationship between Romanticism and the Fantastic in its many different forms and expressions. Romantic ideas and themes, poetics and images, and their relation to or repercussions in fantastic literature, film, TV, games, etc., were explored in order to analyze the enduring fascination of romantic notions and aesthetics in contemporary (popular) culture as well as the intentions and effects of the Romantic and the Fantastic regarding the political, economic, and ecological realities of our world today in a wide ranging aesthetic and ideological spectrum between escapism, criticism, subversion, and creative rethinking. Keynote presentations were offered by David Sandner and Dame Marina Warner.

Hurst's presentation, "Roboter, Halbgott, Doppelgänger: Romantische Motive in Saturn 3 (1980)," focused on the interpretation of an almost forgotten Science Fiction film of the 1980s, Saturn 3 (dir. Stanley Donen), in the light of romantic ideas and motifs, namely the ideas of "Waldeinsamkeit" (Ludwig Tieck) -- the (ambivalent or even futile) attempt to escape from the bleak realities of modern civilization into a paradise-like isolation--, the dream of eternal, self-sufficient romantic love (Friedrich Schlegel), and the concept of the uncanny Doppelgänger/double, embodying inhibited and repressed feelings or unwanted desire. The futuristic story of a cyborg prototype ("the first of the demigod series") that gets out of control on a remote research station on the third moon of Saturn features obvious elements of Mary Shelley and the "Frankenstein complex" (Lisa Zunshine) with its criticism of radical enlightenment and rationalism and its clash of cognitive concepts of sentient life vs. artificial life, but allows for a more refined reading by virtue of an intriguing convergence of dystopian, romantic and psychoanalytical discourses.   

More info about the conference>> 

Faculty Agata Lisiak and her University of Greenwich colleague and migART collaborator Elena Vacchelli organized a two-panel stream at the RC21 (urban sociology) conference which took place on September 18-21, 2019 in New Delhi.

Lisiak and Vacchelli’s stream titled “Cities for girls, boys, and everyone else” explored how urban youth engage with, modify, manipulate, and negotiate the structures of urban control in their everyday life, how young people’s access to the city and their sense of belonging therein are gendered, and how this gendering is classed and racialized, how it intersects with sexuality, religion, migration status, and caste. The contributions included in the stream presented research conducted in Dar es Salaam, Lahore, Helsinki, Dehradun, and Mumbai, among other cities.

Read more about the conference>>

BCB arts instructor John Kleckner is presenting the solo exhibition “Desert Rumors” at the gallery Francesco Pantaleone in Milan. Showcasing new paintings by Kleckner, the exhibition opens on September 24, 2019 and runs through November 23, 2019.

More information>> 

Faculty member Hanan Toukan recently published the article "Liberation or emancipation? Counter-hegemony, performance and public space in Lebanon" in the International Journal of Cultural Studies. 

From the article's abstract:
"This article is about the ways in which counter-hegemony is expressed in performance art dealing with notions of public space and the publics. The article examines two works of art from Lebanon: Rabih Mroué and Lina Saneh’s Photo-Romance (2009), produced and performed before the initial heady days of the Arab uprisings of 2011 unravelled, and the Dictaphone Group’s This Sea is Mine (2012), produced immediately after the onset of the uprisings. Each of the pieces interrogates public space and citizenship in Beirut in very different ways to express dissent and perform resistance.[...] By drawing on theories of aesthetics and their relationship to radical democracy in public space, the article highlights the different iterations of counter-hegemony that circulate in the work of these contemporary Arab artists to argue that, like the momentous Arab uprisings of 2011–12, resistant works of art may only be understood within a longer history of strife and popular protest in the region that have produced differing forms of dissent at various points in time." 

Link to article>>

On September 23-24, 2019 faculty members Kerry Bystrom, Michael Weinman, and Aaron Tugendhaft are participating in the international conference "Hannah Arendt – Thinking and Education in Times of Crisis" held at the European Humanities University, Vilnius.

The conference invites to identify, raise, and discuss critical issues of contemporary European university education by re-reading, re-considering, and re-invigorating the thinking of Hannah Arendt on the Conditio Humana, on the plurality of Man, and the philosophical roots of education.

In a panel devoted to Bard College Berlin, Bystrom, Weinman, and Tugendhaft will give presentations on "Creating a World in Common: The Program for International Education and Social Change at Bard College Berlin," "Our Educational Institutions between Past and Future: The Crisis of Education as a Crisis of Authority," and, respectively, "Teaching Thinking without a Banister." 

Bard College Berlin representatives will also participate in a round table discussion on "Hannah Arendt's Legacy and Liberal Arts Curricula" with delegates from Bard College NY, EHU Vilnius, LCC International, Oldenburg University, University Klaipeda, and UNI-Y.

Conference program>>

BCB's Director of Studio Arts John von Bergen has recently been contracted by the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (Bundesamt für Bauwesen und Raumordnung) to produce his prize-winning 2017 Kunst am Bau proposal "Wandlung."

The 14 meter-high architecturally integrated concrete relief is planned to be finished in 2021.

More info about the Kunst am Bau competition and von Bergen's proposal>> 

On September 11, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was interviewed by Deutsche Welle on the departure of national security adviser John Bolton from the White House. 

Vormann commented that this development reflects Trump's lack of vision for the US foreign policy, which is full of contradictions as Trump prefers to focus on domestic policy. While there were some policy overlaps between Bolton and Trump, Vormann noted that the contradictions between them were very apparent as Trump consistently turned away from foreign policy. 

Watch the interview>> (source: dw.com)

In the frame of its partnership with the Open Learning Initiative (OLIve), Bard College Berlin will host from January to May 2020 the full-time, 4-month preparatory program OLIve-Access, aimed at individuals with refugee status or a refugee-like situation in Europe wishing to improve their Academic English in order to study at university. 

OLIve-Access will offer intensive Academic English & Academic Preparation classes as well as Academic Seminars in order to raise students' Academic English from B1 to B2 level (required for university study). 

Successful graduates of the program are expected to apply to OLIve-UP, a 10-month preparatory program for MA studies in English at Central European University, Vienna. 

OLIve-Access at Bard College Berlin plans to accept six students with a refugee background in its first cohort. Scholarships are available. 

The program is funded by Erasmus+, the EU's program to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe, and by the Higher Education Support Program of the Open Society Foundations and implemented at Bard College, Berlin.

The deadline to apply for OLIve-Access is September 29, 2019. 

Open call and eligibility criteria>>

On September 6, 2019 from 7:30pm faculty member Marion Detjen will participate in a public reading and discussion on migration in Germany organized by Flüchtlingspaten Syrien (Syrian Refugee Sponsors) at the Literaturhaus (Fasanenstraße 23, 10719 Berlin). 

Detjen will be joined in conversation by Dilek Güngör, author of the novel Ich bin Özlem, and by Stephan Detjen, senior correspondent for Deutschlandradio. 

The proceeds from the ticket sales will go to the Flüchtlingspaten Syrien, an organization which helps Syrian refugees with the retrieval of family members.

More information about the event>>

On September 6, 2019, faculty Laura Scuriatti and Ulrike Wagner, and guest faculty Dorothea Schöne will participate in a panel discussion and artist talk entitled "Kunst in unruhigen Zeiten" [Art in Troubled Times] at the Kunsthaus Dahlem. 

The event is a presentation of the recent volume Groups, Coteries, Circles and Guilds. Modernist Aesthetics and the Utopian Lure of Community [Peter Lang, 2019] edited by Scuriatti, which features essays by Wagner ("Utopias of Purposelessness: Sacred and Secular Sociability around 1800"), Schöne ("Modernism and Pan-Europeanism: Utopian Concepts and Visions of the Porza Group") as well as Scuriatti ("Together, on Her Own: A Survey of Mina Loy’s Textual Communities.")

Joined in conversation by Reinhold J. Fäth (HKS Ottersberg) and artist Jenny Michel, the panel participants will discuss the role of art in troubled times and the type of political projects that art can convey. They will focus specifically on the first half of the twentieth century, when the avant-garde on both sides of the Atlantic aligned to search through radical experiments and utopian visions alternatives to the political present. The essays collected in the Groups, Coteries, Circles and Guilds volume examine the social and artistic projects of those times as expressions of various forms of utopia based on an ethos of community and friendship.  

Date&time: Friday, September 6, from 7:00pm
Venue: Kunsthaus Dahlem, Käuzchensteig 12, 14195 Berlin
Admission free

The language of the event is German

More information>> 

In 2019 Bard College Berlin joined the Refugee Education Initiatives (REIs) Consortium, which addresses challenges that refugees and asylum seekers face in accessing higher education. As part of its role, BCB will take over education programs that were intended to run at REIs partner Central European University.

The first such program, OLIve-Plus, will be hosted by BCB between September 2019 and January 2020, and is a full-time course of study for individuals with refugee status in Germany. 

Six students with a refugee background are currently enrolled in the first cohort of OLIve-Plus at BCB. The program prepares them to make competitive applications to Master’s degrees at Central European University. Students take courses in Economics and Business Studies, Human Rights or Public Policy, and additionally in Academic English and Graduate Writing.

More info about the program>>

On August 1, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann provided an analysis of the second round of the US Democrats' primary debates for Deutsche Welle News.

According to Vormann, the division between the Republican and Democratic parties is currently doubled by a split within the parties themselves, which makes any predictions very difficult. The split within the Democratic party could however be used as an indication of what sort of presidential candidates are expected. Vormann further commented that the results of the primary debates are usually volatile and that by September, as the number of candidates reduces, it will be clearer which of them have viable chances.  

Watch the full analysis here>> (source: dw.com)

Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak has published a paper titled “Poza girl power: dziewczyński opór, kontrpubliczności i prawo do miasta” [Beyond girl power: girl resistance, counterpublics, and the right to the city] in Praktyka Teoretyczna, a Polish journal of philosophy and critical social sciences.

Lisiak argues that girlhood's political potential does not lie in the power of individual girls, but in acknowledging the commonalities and multiplicities of girls' experiences. A non-heroic approach to girlhood that rejects the individualistic 'girl power' paradigm opens up new, sometimes contradictory narrations and representations of contemporary girlhood and reveals not only the intricate workings of exclusion mechanisms, but also the various inclusive tactics and resistance strategies at work.

You can read the full article in Polish here>> 

On July 4-6, 2019 faculty member Marion Detjen participated in the conference „Wer ist Flüchtling? Flucht und Asyl in Deutschland seit 1945“ ["Who Is Refugee? Refuge and Asylum in Germany since 1945"] organized by the Jena Center for 20th Century History. 

The conference aimed to historically analyze perception and categorization practices which emerged in dealing with refugees in Germany since 1945 and to contextualize these in an interdisciplinary exchange. 

In the frame of the conference, Detjen participated in the concluding panel on „Deutschland nach der 'Flüchtlingskrise'“ ["Germany after the 'Refugee Crisis'"].

More information on the conference>>

The Heinrich Böll Foundation in Bremen, Germany, has awarded its Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought to Roger Berkowitz, founder and academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College.

The annual award was created to honor individuals who identify critical and unseen aspects of current political events and who are not afraid to enter the public realm by presenting their opinion in controversial political discussions. The Hannah Arendt Award is a public prize, and therefore not based solely on academic achievement. Funded by both the state government of Bremen and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the prize is endowed with 10,000 Euros and is awarded by an international jury.

Berkowitz shares the 2019 award with fellow recipient Jerome Kohn, trustee of the Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust and editor of many volumes of Arendt's posthumous work.

The jury praised Berkowitz’s merits as a constitutional theorist and for his work as director of the Arendt Center, a place where “students from all over the world are encouraged to learn to politically think and to study the writings of a political philosopher who never respected the restraints of philosophical thinking.”

More info>>

The volume Democracy in Crisis: The Neoliberal Roots of Popular Unrest written by Professor of Politics Boris Vormann and Christian Lammert (FU Berlin) was recently published in an English edition by Penn Press with a translation by Susan H. Gillespie (founding director of the Institute for International Liberal Education and Vice President for International Education at Bard College).

Liberal democracies on both sides of the Atlantic find themselves approaching a state of emergency, beset by potent populist challenges of the right and left. But what exactly lies at the core of widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo? In Democracy in Crisis, Christian Lammert and Boris Vormann argue that the rise of populism in North Atlantic states is not the cause of a crisis of governance but its result.

Read more about the volume>>

Faculty member Andreas Martin Widmann recently presented a creative non-fiction paper at the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) biennial conference “Paradise on Fire”, which took place at the University of California, Davis in June 2019.

Widmann’s presentation “The Days of the Nuthatch: Imagining Ecological Coexistence in the Anthropocene” links observations on patterns in bird behavior to both ecocritical theory and harmful land use by humans causing habitat loss through urban sprawl. In discussing the practice of nest-reusal common to nuthatches, the paper also thinks about how “looking at animals” can result in anthropomorphical projections as well as in unexpected visions of alternative housing and ways of living for humans. 

Literature and environment, the field of the conference, is related to a new literature course Widmann will be offering in Spring 2020. Widmann received a DAAD conference travel grant for the trip.

Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak and Alicja Kaczmarek (founder and director of the Polish Expats Association and Centrala Gallery in Birmingham, UK) are co-authors of the chapter titled "Making something out of nothing: On failure and hope in community activism and research” in the newly published UCL Press volume Studying Diversity, Migration and Urban Multiculture: Convivial Tools for Research and Practice co-edited by Mette Luise Berg and Magdalena Nowicka.

In their chapter, Lisiak and Kaczmarek discuss how inventiveness, creativity, and, above all, hope-driven refusal to give into what seems to be a failure, are the driving force behind community activism and research. While not exactly a manual, the chapter discloses practices, mechanisms, and tactics that have emerged during the design and application of creative and collaborative methods in social activism and research. The chapter, as well as the entire book, are available as free downloads from the UCL Press website.

Bard College Berlin Board of Governors member and civil rights advocate Kimberly Marteau Emerson recently published a contribution co-written with Nina Smidt (Director, ZEIT-Foundation) and entitled "Berlin: The Beating Heart of European Civil Society" on the blog of the Center on Public Democracy at USC.  

In the aftermath of the closing of Open Society Foundation and the Central European University in Budapest, as well as similar situations that threaten liberal democracy in Europe, the two authors turn their attention to Berlin and its status as a safe haven for civil society institutions and initiatives. Emerson and Smidt urge that, with the support of the federal government, Berlin plays “a pivotal role in shaping civil society in Germany, Europe and the world at large. It is our hope that it acts on this opportunity.” 

Read the contribution>> 

The volume Plato and the Moving Image, co-edited by Bard College Berlin faculty member Michael Weinman and Shai Biderman (Tel Aviv University), was recently published by Brill Publishers.

From the book's description:
This book shows how and why debates in the philosophy of film can be advanced through the study of the role of images in Plato’s dialogues, and, conversely, why Plato studies stands to benefit from a consideration of recent debates in the philosophy of film. Contributions range from a reading of Phaedo as a ghost story to thinking about climate change documentaries through Plato’s account of pleonexia. They suggest how philosophical aesthetics can be reoriented by attending anew to Plato’s deployment of images, particularly images that move. They also show how Plato’s deployment of images is integral to his practice as a literary artist.

Weinman also contributed a chapter to the book on "The Myth of Er as Rationalizing Recording Device."

The book is available both in print and in e-book edition and can be found here.

On June 19, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann discussed for Deutsche Welle the formal kick-off of Trump's 2020 re-election campaign. Vormann commented that Trump's re-election bid is not surprising and that it is accompanied by familiar themes which have so far been the focus of Trump's presidency. Vormann also discussed the meaning of the swing states for Trump and urged for cautiousness regarding the current poll numbers. 

Watch the interview>> (source: dw.com) 

On June 18-19, 2019 Bard College Berlin representatives participated in the conference "The Other 1 Percent - Refugees at Institutions for Higher Education Worldwide," organized by the German Federal Foreign Office (FFO), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Berlin, in celebration of World Refugee Day on June 20. The conference was opened by Heiko Mass, the German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The conference aimed to strengthen collaboration between higher education stakeholders in countries where displaced individuals live to ensure that generations of young people do not lose their opportunity to lead productive, engaged and independent lives today and in future. In panel discussions, workshops and world-cafés, participants explored opportunities to expand access to higher education for displaced individuals, identified good practices, partnership opportunities and possible actions in the areas of financing and partnerships, inclusion and access, research and data, connected learning, internationalization and transition to employment. 

Bard College Berlin was represented at the conference by Associate Dean Kerry Bystrom, who gave a presentation in a workshop on “Research and data” moderated by economist and peace researcher Tilman Brück; by Civic Engagement Manager Xenia Muth, who introduced BCB’s Program for International Education and Social Change in a poster exhibition on the inclusion of qualified refugees in German universities; and by student Ehab Badwi (BA 2022, Syria), who participated in a student panel discussion on “Refugee student experiences at higher education institutions worldwide” and in the workshop "Student-led Initiatives." 

Read more about the conference>>

On June 7, 2019 faculty member Aya Soika was a guest on the radio show Forum (SWR 2) to discuss together with art critic and journalist Till Briegleb and art historian Christoph Zuschlag (University of Bonn) the relation of the Expressionist art movement "Die Brücke" to National Socialism. 

The radio show draws on two current exhibitions co-curated by Soika - A German Legend. Emil Nolde and the Nazi Regime at the Hamburger Bahnhof and Escape into Art? The Brücke Painters in the Nazi Period at the Brücke Museum in Berlin, which both grapple with the question of whether the Brücke artists were victims of the National Socialist cultural policy in light of their inclusion in the "Degenerate Art" exhibition. In the radio show, Soika highlights that the exhibitions are trying to go beyond the scope of this question, to look at the case of each painter individually and also in relation to the changes in their painting style and their actions after 1933. 

Listen to the show>> 

Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak was recently a guest on the podcast "Who Belongs?", produced by the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley.

Lisiak spoke about her work on Eastern European migration to Western Europe, the experiences of migrant mothers in particular, and the relationship between gentrification and language in European cities. 

Listen to the podcast>>

Bard College Berlin is pleased to announce a partnership with OLIve - the Open Learning Initiative through which it will be able to host a full-time, 5-month university preparatory program on campus starting September 2019. Entitled OLIve-Plus, the program is aimed at students with a refugee background in Germany who wish to apply to an MA program at the Central European University in Vienna.

The course of study includes workshops on how to make a successful university application, classes in academic writing and academic skills, a regular academic seminar, auditing degree level classes at Bard College Berlin, and preparation for standardized exams in English such as TOEFL.

The deadline to apply for the program is July 5, 2019. 

More information about the program>>

Open call and eligibility criteria>>

On June 12, 2019 faculty member Laura Scuriatti gave a lecture on “Censoring, Understanding, Marketing Modernist Literature: The Trials of Ulysses” at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, in the frame of a course on Joyce taught by Prof. Dr. Claudia Olk. 

The lecture focused on the trials that took place in the US against the publication of Joyce's Ulysses. Scuriatti discussed the role of small magazines in the promotion and dissemination of modernist literature, and the impact of the arguments developed during the time of the first trial (1921) on the structure and style of the book, as well as on its reception.

The volume Groups, Coteries, Circles and Guilds. Modernist Aesthetics and the Utopian Lure of Community edited by faculty member Laura Scuriatti was recently published with Peter Lang. 

From the book’s description:
The essays in this volume analyse the significance (and failures) of literary coteries as spaces of aesthetic and political freedom. They explore the internationalist and interdisciplinary practices of the Porza Group, the abstrakten hannover and the anthroposophical group Aenigma; the utopian efforts of the artists’ communities at Dornach (Switzerland) and Farley Farm, in England; the political and aesthetic implications of collaborative practices of cultural mediation, criticism and translation within the Bloomsbury group, the «Young American Critics», and of single individuals in relation to networks and avant-garde coteries, such as Mina Loy, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Djuna Barnes. The volume offers an evaluation of the roots and ethos of sociability in the Enlightenment, as the basis of modernist utopias of community; it also reflects on the problematic notion of individual authorship within artistic groups, as in the case of the early-modernist Finnish author Algot Untola, who created around forty fictitious author-names.

The volume includes essays by faculty members Ulrike Wagner ("Utopias of Purposelessness: Sacred and Secular Sociability around 1800") and Dorothea Schöne ("Modernism and Pan-Europeanism: Utopian Concepts and Visions of the Porza Group"), as well as an essay by Scuriatti entitled "Together, on Her Own: A Survey of Mina Loy’s Textual Communities." 

More information>> 

On May 31, 2019, Martin Binder gave a talk entitled "Pro-Environmental Norms, Green Lifestyles and Subjective Well-Being" in the Cournot seminar series at the University of Strasbourg. 

The talk was based on a paper co-authored by Binder with Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg (University of Goettingen) and Heinz Welsch (University of Oldenburg). The paper grapples with several explanations offered in literature for the positive relationship between green lifestyles and subjective well-being, more specifically with the effect that social or group norms may have on such behavior. Using panel data from the UK, the paper authors demonstrate that the relationship is a positive one, and their findings support the idea that “the relationship between a green lifestyle and subjective well-being relies (in addition to conformity with a moral norm) on group identity rather than conformity with a society-wide green norm.”

More information about the Cournot seminar series>>

On June 3, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was invited by Deutsche Welle to comment on Trump's visit to London. 

Vormann noted that Trump's visit to London, which had been planned shortly after Trump took office, coincides with a critical moment in UK's history. One of Trump's goals, in Vormann's view, is to endorse Boris Johnson as successor of Theresa May, given their mutual support of key issues. Vormann further commented on the economic interests of Trump given the Brexit trade deal.

View the interview>>

On May 31st, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was interviewed by the radio network SWR2 and by the public TV station Das Erste (Tagesschau) on US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Berlin during his current European tour. 

For SWR2, Vormann highlighted that the Trump-led US administration departed from the soft power politics that had characterized the post-war years and had centered on cooperation, military & financial support. Under Trump, the policy has been to re-negotiate everything, Vormann commented, including transatlantic relations and more pressing international conflicts. Listen to the interview>>

On Tagesschau, Vormann focused on the discussions that Pompeo carried out with Angela Merkel and Heiko Maas in Berlin. Vormann commented that the current relation of US to Germany marks a departure from the times of transatlantic alliances; this departure began during Obama's presidency (with the re-orientation of USA towards Asia), and accentuated in Trump's time. Vormann also added that there are aspects in which the USA and Germany hold opposing views, for example in the case of Iran, but this will not affect the current relation between the two countries. Watch the interview>>

On May 30 - June 1, 2019 faculty member Ewa Atanassow will participate in the conference “Popular Sovereignty, Majority Rule, and Electoral Politics,” organized by the Institute for the Human Sciences, Vienna—where the event will be held—, the Center for Trans Cultural Studies (Chicago & New York), and the Center for Global Culture and Communication at Northwestern University.

The conference brings together international scholars in political and social sciences, history, philosophy, and anthropology to examine how the concepts “popular sovereignty,” “majority rule” and “electoral politics”—which over the last three hundred years were constitutive of the democratic project—have in recent decades evolved into threats to the spirit and norms of democracy everywhere. 

In the frame of the conference, Atanassow will give a presentation on “Popular Sovereignty on Trial” in a panel discussion on “Popular Sovereignty and Neo-Liberalism” chaired by Dilip Gaonkar (Northwestern University). 

Conference poster>>

On May 23, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann gave a talk in the Urban American Studies colloquium of the research group "Scripts for Postindustrial Urban Futures: American Models, Transatlantic Interventions" (in short: City Scripts) at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Vormann’s talk was entitled “Urbanization and Infrastructural Statecraft in the American Century.”

The research group City Scripts explores the imaginative strategies and narrative scenarios which the centers of old industries (steel, coal and cars) in the United States and Germany are devising to forge paths into their futures. The public colloquium held between April and July 2019 invites researchers to present their ongoing projects. 

More info>>

For the 2019 summer Bard College Berlin joins PAF Campus, a network of Berlin-based universities offering seminars, workshops, artists’ discussions and visits to performances during the Berlin Performing Arts Festival (PAF). 

Between May 28 and June 2, 2019 Bard College Berlin students can participate in a variety of workshops on performance-based practices and discourses related to Berlin’s vibrant independent performing arts scene, from set design to writing, performance-making and performance analysis. 

Bard College Berlin guest faculty Daniel Reeve has recently accepted an offer of appointment as Assistant Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara (USA). The appointment begins in autumn 2019. 

A scholar of medieval culture and literature, Reeve was one of the instructors in the core courses Plato’s Republic and Its Interlocutors (Fall 2018) and Forms of Love (Spring 2019) at Bard College Berlin. In 2018-2019 Reeve has been affiliated with the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, after serving as a fellow in 2016-2018. 

Reeve’s profile on the ICI Berlin website>> 

Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak and Director of Studio Arts John von Bergen will participate in the conference "Data-stories: New Media Aesthetics and Rhetorics for Critical Digital Ethnography," held in Volos, Greece, on May 31 - June 2, 2019. 

Bringing together young researchers, cultural producers, and the general public, the conference will both explore and perform new media narratives, thus aiming to push contemporary digital culture to its analytical and expressive limits.

In the frame of the conference, Lisiak will moderate the presentation of VR explorations, multimedia & multimodal ethnographic projects, and will participate in a roundtable with scholars from Bard College (New York), KEAE, the University of the Aegean, and the University of Thessaly. Von Bergen will give a presentation on "Exploring VR in the Studio Arts Classroom."

The conference is organized by the Laboratory of Social Anthropology and the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly.

Read more>>

Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak and student Mohamad Othman (BA '21, Syria) will participate in the conference “We, the City. Plurality and Resistance in Berlin and Istanbul,” held on May 23-25 at various locations in Berlin. The conference brings together scholars, activists, and artists from Berlin and Istanbul to explore various forms of knowledge-production, including workshops, panels, and installations. 

On the first day of the conference Mohamad Othman will guide a tour titled “Why We're Here” which offers a unique comparative take on conflict and uprising in Syria and Berlin. Mohamad will engage with recent Syrian history by drawing parallels to selected events from Berlin’s past. The two-hour tour will start at U-Mohrenstrasse in Mitte.

The speakers in the panel “Re-Writing the City Through Engaged Walking” co-organized by Agata Lisiak will explore various political efforts centered on the idea of walking, which aim to re-write hegemonic narratives of cities. The speakers (academics and activists from Istanbul and Berlin) will also closely consider walking as an ethnographic and activist method of engagement with the urban and discuss with the audience how we can make cities more inclusive through walking and how we can make walking more inclusive.

More about the conference>>

On May 16-18, 2019 faculty member Aya Soika participated in the conference "Unbewältigt? Ästhetische Moderne und Nationalsozialismus. Kunst, Kunsthandel, Ausstellungspraxis" [“Unresolved? Aesthetic Modernism and National Socialism. Art, art trade, exhibition practice”], conceived by Meike Hofmann (Research Center 'Degenerate Art’, Freie Universität), Dieter Scholz (Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), together with Bernhard Fulda (University of Cambridge) and Soika, and supported by the Ferdinand-Möller-Stiftung.

The international conference brought together experts in National Socialism and early 20th century Art and Culture to introduce and discuss the latest findings from research and exhibition practice. The participants aimed to examine the motivations of artists, art historians, and art dealers in connecting the forms of expression of modernism with National Socialism, as well as to explore how the multifaceted and contradictory image of the German art world in 1933-1945 could be presented in the institutional context of a museum. 

In the frame of the conference, Soika was invited to speak on co-curating the exhibitions A German Legend. Emil Nolde and the Nazi Regime (Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin) and Escape into Art? The Brücke Painters in the Nazi Period (Brücke Museum, Berlin), and to moderate a panel on the "Persecution Narrative and Heroic Stories of Modernity in Post-war Germany." 

Read more about the conference>>

Faculty member Marion Detjen contributed to a radio show on the history of the German Basic Law, which aired on Bayerischer Rundfunk on May 20, 2019 to mark the 70th anniversary since the birth of this text.

Detjen, who is co-author of the volume Die Deutschen und das Grundgesetz: Geschichte und Grenzen unserer Verfassung [The Germans and the Basic Law: The History and Limits of our Constitution], was invited to speak about the Germans’ perception of the Basic Law around its birth. Detjen noted that in the aftermath of the Second World War, feelings such as freedom or self-determination were far from the German population, and it took a while to realize the constitutional and liberal potential of the Basic Law. Detjen also discussed the constitutional experiments that took place before the reunification and the organic character of the Basic Law. 

Listen to the piece here>>  

On Tuesday May 14, 2019, Bard College Berlin celebrated the inauguration of its new student residence, Henry Koerner Hall.

Named after the Austrian-born American painter and graphic designer Henry Koerner (1915-1991), the building was designed by the renowned Rotterdam-based Atelier Kempe Thill. 

The festivities began with a ribbon cutting ceremony which featured short addresses from Leon Botstein, President of Bard College; Peter Baldwin, Co-founder of the Arcadia Fund and Member of the Board of Governors of Bard College Berlin; André Kempe, Co-founder and Partner at Atelier Kempe Thill; and Sӧren Benn, Mayor of Berlin-Pankow. Two exhibitions were on view at Henry Koerner Hall following the inauguration. The first presented a group of prints by Henry Koerner, including My Parents based on an iconic painting by the artist. Also on view was a selection of issues of TIME magazine featuring portraits by Koerner on the cover. The second exhibition, The Skin of the Law. European Migration Regimes and their Global Realities, showed works created by students from Bard College Berlin and was curated by professors Dorothea von Hantelmann and Marion Detjen. 

The day continued with a series of discussions at St. Maria Magdalena Church, located in the proximity of Henry Koerner Hall. Joseph Leo Koerner, Harvard art historian, author and son of Henry Koerner, gave a presentation on the work and life of his father. The college was delighted to host keynote speeches by Sigmar Gabriel, Member of the German Bundestag, and the artist, architect, and filmmaker Alfredo Jaar. The closing event was a panel discussion and open forum with Tracey Emin, artist; Barbara Haskell, curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Orwa Nyrabia, Artistic Director of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam; and Joseph Koerner, moderated by Leon Botstein. 

The college wishes to thank Arcadia, A charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, for making the construction of Henry Koerner Hall possible. 

Booklet on Henry Koerner Hall>>

Press features
Im Geist von Hannah Arendt, Der Tagesspiegel, May 13, 2019
Wiener Emigrant Henry Koerner wird Namenspatron eines Berliner Studentenheims, Der Standard, May 14, 2019

 

The article "Comparing Public Communication in Democracies and Autocracies - Automated Text Analyses of Speeches by Heads of Government" co-authored by faculty member Seraphine Maerz and Carsten Q. Schneider (Central European University) was recently published in the international journal of methodology Quality & Quantity. 

Article abstract:
Renewed efforts at empirically distinguishing between different forms of political regimes leave out the cultural dimension. In this article, we demonstrate how modern computational tools can be used to fill this gap. We employ web-scraping techniques to generate a data set of speeches by heads of government in European democracies and autocratic regimes around the globe. Our data set includes 4740 speeches delivered between 1999 and 2019 by 40 political leaders of 27 countries. By scaling the results of a dictionary application, we show how, in comparative terms, liberal or illiberal the leaders present them-selves to their national and international audience. In order to gauge whether our liberal-ness scale reveals meaningful distinctions, we perform a series of validity tests: criterion validity, qualitative hand-coding, unsupervised topic modeling, and network analysis. All tests suggest that our liberalness scale does capture meaningful differences between political regimes despite the large heterogeneity of our data.

Read more here>>

On April 14, 2019 the exhibition Escape into Art? The Brücke Painters in the Nazi Period, co-curated by faculty member Aya Soika with Lisa Marei Schmidt (Brücke Museum) and Meike Hoffmann (Research Center 'Degenerate Art’, Freie Universität), opened at the the Brücke Museum in Berlin. 

The exhibition offers a detailed examination of the artistic practice, scope and everyday life of the initial members of Brücke - Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Pechstein and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - during the Nazi period. It seeks to take a multifaceted view and approaches the complexity of the Brücke history – between recognition and ‘defamation’ – by means of artworks and extensive documentation.

The exhibition runs through August 11, 2019. 

More information>> 

Reviews
Wer hat hier „entartet“ gesagt?, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 4, 2019
Das Ende der verklärten Bilder, in Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 24, 2019

The fourth European Liberal Education Student Conference (LESC) will be held at Bard College Berlin on May 2-5, 2019.

A student-organized conference, this year's LESC welcomes approximately fifty student participants from liberal education institutions all over Europe to consider the central theme "Liberal Education: In Conversation with Today's World of Tomorrow." The student participants are themselves international and come from institutions in Poland, Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovakia, the UK, Belgium, and Lithuania.

LESC 2019 seeks to understand the tone and content of the conversation between a Liberal Education and the world at large, asking how current model(s) of Liberal Education interact with the spheres of politics, technology, society, the global economy, and education historically, today, and into the future. It asks what supports and what stifles Liberal Education and how Liberal Education can help us as individuals and on an institutional level accomplish the needed change in each of these fields.

Lectures in the scope of the conference program will be open to the Bard College Berlin community with advance registration.

The LESC organizing committee wishes to express its gratitude to the Bard College Berlin faculty & community, as well as to Bard Center for Civic Engagement and ECOLAS (The European Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences) for their invaluable financial support.  

More information about LESC 2019>>

On April 25, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was invited by Deutsche Welle’s show “The Day with Brent Goff” to comment with Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson on Joe Biden’s announcement of his candidacy for US President in 2020.

Vormann was reluctant to offer a prognosis at this point in time, especially considering the current split in the US Democratic Party, which is reflected in similar splits beyond the US. He noted that, while Biden is popular with unions and workers, he would have to fight to win over the nonvoters from the previous election, and also to straighten the legacy surrounding his name. 

Watch the video>> (source: dw.com)

On April 11, 2019 Bard College Berlin in cooperation with The Bard Institute for the Revival of Democracy through Sortition (B.I.R.D.S.) and the German think tank denkzentrum|demokratie organized a discussion on “Reviving Democracy. Can Citizens’ Assemblies Fix Representation?”.

Part of the event, B.I.R.D.S. had the great pleasure to introduce a surprise guest of honor - Greek social politician Theodore Stathis. As a trustee of Andreas Papadremos, he helped overthrow the Hunta in 1973, was a member of the Greek parliament for over 30 years and has as of recent earned much appreciation for his work at the national bank of Greece, as well as in music composition. Stathis is also an advocate of sortition and, during the discussion, he provided valuable input on electoral parties controlled by sortition (a system he had helped developed in the 70s together with Papadremos). 

The event took place in connection to the course Introduction to Comparative Politics led by Boris Vormann, and also featured Jonas Kunz and Hans Kern from B.I.R.D.S., as well as Dr. Andreas Schiel and Tom Wohlfarth from denkzentrum|demokratie. 

Faculty member Laura Scuriatti recently published the volume Mina Loy’s Critical Modernism with Florida University Press. 

From the book’s description:
This book provides a fresh assessment of the works of British-born poet and painter Mina Loy. Laura Scuriatti shows how Loy’s “eccentric” writing and art celebrate ideas and aesthetics central to the modernist movement while simultaneously critiquing them, resulting in a continually self-reflexive and detached stance that Scuriatti terms “critical modernism.”   
Offering new insights into Loy’s feminism and tracing the writer’s lifelong exploration of themes such as authorship, art, identity, genius, and cosmopolitanism, this volume prompts readers to rethink the place, value, and function of key modernist concepts through the critical spaces created by Loy’s texts. 

Read more about the book>>

On April 18, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann gave an interview to rbb's Inforadio on the expected release of a redacted version of the Mueller report. 

Bormann commented that he expects the content of the report to be controversial and also prone to interpretation. He pointed to previous declarations that may suggest the report should be read with a certain dose of skepticism. 

Vormann also noted that it is a common practice to redact passages in such reports, but that the Ministry of Justice's free hand in deciding what should be redacted constitutes a dilemma given the way the US institutional system is set up.

Listen to the interview here>> 

On April 12, the exhibition A German Legend. Emil Nolde and the Nazi Regime curated by Bard College Berlin's Professor of Art History Aya Soika opens at the Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof.

The exhibitions looks at the Expressionist painter's role during the Third Reich and asks how Nolde’s ostracism and occupational ban fit with our knowledge that he was a Nazi Party member, and that he kept faith with the regime until the end of the war. To accompany the exhibition, a richly illustrated volume of essays and pictures (also in an English edition), as well as a separate volume with a timeline and more than 100 documents, will be published. The show is curated together with Bernhard Fulda and Christian Ring, and made possible by the Friends of the Nationalgalerie and supported by the Friede Springer Stiftung.

The exhibition Emil Nolde – A German Legend. The Artist and the Nazi Regime is based on the results of a multi-year academic research project which for the first time was able to analyse the extensive holdings of the Nolde estate in Seebüll, uncovering so much new material that the conventional Nolde narrative must be revised. Thus, for example, the exhibition will present the famous Unpainted Pictures – the small-format watercolours Nolde was reputed to have secretly painted at Seebüll during his occupational ban – in a completely new light, explaining them as part of a long-standing practice of self-stylisation. The importance of this self-stylisation – and how strongly it has influenced our view of Nolde – will be demonstrated to visitors through a reconstruction of the ‘painting gallery’ in Nolde’s studio house in Seebüll. This reconstruction will display the paintings and watercolours just as the ageing artist himself arranged them during the wartime winter of 1941/42. The exhibition will present over 100 originals, some of which have not previously been shown, with references to Nolde’s writings and in the historical context of their creation, in order to reveal the multi-layered relationships between paintings, the artist’s self-presentation, his ostracism, and development of his legend. What impact did the ‘Third Reich’ have on Emil Nolde's artistic work? To what extent do some of his works, such as his depictions of mythic sacrificial scenes or Nordic people, correspond with his sympathies for the regime? What effects did Nolde’s defamation and occupational ban have on his artistic practice and political outlook? And how did the myths about Nolde develop in the post-war period?

The exhibition will run through September 15.

More information>>

Media features in connection to Soika's research on Emil Nolde
To the Bitter End, in London Review of Books (December 5, 2019)
Hängt sie auf, in Süddeutsche Zeitung (June 14, 2019)
Die angepassten Expressionisten, on SWR 2 (June 7, 2019)
Emil Nolde, der Nazi, in Süddeutsche Zeitung (April 11, 2019)
Le passé trouble d’Emil Nolde, une ombre au tableau in Le Monde (April 11, 2019)
Der entartete Nazi, RBB (April 10, 2019)
New Berlin exhibition exposes Emil Nolde’s Nazi ties in The Art Newspaper (April 10, 2019)
Stripping Away Lies to Expose a Painter’s Nazi Past in The New York Times (April 10, 2019)

On May 18, 2019 the students, faculty, staff, alumni/ae, and friends of Bard College Berlin will celebrate the conclusion of the academic year 2018-2019.  

The ceremony will be held at the Ballhaus Pankow, which has been the venue of the past two Commencements. The Ballhaus was built during the Belle Époque (1880) as a recreation & ball structure and is nowadays considered a historical monument. 

The 2019 Commencement speaker will be lawyer, civic leader, and human rights advocate Kimberly Marteau Emerson. From 2013 to 2017 she lived in Berlin with her husband, U.S. Ambassador to Germany John B. Emerson (ret.). Here, she worked both with the Embassy and independently to drive projects on multiple platforms, including the promotion of German immigration and integration efforts related to the 2015-2016 refugee “crisis" and addressing the issue of bringing women to the economic and political decision-making table. She now divides her time between Los Angeles and Berlin. She serves on the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch, the Advisory Board of the USC Center on Public Diplomacy, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy. Kimberly holds degrees from UCLA (B.A.), UC Hastings College of the Law (J.D.) and l’Université de Droit d’Aix-Marseille (D.E.S.U.).

The ceremony will feature a musical introduction by BCB students.

Bard College Berlin’s eighth graduating BA cohort consists of 51 students from 29 countries, including Canada, China, Ecuador, France, Georgia, India, Israel, Kosovo, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, Russia, Syria, Turkey, and the USA. 

The faculty and staff congratulate the Class of 2019 for their achievements! 

On April 14-15, 2019 faculty members Geoff Lehman and Michael Weinman will participate in a series of alumni-organized events in Chicago centered on their recent volume The Parthenon and Liberal Education (SUNY Press, 2018).

On April 14, Lehman and Weinman will participate in a reading followed by a discussion with David Shiner (The Shimer Great Books School at North Central College) at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. 
More information>>

On April 15, the University of Chicago will host a day-long workshop bringing together philosophy scholars, art historians, classicists, and historians of science to discuss the questions raised by Lehman and Weinman in their volume. 
More information>>

The events are organized by BCB alumni and current PhD students at the University of Chicago Ena M. Gojak (BA 2012), David Kretz (BA 2016) and Xinyue Zhang (BA 2018) together with Pirachula Chulanon (PhD student, the University of Chicago). 

Faculty member David Hayes recently published an essay called “In praise of lameness: A response to William Deresiewicz’s Excellent Sheep” in the journal Arts and Humanities in Higher Education.
 

On March 14, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann gave a talk on “Governing Transactional Economies” at the international conference “Cities and International Law in the Urban Age,” organized by the Asser Institute (the Hague, Netherlands) in cooperation with Freie Universität Berlin. 

The aim of the conference was to examine “a wide range of practical developments and theoretical dimensions of the changing position and role of cities in international law and governance.”

Vormann’s talk was part of a panel on “Practice Areas: How Cities are Reshaping Legal Fields.”

More about the conference>>

A review of BCB German instructor Andreas Martin Widmann's novel Messias (Rowohlt, 2018) was recently published by Der Tagesspiegel. 

The reviewer considers Messias more “ambitious” and “polyphonic” than Widmann’s first novel Die Glücksparade (Rowohlt, 2012), and praises Widmann’s writing skills as well as his approach to the narrative.

Read the review here>>  

On February 22, faculty member Katalin Makkai participated in a panel representing the American Society for Aesthetics at the Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association (Central Division) in Denver, Colorado (USA). Her talk was entitled “Meaning and Mattering.”

Makkai was also invited to lead a discussion, together with Richard Eldridge and Michael Fischer, following a screening of Preston Sturges’ film "The Lady Eve" (1941) at the Sie Film Center on February 23. The screening and discussion, under the heading of “Exploring Stanley Cavell on Film,” were open to the public. Co-sponsored by the American Society for Aesthetics and the Denver Project for Humanistic Inquiry (D-phi) at MSU Denver, the discussion drew the largest audience to date to such events.

The volume Contours of the Illiberal State. Governing Circulation in the Smart Economy, co-edited by Professor of Politics Boris Vormann with Christian Lammert (FU Berlin), was recently published with campus. 

The book discusses the relation between government intervention and globalization, and how this can influence democracy. The contributions provide a historical comparative perspective of the sustained, central role of the US state in the smart economy. 

Read more>>

For the second time, the German Studies Program at Bard College Berlin received a DAAD STIBET I.

Similar to last year, the STIBET funding will be used to support the advanced seminar “The German Public Sphere” (in German) that brings together students with guest speakers and faculty to discuss the key themes of migration, populism, artificial intelligence, and gender equity, and to visit German media outlets.

Recent guest seminar leaders included Johanna Luyssen from the Libération on current Franco-German relationships, Sebastian Kenn on projects of the European Democracy Lab and Alexander Sängerlaub from Stiftung Neue Verantwortung on media and fake news; together with Caroline Kent from Tactical Technology Collective, students discussed the organization’s work at the intersection of technology, human rights and civil liberties, and hosted a Glassroom Experience exhibition on campus.

Bard College Berlin will also use the funds to continue last year’s conference series on the topic of antisemitism in cooperation with the Centre Marc Bloch. And through the financial support of STIBET I, supervised student tutors will assist students to advance their German language skills in individual meetings, tailored to their needs and questions.

The DAAD's STIBET initiative is a combined scholarship and support program offered to universities using funding from the Federal Foreign Office. STIBET’s overarching objective is to make a contribution towards improving the academic success rate of foreign students.