News Archive

An article written by faculty member Dr. Kerry Bystrom and Brenda Werth (American University) was recently published in a special issue on "Rhetorics Regulating Childhood and Children's Rights" of the journal JAC. Titled "Stolen Children, Identity Rights and Rhetoric (Argentina, 1983-2012)," the article tracks the development from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s in Argentina of a highly compelling political narrative about the wrongness of the dictatorship of the military junta, who kidnapped and detained in clandestine prisons up to 30,000 civilians, including up to 500 children, in their attempt to eradicate those they saw as Communist terrorists. The authors then turn to the present day, to a series of court cases aimed at recovering the stolen children which have helped shape public debates about the right to identity and national values. The article is available online here. JAC is a quarterly journal for the interdisciplinary study of rhetoric, culture and politics. The special issue on children's rights was edited by Wendy S. Hesford and Katrina M. Powell.

Meta: Type(s): Faculty | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

The Anthropocene is the name proposed by scientists for the new geological age we now find ourselves in. Literally an 'age of humanity' in which we have become the most significant shaper of the world (as the sun was in the Holocene). In 1804 Schelling wrote of the future 'annihilation of nature' that would occur if we continued to value nature only for its economic worth. This prediction was grounded in his broader critique of modernity's obsession with the control and clarity promised by the logical reflection of self-certainty succinctly expressed in Descartes' Cogito. Certainty and control, however, are purchased at the price making the object world of Nature a domain irreducibly detached and separate from our consciousness, with no inherent value beyond its instrumental value to our needs. Thinking beyond the annihilation of nature is the attempt to think beyond this destructive frame of modernity. The question is: How might we use the rich resources of Schelling's works – on art, on myth, on nature and religion – as a source and foil for creating a new way of understanding nature, ourselves and our relation to nature, so that we can move beyond, and thus hopefully stop or mitigate the radical changes we are causing to our world? The very possible annihilation of nature we now face – annihilation not in the sense of the end all life, but in the nonetheless world changing extinctions predicted by Hanson and others, - this possible annihilation creates a space for philosophical reflection that can no longer indulge in the luxury of more scholastic speculations, but must instead work to think creatively within the absolute horizon of such a future. Bruce Matthews received his B.A. from the University of Virginia, a M.A.R from Yale Divinity School, and a PhD from the New School University in Philosophy in 1999. He is a member of the Bard College Faculty who helped found the Bard High School Early College in New York City, and is currently Visiting Faculty at Duke University. While his passion is teaching in urban, tuition-free programs such at BHSEC and The Clemente Program, he has also taught at Universities in Tübingen and Freiburg, and lectured extensively. His field of research is German Idealism and Romanticism, focused on the work of F.W.J. Schelling. He is the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the Hans Jonas Award, two Fulbright Senior Scholar awards, and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Recent publications include "Schelling: A Brief Biographical Sketch of the Odysseus of German Idealism," in The Palgrave Handbook to German Idealism (2014), and "The New Mythology: Between Romanticism and Humanism," in The Relevance of Romanticism (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Books include F.W.J. Schelling's Berlin Lectures: the Grounding of Positive Philosophy (SUNY Press 2007), Schelling's Organic Form of Philosophy: Life as the Schema of Freedom (SUNY 2011), and the forthcoming intellectual biography, Schelling: Heretic of Modernity. Time: Tuesday, October 14, 2014 from 19:00 Venue: Bard College Berlin Main Auditorium Platanenstr. 98a, Berlin - Pankow (map here) Admission free

Meta: Type(s): Event | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

On Wednesday October 8, 2014 at 12:30, faculty member Dr. Irit Dekel presented a paper on "The condensation of time and space in home historical museums." This paper is an early exploration of the question of 'atmosphere' as a mode of experience in home historical museums through the condensation of time and space performed by the positioning and presentation of objects, stories and bodies. Dr. Dekel will present the categories of experience through which time and space get condensed in the museums, creating intimations and thereby distinctions between knowledgeable insiders and peeping outsiders to an era, a person, and to historical narrative. This work is based on a comparative research in home historical museums in Germany and Israel, which is currently conducted by two teams and financed by the German Israeli Foundation for Research and Development (GIF).

Meta: Type(s): Event | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

On October 6, the Hate and Revolution course hosted Daniel Schönpflug, Vice Director of the Centre Marc Bloch at the Humboldt University, for a guest seminar on "Hate and other Feelings in the French Revolution." Revolutions are moments of intense emotions. On the one hand, the revolutionary momentum is driven by feelings as much as by ideas. On the other, revolutions change the way people feel – both in particular situations, but also in general as they transform what William Reddy called "emotional regimes." Historians of the French Revolution, who work with primary sources come across many emotions such as joy, hate, zeal or fear. But systematic research on the subject has only just begun. By presenting his work on Jacobinism and a chapter of Arno J. Mayer's "The Furies," Daniel Schönpflug offered students an insight into the laboratory of the emotional history of 1789, and shed light on the crucial role of hate in the revolutionary dynamic. Dr. Daniel Schönpflug is Vice Director of the Centre Marc Bloch at the Humboldt University of Berlin. His fields of research include the French Revolution, royal kinship networks in Europe, and the history and methodology of historiography. Outside Germany, he has taught as visiting professor at the Sorbonne, and has held prestigious fellowships at the German Historical Institutes in Paris and London, and the Center for European Studies at Harvard University. Daniel Schönpflug is the author of "Der Weg in die Terreur. Radikalisierung und Konflikte im Straßburger Jakobinerclub 1790-1795" ("The road to Terror. Radicalisation and Conflicts in the Strasbourg Jacobin Club," Oldenburg, 2002) and most recently of the monograph "Die Heiraten der Hohenzollern" ("Hohenzollern Weddings,"2013). He is also co-editor of books on various subjects, such as migration and transfer in the Age of Revolution (2002), Friedrich Meinecke (2006), enmity and cultural transfers in Europe in the 19th and 20th c. (2007), and religion in the French and Russian Revolutions (2008). Read more about the Hate and Revolution course in the frame of the Academic Initiative on Hate and the Human Condition here. This seminar is only open to students enrolled in the Hate and Revolution course.

Meta: Type(s): Event | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

Faculty member Prof. Dr. Martin Binder presented a paper on the heterogeneous effects of unemployment on subjective well-being at the 2014 Quality of Life Conference "Sustaining Quality of Life across the Globe," organised by the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies (ISQOLS) and the Free University on September 15-18, 2014 in Berlin. In the frame of the conference, Prof. Binder also chaired a session on statistical applications for quality of life research. Read more about the conference here.

Meta: Type(s): Faculty | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

The article "The Ideology of Life and the Necessity of its Critique" by faculty member Dr. Jan Völker was recently published in the third issue of the journal Crisis and Critique, edited by Frank Ruda and Agon Hamza. In this article Dr. Völker poses the question of whether the notion of life can become a target of a critique of ideology, given that theoretical conceptions of life tend to conceive of life as an ambiguous zone, neither purely objective, nor purely subjective. To answer this question, Dr. Völker examines, on the one hand, the framework of the critique of ideology developed by Žižek, and, on the other hand, the notion of life as reflected in the works of Kant and Meillassoux, and concludes that the possibility of such a critique depends upon the status of the subject. You can read the article here.

Meta: Type(s): Faculty | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

An article by faculty member Dr. David Hayes was recently published on the blog of The Chronicle of Higher Education. Titled "When BS is a Virtue," the post addresses the framework and goals of class conversations in liberal-arts colleges and the humanities. Drawing from his own experience with teaching and discussing texts in a classroom setting, Dr. Hayes grapples with the entrenched concept of "critical thinking" and proposes an approach that is more tailored to the students' way of thinking and to the purposes of humanistic education. You can read the blog post here.

Meta: Type(s): Faculty | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

The essay "Im kinematographischen Kabinett des Dr. Caligari. Fremdkontrolle und Ich-Verlust im Film" ("In the Cinematographic Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. External Control and Loss of I in Film") by faculty member Prof. Dr. Matthias Hurst has recently appeared in the volume Fremdkontrolle: Ängste - Mythen - Praktiken (External Control: Anxieties - Myths - Practices) edited by Michael Schetsche and Renate-Berenike Schmidt, and published by Springer VS. In this essay, Prof. Hurst explores the dimensions of external control and the loss of the self and independent self-control in films from the Weimar Republic (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Dr. Mabuse) and more recent films like The Sorcerers, The Exorcist and The Truman Show. The selection of analyzed films covers different genres and offers different explanations -- sociological, technological, fantastic, and psychoanalytical -- for the phenomenon of external control and its explicit or implicit, allegorical or symbolic depiction in films. It could be mad scientists, aliens, computers, the media, social estrangement, split personalities or the devil himself who take over control and turn the individual into a helpless puppet and victim of circumstances. In films these possibilities are presented as science fiction stories or as tales of horror, as cases of psychological alienation or as criticism of social, political and technological development. In many cases the causes for loss of control overlap and thus create an even more hopeless situation for the individual or the human condition in general. Read more about the book here.

Meta: Type(s): Faculty | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

The article "How to Act As If One Were Not Free: A Contemporary Defense of Fatalism" by faculty member Dr. Frank Ruda has recently appeared in the third issue of the philosophical journal Crisis and Critique. The article draws on the thought of Descartes, Kant, Hegel and Marx to offer a critical account of a predominant subjective state today: indifference. It systematically elaborates its conceptual coordinates and shows in which sense it ultimately implies a problematic, misperceived conception of freedom. Against the background of this analysis, the article defends fatalism as a possible means to counter states of indifference and thereby attempts to move from critical analysis to the affirmative formulation of a principle of orientation: act as if you are not free. The article is available online here. The third issue of Crisis and Critique addresses the topic of "Crisis today" and was edited by Frank Ruda and Agon Hamza. The issue is available online here.

Meta: Type(s): Faculty | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

Faculty member Laura Scuriatti attended the fourth Biannual Conference of the EAM Network (European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies), which took place in Helsinki on August 29-31 and addressed the topic of Utopia. As part of the conference, Prof. Dr. Scuriatti co-organized and co-chaired a panel on "Phalansteries, Groups, Circles and Guilds. Modernist Aesthetics and the Utopian Lure of Community" with Prof. Caroline Patey, of the Universita' Statale di Milano. The panel explored the relevance of group artistry to Modernist aesthetics, politics and ethics. While Modernism has long been investigated in the wake of the primary role played by individual voices and authorship, the contributors to the panel showed how a large number of known and less known collective experiences are crucial for the understanding of the aesthetic production and practices of both Avant-garde and modernism, also from the point of view of their (very different) utopian goals. Papers in the panel investigated the collective attempts to reassess and reformulate the meaning of art, creativity and craft in the light of communal practices and choices, focusing also on methodological and theoretical questions concerning authorship and authorial signature. Read more about the conference here.

Meta: Type(s): Faculty | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

Twenty-five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, this transatlantic conference explored the significance of Heiner Müller for the theater, literature and politics of our own century. Political thinkers, critics, scholars, actors and directors from Germany, the USA and several European countries asked what Müller's theatrical examinations of an often catastrophic past mean today and whether any positive visions of the future might be built from them. The presentations were addressed to a wide-ranging public interested in theater, literature and contemporary art. An event organized by the International Heiner Müller Society in cooperation with Bard College Berlin; Dickinson College USA; Research Center for Europe, University of Trier; NYU Berlin; the Literaturforum in the Brecht House; the International Brecht Society; Theater der Zeit. Sponsored by the Transatlantic Program of the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany through funds of the European Recovery Program (ERP) of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy (BMWi). Additional sponsors: Arbeitsgemeinschaft Literarischer Gesellschaften und Gedenkstätten (ALG), the Braun Foundation for International Exchange, the Prussian Maritime Trade Foundation Participants included: Gregor Gysi (member of the Bundestag, Die Linke), Jens Reich (molecular biologist), Wolfgang Engler (Hochschule für Schauspiel „Ernst Busch"), Thomas Martin (Volksbühne), Ivica Buljan (Zagreb International Theatre Festival), Hermann Beyer (actor), Thomas Heise (documentary filmmaker), David Levine (Bard College Berlin), Joachim Fiebach (FU Berlin), Barbara Hahn (Vanderbilt University), Jost Hermand (University of Wisconsin), Frank Hörnigk (HU Berlin), Uwe Schütte (Aston University), B.K. Tragelehn (director) and Ginka Tscholakowa (director). Venues: Friday: Theater der Zeit (Winsstraße 72) Saturday: The Academy of Arts Berlin (Hanseatenweg 10) Sunday: The Academy of Arts Berlin (Pariser Platz 4) The conference will be held in German and English. Schedule (in German)

Meta: Type(s): Event | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |