News Archive

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>>

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

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>>

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

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>>

Meta: Type(s): Student,PIESC | Subject(s): Bard College Berlin | Institutes(s): Bard College Berlin |

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>>

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

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>>

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

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.

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

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>> 

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

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>>

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

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>>

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

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>>

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