News Archive

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. 
https://the-americans.com/25-kimberly-marteau-emerson-what-is-germany-doing-right-in-this-crisis/

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

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.

The article in Nature Connections can be found here.
A non-technical explanation of the paper can be found here.

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

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. 

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

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>>
 

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

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.”

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

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!

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

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>>

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

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>> 

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

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">>

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

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>> 

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

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 |

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>>

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

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>> 

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

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>>

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

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

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

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>>

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

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>>

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

On January 13, 2020, Academy Year 2007 alum 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>>

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

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

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

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.

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

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>> 

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

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>> 

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

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)>>

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

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>>

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

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>>

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

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>> 
 

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

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/. 

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

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>> 

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

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>>

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

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.

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

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. 

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

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>>

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

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>>

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

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>>

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

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>>

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

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>>

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

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>> 

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

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. 

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

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.

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

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>> 

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

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>> 

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