News Archive

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.

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

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>>

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

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)

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

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) >>

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

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.

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

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. 
https://www.skd.museum/forschung/veranstaltungen/

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

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. 

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

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 >>

 

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

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>>

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

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.

 

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

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.
 

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

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.



 

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

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>>

 

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

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.
 

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

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 >>
 

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

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.

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

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 >>
 

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

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 >>
 

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

"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 >>

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

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

 

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

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)

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

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 >>

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

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.”
 

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

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 >>
 

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

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 >>

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

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 >>
 

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

“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>>
 

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

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 >>

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

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 >>

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

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 >>

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

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.

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

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 |