News Archive

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. 

Read more about the volume>> 

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.

Read more about the volume>> 

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 |

Faculty Agata Lisiak and her University of Greenwich colleague and migART collaborator Elena Vacchelli organized a two-panel stream at the RC21 (urban sociology) conference which took place on September 18-21, 2019 in New Delhi.

Lisiak and Vacchelli’s stream titled “Cities for girls, boys, and everyone else” explored how urban youth engage with, modify, manipulate, and negotiate the structures of urban control in their everyday life, how young people’s access to the city and their sense of belonging therein are gendered, and how this gendering is classed and racialized, how it intersects with sexuality, religion, migration status, and caste. The contributions included in the stream presented research conducted in Dar es Salaam, Lahore, Helsinki, Dehradun, and Mumbai, among other cities.

Read more about the conference>>

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

BCB arts instructor John Kleckner is presenting the solo exhibition “Desert Rumors” at the gallery Francesco Pantaleone in Milan. Showcasing new paintings by Kleckner, the exhibition opens on September 24, 2019 and runs through November 23, 2019.

More information>> 

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

Faculty member Hanan Toukan recently published the article "Liberation or emancipation? Counter-hegemony, performance and public space in Lebanon" in the International Journal of Cultural Studies. 

From the article's abstract:
"This article is about the ways in which counter-hegemony is expressed in performance art dealing with notions of public space and the publics. The article examines two works of art from Lebanon: Rabih Mroué and Lina Saneh’s Photo-Romance (2009), produced and performed before the initial heady days of the Arab uprisings of 2011 unravelled, and the Dictaphone Group’s This Sea is Mine (2012), produced immediately after the onset of the uprisings. Each of the pieces interrogates public space and citizenship in Beirut in very different ways to express dissent and perform resistance.[...] By drawing on theories of aesthetics and their relationship to radical democracy in public space, the article highlights the different iterations of counter-hegemony that circulate in the work of these contemporary Arab artists to argue that, like the momentous Arab uprisings of 2011–12, resistant works of art may only be understood within a longer history of strife and popular protest in the region that have produced differing forms of dissent at various points in time." 

Link to article>>

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

On September 23-24, 2019 faculty members Kerry Bystrom, Michael Weinman, and Aaron Tugendhaft are participating in the international conference "Hannah Arendt – Thinking and Education in Times of Crisis" held at the European Humanities University, Vilnius.

The conference invites to identify, raise, and discuss critical issues of contemporary European university education by re-reading, re-considering, and re-invigorating the thinking of Hannah Arendt on the Conditio Humana, on the plurality of Man, and the philosophical roots of education.

In a panel devoted to Bard College Berlin, Bystrom, Weinman, and Tugendhaft will give presentations on "Creating a World in Common: The Program for International Education and Social Change at Bard College Berlin," "Our Educational Institutions between Past and Future: The Crisis of Education as a Crisis of Authority," and, respectively, "Teaching Thinking without a Banister." 

Bard College Berlin representatives will also participate in a round table discussion on "Hannah Arendt's Legacy and Liberal Arts Curricula" with delegates from Bard College NY, EHU Vilnius, LCC International, Oldenburg University, University Klaipeda, and UNI-Y.

Conference program>>

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

BCB's Director of Studio Arts John von Bergen has recently been contracted by the Federal Office for Building and Regional Planning (Bundesamt für Bauwesen und Raumordnung) to produce his prize-winning 2017 Kunst am Bau proposal "Wandlung."

The 14 meter-high architecturally integrated concrete relief is planned to be finished in 2021.

More info about the Kunst am Bau competition and von Bergen's proposal>> 

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

On September 11, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was interviewed by Deutsche Welle on the departure of national security adviser John Bolton from the White House. 

Vormann commented that this development reflects Trump's lack of vision for the US foreign policy, which is full of contradictions as Trump prefers to focus on domestic policy. While there were some policy overlaps between Bolton and Trump, Vormann noted that the contradictions between them were very apparent as Trump consistently turned away from foreign policy. 

Watch the interview>> (source: dw.com)

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

In the frame of its partnership with the Open Learning Initiative (OLIve), Bard College Berlin will host from January to May 2020 the full-time, 4-month preparatory program OLIve-Access, aimed at individuals with refugee status or a refugee-like situation in Europe wishing to improve their Academic English in order to study at university. 

OLIve-Access will offer intensive Academic English & Academic Preparation classes as well as Academic Seminars in order to raise students' Academic English from B1 to B2 level (required for university study). 

Successful graduates of the program are expected to apply to OLIve-UP, a 10-month preparatory program for MA studies in English at Central European University, Vienna. 

OLIve-Access at Bard College Berlin plans to accept six students with a refugee background in its first cohort. Scholarships are available. 

The program is funded by Erasmus+, the EU's program to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe, and by the Higher Education Support Program of the Open Society Foundations and implemented at Bard College, Berlin.

The deadline to apply for OLIve-Access is September 29, 2019. 

Open call and eligibility criteria>>

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

On September 6, 2019 from 7:30pm faculty member Marion Detjen will participate in a public reading and discussion on migration in Germany organized by Flüchtlingspaten Syrien (Syrian Refugee Sponsors) at the Literaturhaus (Fasanenstraße 23, 10719 Berlin). 

Detjen will be joined in conversation by Dilek Güngör, author of the novel Ich bin Özlem, and by Stephan Detjen, senior correspondent for Deutschlandradio. 

The proceeds from the ticket sales will go to the Flüchtlingspaten Syrien, an organization which helps Syrian refugees with the retrieval of family members.

More information about the event>>

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

On September 6, 2019, faculty Laura Scuriatti and Ulrike Wagner, and guest faculty Dorothea Schöne will participate in a panel discussion and artist talk entitled "Kunst in unruhigen Zeiten" [Art in Troubled Times] at the Kunsthaus Dahlem. 

The event is a presentation of the recent volume Groups, Coteries, Circles and Guilds. Modernist Aesthetics and the Utopian Lure of Community [Peter Lang, 2019] edited by Scuriatti, which features essays by Wagner ("Utopias of Purposelessness: Sacred and Secular Sociability around 1800"), Schöne ("Modernism and Pan-Europeanism: Utopian Concepts and Visions of the Porza Group") as well as Scuriatti ("Together, on Her Own: A Survey of Mina Loy’s Textual Communities.")

Joined in conversation by Reinhold J. Fäth (HKS Ottersberg) and artist Jenny Michel, the panel participants will discuss the role of art in troubled times and the type of political projects that art can convey. They will focus specifically on the first half of the twentieth century, when the avant-garde on both sides of the Atlantic aligned to search through radical experiments and utopian visions alternatives to the political present. The essays collected in the Groups, Coteries, Circles and Guilds volume examine the social and artistic projects of those times as expressions of various forms of utopia based on an ethos of community and friendship.  

Date&time: Friday, September 6, from 7:00pm
Venue: Kunsthaus Dahlem, Käuzchensteig 12, 14195 Berlin
Admission free

The language of the event is German

More information>> 

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

In 2019 Bard College Berlin joined the Refugee Education Initiatives (REIs) Consortium, which addresses challenges that refugees and asylum seekers face in accessing higher education. As part of its role, BCB will take over education programs that were intended to run at REIs partner Central European University.

The first such program, OLIve-Plus, will be hosted by BCB between September 2019 and January 2020, and is a full-time course of study for individuals with refugee status in Germany. 

Six students with a refugee background are currently enrolled in the first cohort of OLIve-Plus at BCB. The program prepares them to make competitive applications to Master’s degrees at Central European University. Students take courses in Economics and Business Studies, Human Rights or Public Policy, and additionally in Academic English and Graduate Writing.

More info about the program>>

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

On August 1, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann provided an analysis of the second round of the US Democrats' primary debates for Deutsche Welle News.

According to Vormann, the division between the Republican and Democratic parties is currently doubled by a split within the parties themselves, which makes any predictions very difficult. The split within the Democratic party could however be used as an indication of what sort of presidential candidates are expected. Vormann further commented that the results of the primary debates are usually volatile and that by September, as the number of candidates reduces, it will be clearer which of them have viable chances.  

Watch the full analysis here>> (source: dw.com)

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

Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak has published a paper titled “Poza girl power: dziewczyński opór, kontrpubliczności i prawo do miasta” [Beyond girl power: girl resistance, counterpublics, and the right to the city] in Praktyka Teoretyczna, a Polish journal of philosophy and critical social sciences.

Lisiak argues that girlhood's political potential does not lie in the power of individual girls, but in acknowledging the commonalities and multiplicities of girls' experiences. A non-heroic approach to girlhood that rejects the individualistic 'girl power' paradigm opens up new, sometimes contradictory narrations and representations of contemporary girlhood and reveals not only the intricate workings of exclusion mechanisms, but also the various inclusive tactics and resistance strategies at work.

You can read the full article in Polish here>> 

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

On July 4-6, 2019 faculty member Marion Detjen participated in the conference „Wer ist Flüchtling? Flucht und Asyl in Deutschland seit 1945“ ["Who Is Refugee? Refuge and Asylum in Germany since 1945"] organized by the Jena Center for 20th Century History. 

The conference aimed to historically analyze perception and categorization practices which emerged in dealing with refugees in Germany since 1945 and to contextualize these in an interdisciplinary exchange. 

In the frame of the conference, Detjen participated in the concluding panel on „Deutschland nach der 'Flüchtlingskrise'“ ["Germany after the 'Refugee Crisis'"].

More information on the conference>>

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

The Heinrich Böll Foundation in Bremen, Germany, has awarded its Hannah Arendt Award for Political Thought to Roger Berkowitz, founder and academic director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College.

The annual award was created to honor individuals who identify critical and unseen aspects of current political events and who are not afraid to enter the public realm by presenting their opinion in controversial political discussions. The Hannah Arendt Award is a public prize, and therefore not based solely on academic achievement. Funded by both the state government of Bremen and the Heinrich Böll Foundation, the prize is endowed with 10,000 Euros and is awarded by an international jury.

Berkowitz shares the 2019 award with fellow recipient Jerome Kohn, trustee of the Hannah Arendt Bluecher Literary Trust and editor of many volumes of Arendt's posthumous work.

The jury praised Berkowitz’s merits as a constitutional theorist and for his work as director of the Arendt Center, a place where “students from all over the world are encouraged to learn to politically think and to study the writings of a political philosopher who never respected the restraints of philosophical thinking.”

More info>>
https://www.bard.edu/news/details/?id=16076

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

The volume Democracy in Crisis: The Neoliberal Roots of Popular Unrest written by Professor of Politics Boris Vormann and Christian Lammert (FU Berlin) was recently published in an English edition by Penn Press with a translation by Susan H. Gillespie (founding director of the Institute for International Liberal Education and Vice President for International Education at Bard College).

Liberal democracies on both sides of the Atlantic find themselves approaching a state of emergency, beset by potent populist challenges of the right and left. But what exactly lies at the core of widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo? In Democracy in Crisis, Christian Lammert and Boris Vormann argue that the rise of populism in North Atlantic states is not the cause of a crisis of governance but its result.

Read more about the volume>>

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

Faculty member Andreas Martin Widmann recently presented a creative non-fiction paper at the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) biennial conference “Paradise on Fire”, which took place at the University of California, Davis in June 2019.

Widmann’s presentation “The Days of the Nuthatch: Imagining Ecological Coexistence in the Anthropocene” links observations on patterns in bird behavior to both ecocritical theory and harmful land use by humans causing habitat loss through urban sprawl. In discussing the practice of nest-reusal common to nuthatches, the paper also thinks about how “looking at animals” can result in anthropomorphical projections as well as in unexpected visions of alternative housing and ways of living for humans. 

Literature and environment, the field of the conference, is related to a new literature course Widmann will be offering in Spring 2020. Widmann received a DAAD conference travel grant for the trip.

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

Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak and Alicja Kaczmarek (founder and director of the Polish Expats Association and Centrala Gallery in Birmingham, UK) are co-authors of the chapter titled "Making something out of nothing: On failure and hope in community activism and research” in the newly published UCL Press volume Studying Diversity, Migration and Urban Multiculture: Convivial Tools for Research and Practice co-edited by Mette Luise Berg and Magdalena Nowicka.

In their chapter, Lisiak and Kaczmarek discuss how inventiveness, creativity, and, above all, hope-driven refusal to give into what seems to be a failure, are the driving force behind community activism and research. While not exactly a manual, the chapter discloses practices, mechanisms, and tactics that have emerged during the design and application of creative and collaborative methods in social activism and research. The chapter, as well as the entire book, are available as free downloads from the UCL Press website.

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

Bard College Berlin Board of Governors member and civil rights advocate Kimberly Marteau Emerson recently published a contribution co-written with Nina Smidt (Director, ZEIT-Foundation) and entitled "Berlin: The Beating Heart of European Civil Society" on the blog of the Center on Public Democracy at USC.  

In the aftermath of the closing of Open Society Foundation and the Central European University in Budapest, as well as similar situations that threaten liberal democracy in Europe, the two authors turn their attention to Berlin and its status as a safe haven for civil society institutions and initiatives. Emerson and Smidt urge that, with the support of the federal government, Berlin plays “a pivotal role in shaping civil society in Germany, Europe and the world at large. It is our hope that it acts on this opportunity.” 

Read the contribution>> 

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

The volume Plato and the Moving Image, co-edited by Bard College Berlin faculty member Michael Weinman and Shai Biderman (Tel Aviv University), was recently published by Brill Publishers.

From the book's description:
This book shows how and why debates in the philosophy of film can be advanced through the study of the role of images in Plato’s dialogues, and, conversely, why Plato studies stands to benefit from a consideration of recent debates in the philosophy of film. Contributions range from a reading of Phaedo as a ghost story to thinking about climate change documentaries through Plato’s account of pleonexia. They suggest how philosophical aesthetics can be reoriented by attending anew to Plato’s deployment of images, particularly images that move. They also show how Plato’s deployment of images is integral to his practice as a literary artist.

Weinman also contributed a chapter to the book on "The Myth of Er as Rationalizing Recording Device."

The book is available both in print and in e-book edition and can be found here.

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

On June 19, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann discussed for Deutsche Welle the formal kick-off of Trump's 2020 re-election campaign. Vormann commented that Trump's re-election bid is not surprising and that it is accompanied by familiar themes which have so far been the focus of Trump's presidency. Vormann also discussed the meaning of the swing states for Trump and urged for cautiousness regarding the current poll numbers. 

Watch the interview>> (source: dw.com) 

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

On June 18-19, 2019 Bard College Berlin representatives participated in the conference "The Other 1 Percent - Refugees at Institutions for Higher Education Worldwide," organized by the German Federal Foreign Office (FFO), the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Berlin, in celebration of World Refugee Day on June 20. The conference was opened by Heiko Mass, the German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Filippo Grandi, UN High Commissioner for Refugees.

The conference aimed to strengthen collaboration between higher education stakeholders in countries where displaced individuals live to ensure that generations of young people do not lose their opportunity to lead productive, engaged and independent lives today and in future. In panel discussions, workshops and world-cafés, participants explored opportunities to expand access to higher education for displaced individuals, identified good practices, partnership opportunities and possible actions in the areas of financing and partnerships, inclusion and access, research and data, connected learning, internationalization and transition to employment. 

Bard College Berlin was represented at the conference by Associate Dean Kerry Bystrom, who gave a presentation in a workshop on “Research and data” moderated by economist and peace researcher Tilman Brück; by Civic Engagement Manager Xenia Muth, who introduced BCB’s Program for International Education and Social Change in a poster exhibition on the inclusion of qualified refugees in German universities; and by student Ehab Badwi (BA 2022, Syria), who participated in a student panel discussion on “Refugee student experiences at higher education institutions worldwide” and in the workshop "Student-led Initiatives." 

Read more about the conference>>

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

On June 7, 2019 faculty member Aya Soika was a guest on the radio show Forum (SWR 2) to discuss together with art critic and journalist Till Briegleb and art historian Christoph Zuschlag (University of Bonn) the relation of the Expressionist art movement "Die Brücke" to National Socialism. 

The radio show draws on two current exhibitions co-curated by Soika - A German Legend. Emil Nolde and the Nazi Regime at the Hamburger Bahnhof and Escape into Art? The Brücke Painters in the Nazi Period at the Brücke Museum in Berlin, which both grapple with the question of whether the Brücke artists were victims of the National Socialist cultural policy in light of their inclusion in the "Degenerate Art" exhibition. In the radio show, Soika highlights that the exhibitions are trying to go beyond the scope of this question, to look at the case of each painter individually and also in relation to the changes in their painting style and their actions after 1933. 

Listen to the show>> 

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

Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak was recently a guest on the podcast "Who Belongs?", produced by the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at UC Berkeley.

Lisiak spoke about her work on Eastern European migration to Western Europe, the experiences of migrant mothers in particular, and the relationship between gentrification and language in European cities. 

Listen to the podcast>>

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

Bard College Berlin is pleased to announce a partnership with OLIve - the Open Learning Initiative through which it will be able to host a full-time, 5-month university preparatory program on campus starting September 2019. Entitled OLIve-Plus, the program is aimed at students with a refugee background in Germany who wish to apply to an MA program at the Central European University in Vienna.

The course of study includes workshops on how to make a successful university application, classes in academic writing and academic skills, a regular academic seminar, auditing degree level classes at Bard College Berlin, and preparation for standardized exams in English such as TOEFL.

The deadline to apply for the program is July 5, 2019. 

More information about the program>>

Open call and eligibility criteria>>

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

On June 12, 2019 faculty member Laura Scuriatti gave a lecture on “Censoring, Understanding, Marketing Modernist Literature: The Trials of Ulysses” at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, in the frame of a course on Joyce taught by Prof. Dr. Claudia Olk. 

The lecture focused on the trials that took place in the US against the publication of Joyce's Ulysses. Scuriatti discussed the role of small magazines in the promotion and dissemination of modernist literature, and the impact of the arguments developed during the time of the first trial (1921) on the structure and style of the book, as well as on its reception.

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

The volume Groups, Coteries, Circles and Guilds. Modernist Aesthetics and the Utopian Lure of Community edited by faculty member Laura Scuriatti was recently published with Peter Lang. 

From the book’s description:
The essays in this volume analyse the significance (and failures) of literary coteries as spaces of aesthetic and political freedom. They explore the internationalist and interdisciplinary practices of the Porza Group, the abstrakten hannover and the anthroposophical group Aenigma; the utopian efforts of the artists’ communities at Dornach (Switzerland) and Farley Farm, in England; the political and aesthetic implications of collaborative practices of cultural mediation, criticism and translation within the Bloomsbury group, the «Young American Critics», and of single individuals in relation to networks and avant-garde coteries, such as Mina Loy, the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and Djuna Barnes. The volume offers an evaluation of the roots and ethos of sociability in the Enlightenment, as the basis of modernist utopias of community; it also reflects on the problematic notion of individual authorship within artistic groups, as in the case of the early-modernist Finnish author Algot Untola, who created around forty fictitious author-names.

The volume includes essays by faculty members Ulrike Wagner ("Utopias of Purposelessness: Sacred and Secular Sociability around 1800") and Dorothea Schöne ("Modernism and Pan-Europeanism: Utopian Concepts and Visions of the Porza Group"), as well as an essay by Scuriatti entitled "Together, on Her Own: A Survey of Mina Loy’s Textual Communities." 

More information>> 

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

On May 31, 2019, Martin Binder gave a talk entitled "Pro-Environmental Norms, Green Lifestyles and Subjective Well-Being" in the Cournot seminar series at the University of Strasbourg. 

The talk was based on a paper co-authored by Binder with Ann-Kathrin Blankenberg (University of Goettingen) and Heinz Welsch (University of Oldenburg). The paper grapples with several explanations offered in literature for the positive relationship between green lifestyles and subjective well-being, more specifically with the effect that social or group norms may have on such behavior. Using panel data from the UK, the paper authors demonstrate that the relationship is a positive one, and their findings support the idea that “the relationship between a green lifestyle and subjective well-being relies (in addition to conformity with a moral norm) on group identity rather than conformity with a society-wide green norm.”

More information about the Cournot seminar series>>

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

On June 3, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was invited by Deutsche Welle to comment on Trump's visit to London. 

Vormann noted that Trump's visit to London, which had been planned shortly after Trump took office, coincides with a critical moment in UK's history. One of Trump's goals, in Vormann's view, is to endorse Boris Johnson as successor of Theresa May, given their mutual support of key issues. Vormann further commented on the economic interests of Trump given the Brexit trade deal.

View the interview>>

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

On May 31st, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was interviewed by the radio network SWR2 and by the public TV station Das Erste (Tagesschau) on US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to Berlin during his current European tour. 

For SWR2, Vormann highlighted that the Trump-led US administration departed from the soft power politics that had characterized the post-war years and had centered on cooperation, military & financial support. Under Trump, the policy has been to re-negotiate everything, Vormann commented, including transatlantic relations and more pressing international conflicts. Listen to the interview>>

On Tagesschau, Vormann focused on the discussions that Pompeo carried out with Angela Merkel and Heiko Maas in Berlin. Vormann commented that the current relation of US to Germany marks a departure from the times of transatlantic alliances; this departure began during Obama's presidency (with the re-orientation of USA towards Asia), and accentuated in Trump's time. Vormann also added that there are aspects in which the USA and Germany hold opposing views, for example in the case of Iran, but this will not affect the current relation between the two countries. Watch the interview>>

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

On May 30 - June 1, 2019 faculty member Ewa Atanassow will participate in the conference “Popular Sovereignty, Majority Rule, and Electoral Politics,” organized by the Institute for the Human Sciences, Vienna—where the event will be held—, the Center for Trans Cultural Studies (Chicago & New York), and the Center for Global Culture and Communication at Northwestern University.

The conference brings together international scholars in political and social sciences, history, philosophy, and anthropology to examine how the concepts “popular sovereignty,” “majority rule” and “electoral politics”—which over the last three hundred years were constitutive of the democratic project—have in recent decades evolved into threats to the spirit and norms of democracy everywhere. 

In the frame of the conference, Atanassow will give a presentation on “Popular Sovereignty on Trial” in a panel discussion on “Popular Sovereignty and Neo-Liberalism” chaired by Dilip Gaonkar (Northwestern University). 

Conference poster>>

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

On May 23, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann gave a talk in the Urban American Studies colloquium of the research group "Scripts for Postindustrial Urban Futures: American Models, Transatlantic Interventions" (in short: City Scripts) at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Vormann’s talk was entitled “Urbanization and Infrastructural Statecraft in the American Century.”

The research group City Scripts explores the imaginative strategies and narrative scenarios which the centers of old industries (steel, coal and cars) in the United States and Germany are devising to forge paths into their futures. The public colloquium held between April and July 2019 invites researchers to present their ongoing projects. 

More info>>

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

For the 2019 summer Bard College Berlin joins PAF Campus, a network of Berlin-based universities offering seminars, workshops, artists’ discussions and visits to performances during the Berlin Performing Arts Festival (PAF). 

Between May 28 and June 2, 2019 Bard College Berlin students can participate in a variety of workshops on performance-based practices and discourses related to Berlin’s vibrant independent performing arts scene, from set design to writing, performance-making and performance analysis. 

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

Bard College Berlin guest faculty Daniel Reeve has recently accepted an offer of appointment as Assistant Professor of Medieval English Literature and Culture in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara (USA). The appointment begins in autumn 2019. 

A scholar of medieval culture and literature, Reeve was one of the instructors in the core courses Plato’s Republic and Its Interlocutors (Fall 2018) and Forms of Love (Spring 2019) at Bard College Berlin. In 2018-2019 Reeve has been affiliated with the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, after serving as a fellow in 2016-2018. 

Reeve’s profile on the ICI Berlin website>> 

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

Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak and Director of Studio Arts John von Bergen will participate in the conference "Data-stories: New Media Aesthetics and Rhetorics for Critical Digital Ethnography," held in Volos, Greece, on May 31 - June 2, 2019. 

Bringing together young researchers, cultural producers, and the general public, the conference will both explore and perform new media narratives, thus aiming to push contemporary digital culture to its analytical and expressive limits.

In the frame of the conference, Lisiak will moderate the presentation of VR explorations, multimedia & multimodal ethnographic projects, and will participate in a roundtable with scholars from Bard College (New York), KEAE, the University of the Aegean, and the University of Thessaly. Von Bergen will give a presentation on "Exploring VR in the Studio Arts Classroom."

The conference is organized by the Laboratory of Social Anthropology and the Department of History, Archaeology and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly.

Read more>>

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

On May 16-18, 2019 faculty member Aya Soika participated in the conference "Unbewältigt? Ästhetische Moderne und Nationalsozialismus. Kunst, Kunsthandel, Ausstellungspraxis" [“Unresolved? Aesthetic Modernism and National Socialism. Art, art trade, exhibition practice”], conceived by Meike Hofmann (Research Center 'Degenerate Art’, Freie Universität), Dieter Scholz (Neue Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), together with Bernhard Fulda (University of Cambridge) and Soika, and supported by the Ferdinand-Möller-Stiftung.

The international conference brought together experts in National Socialism and early 20th century Art and Culture to introduce and discuss the latest findings from research and exhibition practice. The participants aimed to examine the motivations of artists, art historians, and art dealers in connecting the forms of expression of modernism with National Socialism, as well as to explore how the multifaceted and contradictory image of the German art world in 1933-1945 could be presented in the institutional context of a museum. 

In the frame of the conference, Soika was invited to speak on co-curating the exhibitions A German Legend. Emil Nolde and the Nazi Regime (Nationalgalerie, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin) and Escape into Art? The Brücke Painters in the Nazi Period (Brücke Museum, Berlin), and to moderate a panel on the "Persecution Narrative and Heroic Stories of Modernity in Post-war Germany." 

Read more about the conference>>

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

Faculty member Marion Detjen contributed to a radio show on the history of the German Basic Law, which aired on Bayerischer Rundfunk on May 20, 2019 to mark the 70th anniversary since the birth of this text.

Detjen, who is co-author of the volume Die Deutschen und das Grundgesetz: Geschichte und Grenzen unserer Verfassung [The Germans and the Basic Law: The History and Limits of our Constitution], was invited to speak about the Germans’ perception of the Basic Law around its birth. Detjen noted that in the aftermath of the Second World War, feelings such as freedom or self-determination were far from the German population, and it took a while to realize the constitutional and liberal potential of the Basic Law. Detjen also discussed the constitutional experiments that took place before the reunification and the organic character of the Basic Law. 

Listen to the piece here>>  

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

Professor of Migration Studies Agata Lisiak and student Mohamad Othman (BA '21, Syria) will participate in the conference “We, the City. Plurality and Resistance in Berlin and Istanbul,” held on May 23-25 at various locations in Berlin. The conference brings together scholars, activists, and artists from Berlin and Istanbul to explore various forms of knowledge-production, including workshops, panels, and installations. 

On the first day of the conference Mohamad Othman will guide a tour titled “Why We're Here” which offers a unique comparative take on conflict and uprising in Syria and Berlin. Mohamad will engage with recent Syrian history by drawing parallels to selected events from Berlin’s past. The two-hour tour will start at U-Mohrenstrasse in Mitte.

The speakers in the panel “Re-Writing the City Through Engaged Walking” co-organized by Agata Lisiak will explore various political efforts centered on the idea of walking, which aim to re-write hegemonic narratives of cities. The speakers (academics and activists from Istanbul and Berlin) will also closely consider walking as an ethnographic and activist method of engagement with the urban and discuss with the audience how we can make cities more inclusive through walking and how we can make walking more inclusive.

More about the conference>>

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

On Tuesday May 14, 2019, Bard College Berlin celebrated the inauguration of its new student residence, Henry Koerner Hall.

Named after the Austrian-born American painter and graphic designer Henry Koerner (1915-1991), the building was designed by the renowned Rotterdam-based Atelier Kempe Thill. 

The festivities began with a ribbon cutting ceremony which featured short addresses from Leon Botstein, President of Bard College; Peter Baldwin, Co-founder of the Arcadia Fund and Member of the Board of Governors of Bard College Berlin; André Kempe, Co-founder and Partner at Atelier Kempe Thill; and Sӧren Benn, Mayor of Berlin-Pankow. Two exhibitions were on view at Henry Koerner Hall following the inauguration. The first presented a group of prints by Henry Koerner, including My Parents based on an iconic painting by the artist. Also on view was a selection of issues of TIME magazine featuring portraits by Koerner on the cover. The second exhibition, The Skin of the Law. European Migration Regimes and their Global Realities, showed works created by students from Bard College Berlin and was curated by professors Dorothea von Hantelmann and Marion Detjen. 

The day continued with a series of discussions at St. Maria Magdalena Church, located in the proximity of Henry Koerner Hall. Joseph Leo Koerner, Harvard art historian, author and son of Henry Koerner, gave a presentation on the work and life of his father. The college was delighted to host keynote speeches by Sigmar Gabriel, Member of the German Bundestag, and the artist, architect, and filmmaker Alfredo Jaar. The closing event was a panel discussion and open forum with Tracey Emin, artist; Barbara Haskell, curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art; Orwa Nyrabia, Artistic Director of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam; and Joseph Koerner, moderated by Leon Botstein. 

The college wishes to thank Arcadia, A charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin, for making the construction of Henry Koerner Hall possible. 

Booklet on Henry Koerner Hall>>

Press features
Im Geist von Hannah Arendt, Der Tagesspiegel, May 13, 2019
Wiener Emigrant Henry Koerner wird Namenspatron eines Berliner Studentenheims, Der Standard, May 14, 2019

 

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

The article "Comparing Public Communication in Democracies and Autocracies - Automated Text Analyses of Speeches by Heads of Government" co-authored by faculty member Seraphine Maerz and Carsten Q. Schneider (Central European University) was recently published in the international journal of methodology Quality & Quantity. 

Article abstract:
Renewed efforts at empirically distinguishing between different forms of political regimes leave out the cultural dimension. In this article, we demonstrate how modern computational tools can be used to fill this gap. We employ web-scraping techniques to generate a data set of speeches by heads of government in European democracies and autocratic regimes around the globe. Our data set includes 4740 speeches delivered between 1999 and 2019 by 40 political leaders of 27 countries. By scaling the results of a dictionary application, we show how, in comparative terms, liberal or illiberal the leaders present them-selves to their national and international audience. In order to gauge whether our liberal-ness scale reveals meaningful distinctions, we perform a series of validity tests: criterion validity, qualitative hand-coding, unsupervised topic modeling, and network analysis. All tests suggest that our liberalness scale does capture meaningful differences between political regimes despite the large heterogeneity of our data.

Read more here>>

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

On April 14, 2019 the exhibition Escape into Art? The Brücke Painters in the Nazi Period, co-curated by faculty member Aya Soika with Lisa Marei Schmidt (Brücke Museum) and Meike Hoffmann (Research Center 'Degenerate Art’, Freie Universität), opened at the the Brücke Museum in Berlin. 

The exhibition offers a detailed examination of the artistic practice, scope and everyday life of the initial members of Brücke - Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Pechstein and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner - during the Nazi period. It seeks to take a multifaceted view and approaches the complexity of the Brücke history – between recognition and ‘defamation’ – by means of artworks and extensive documentation.

The exhibition runs through August 11, 2019. 

More information>> 

Reviews
Wer hat hier „entartet“ gesagt?, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 4, 2019
Das Ende der verklärten Bilder, in Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 24, 2019

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

The fourth European Liberal Education Student Conference (LESC) will be held at Bard College Berlin on May 2-5, 2019.

A student-organized conference, this year's LESC welcomes approximately fifty student participants from liberal education institutions all over Europe to consider the central theme "Liberal Education: In Conversation with Today's World of Tomorrow." The student participants are themselves international and come from institutions in Poland, Russia, Germany, the Netherlands, Slovakia, the UK, Belgium, and Lithuania.

LESC 2019 seeks to understand the tone and content of the conversation between a Liberal Education and the world at large, asking how current model(s) of Liberal Education interact with the spheres of politics, technology, society, the global economy, and education historically, today, and into the future. It asks what supports and what stifles Liberal Education and how Liberal Education can help us as individuals and on an institutional level accomplish the needed change in each of these fields.

Lectures in the scope of the conference program will be open to the Bard College Berlin community with advance registration.

The LESC organizing committee wishes to express its gratitude to the Bard College Berlin faculty & community, as well as to Bard Center for Civic Engagement and ECOLAS (The European Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences) for their invaluable financial support.  

More information about LESC 2019>>

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

On April 25, 2019 Professor of Politics Boris Vormann was invited by Deutsche Welle’s show “The Day with Brent Goff” to comment with Washington Post’s Jenna Johnson on Joe Biden’s announcement of his candidacy for US President in 2020.

Vormann was reluctant to offer a prognosis at this point in time, especially considering the current split in the US Democratic Party, which is reflected in similar splits beyond the US. He noted that, while Biden is popular with unions and workers, he would have to fight to win over the nonvoters from the previous election, and also to straighten the legacy surrounding his name. 

Watch the video>> (source: dw.com)

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