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Film Screening of Silent Storm by Abdullah NaseerTuesday, April 2, 2024K24, Seminar Room 11 |
Preparing for Life after BCBRuns through Monday, April 15, 2024Student Life invites you to attend our series of programs aimed at supporting students as you make plans for post-graduation life.Alumni Career Talk: Aurora Energy Research with Lucari Jordan (Spring '21) Date: Tuesday, March 5 Time: 11:45am-12:45pm Location: Lecture Hall Join us for an Alumni Talk with Lucari Jordan '21, an EPST graduate from New Mexico, who started their career in the energy and economics sector in Berlin with the goal of eventually working at the intersection of the power industry and regulatory institutions. Lucari will share their experience at their current company, Aurora Energy Research, with BCB students: what they have found helpful for entry into the Berlin job market, and what they have found to be the most important qualities of a company in the early stages of building a career. We will also hear more about Aurora's Graduate Analyst Program, a traineeship which lasts 18-21 months, and allows you to get a perspective of the three main departments of the company (Advisory, Commercial, and Research) by completing a rotation working in each. Bureaucracy in Reverse: Residence Permits, Health Insurance, Paperwork, and More! Date: Wednesday, April 3 Time: 5:00pm-6:00pm Location: Online You did it, but now what? Come learn about how to wrap up your time at BCB and transition to your next adventure, be that in Berlin or across the globe. In this session we will cover:
BCB Career Services Workshop for Graduating Students Date: Monday, April 15 Time: 10:00am-11:30am Location: Lecture Hall Whether you are graduating this semester or are still in the midst of your studies, come find out more about what BCB Career Services has to offer! Together with the Senior Research Colloquium we will learn about the BCB Career website with a monthly Career Newsletter, a Resource Guide, and CV & cover letter templates. You will also find out more about our personalized career counseling; post-grad options in Berlin, Germany and abroad; deadlines for MA & PhD applications; tips on how to overcome networking anxiety, and much more. Contact: [email protected] Bureaucracy in Reverse: Residence Permits, Health Insurance, Paperwork, and more!Part of the Life After BCB event seriesWednesday, April 3, 2024Online Event |
Alumni Talk with Denise Kripper '09: Translation studies scholar and literary translatorThursday, April 4, 2024Bard College Berlin, W15 Cafe (Waldstr. 15, Berlin 13156) |
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Supporting Victims of Wartime Sexual Violence: Insights from Bosnia and HerzegovinaMonday, April 8, 2024Online (Zoom) |
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Gendered Mobilities of Central Asian Females in Germany through the Perspectives of Public TransportWednesday, April 10, 2024P24 Seminar Room 8 |
SLC Community Forum with DEI Office: Accessibility & AccommodationsThursday, April 11, 2024W15 Cafe |
Fundraiser for Ukrainian Refugees in TegelFriday, April 12, 2024K30 Study Room |
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BCB Career Services Workshop for Graduating StudentsPart of the Life After BCB event seriesMonday, April 15, 2024Lecture Hall, Platanenstraße 98A, 13156 Berlin |
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Internship Program Info Session Fall '24Wednesday, April 17, 2024K24, SR11 |
How NGOs are tracking down Syrian war criminals across Europe and pushing for accountabilityThursday, April 18, 2024Lecture Hall |
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Admitted Students DaySaturday, April 20, 2024This event is for admitted students only. |
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BA Thesis Presentations Spring 2024Runs through Friday, May 10, 2024This semester's Senior Thesis Presentations are taking place from April 22 to May 10. The presentations are an essential step towards graduation for every senior, and they are an established and cherished event in the BCB academic year.Monday, April 22 | 12:45pm-1:15pm, Lecture Hall Sarah Wolbach, "The New Marriage Plot: Sally Rooney and the Legacy of Jane Austen" Friday, April 26 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, Lecture Hall Maia Angela Villarica, "Democracy and Disinformation: Addressing the Problem of Post-Truth in Social Media" Monday, April 29 | 11:30am-12:00pm, P24 SR 8 Camila Rosales, "Reconceiving Spaces of Consumption: A Look into Interactions in a Berlin Mall" Monday, April 29 | 11:30am-12:00pm, Lecture Hall Ana Mihajlovska, "Empty Shelves: Causes of the Toilet Paper Shortage During the Covid-19 Crisis in the U.S." Monday, April 29 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, P24 SR 8 Tay Mitchell, "Multiculturalism and the Promotion of Yiddishism through Labour Unions: An Archival Research" Monday, April 29 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, Lecture Hall Olivia Thayer, "Structures of Change: The Breaking of Binaries in Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook" Monday, April 29 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR 8 Renata Álvarez León, "Reclaiming the Capital: Women's Reappropriation of Urban Public Spaces in Mexico City" Monday, April 29 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, P24 SR 8 Carla Schwingler, "(In)Accessible Education: A Case Study of Bard College Berlin" Monday, April 29 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, Lecture Hall Jasmine Ahmed, "Making Waves in the Pacific: Examining the Reasons behind the Chinese Naval Build Up; and the Potential US response" Monday, April 29 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, Lecture Hall Aisha Khurram, "Education as a Lifeline; The Imperative of Including Education as a Humanitarian Response in Afghanistan" Monday, April 29 | 2:00pm-2:30pm, Lecture Hall Ayman Ndam Njoya, "Navigating Modernity: Assessing the Leverage of Traditional Authorities within a Republic and Decentralized Territorial Collectivities " Monday, April 29 | 2:30pm-3:00pm, Lecture Hall Sultana Taib, "The Socio-Economic Implications of Policy Reforms in Higher Education: A Case of the UK" Tuesday, April 30 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, Lecture Hall Mouadh Elarbi, "Microfinance in North Africa: Learning from Past Failures" Tuesday, April 30 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, Lecture Hall Anđela Despotović, "In Search of a Mother’s Tongue: Dinçer Güçyeter’s Unser Deutschlandmärchen as a Writing in 'Postmonolingual' Condition" Thursday, May 2 | 11:30am-12:00pm, W70 SR 10 Eve Sanchez, "A Critical Inquiry into Israel’s Mobilization of Happiness Discourse to Stimulate Normalization of Occupation: Exploring the Relationship Between Governments and National Happiness" Thursday, May 2 | 11:30am-12:00pm, W15 Cafe Elma Talić, "Where Did The Enemy Go? Performing LAIBACH In Post-Ideological Era" Thursday, May 2 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, W70 SR 10 Milica Vučić, "Democracy in Crisis: a Historical Analysis from the Time of Kemalist Reforms to the AKP and How Secularism Became the Defining Force of Turkish Politics" Thursday, May 2 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, W15 Cafe Wanda Alvesová, "Staging Authenticity: An Exploration of ‘Real People’ in She She Pop’s Theatre" Thursday, May 2 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR 2 Lara Habboub, "The Algorithmic Oracle: Decoding the Human-Machine Feedback Loop of Value Capture" Thursday, May 2 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR8 Andrea Kalife de la Garza, "A Symbolic Disorder: Language & Addiction" Thursday, May 2 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, K24 SR 11 Grace Klein, "Unveiling the Layers: Deconstructing Ethnic and Racial Hierarchies in Zionist Thought" Thursday, May 2 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, K24 SR 11 Salma Barakat, "Settler Colonialism in Kashmir and Palestine: Exploring Themes of Ecocide, Memoricide, and Spaciocide" Thursday, May 2 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, P24 SR 8 Jacob Horack, "Artificial Cognition: An Ethics of the Creation of Minds" Friday, May 3 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, Lecture Hall Harri Thomas, "Peace After Parapolitics: The Red Right Hand of Liberal Democracy and its Challenges for Peacebuilding" Friday, May 3 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, Lecture Hall Isabel Castro Dominguez, "Safeguarding Indigenous Cultural Heritage in the Face of Land Grabbing in the Colombian Amazon" Monday, May 6 | 11:30am-12:00pm, P98a Lecture Hall Hang Nguyen, "Echoed Narratives: Transnational and Transgenerational Memories of Former Vietnamese Contract Workers in Germany" Monday, May 6 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, P98a Lecture Hall Julia Mazal, "Redefining 'Arte Popular' in Mexico. Past and Present" Monday, May 6 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P98 Seminar Room 2 Selo Uğuzeş, "Aesthetics, Politics, and Life: Autonomous Zones as Places of Cultural Production" Monday, May 6 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR 8 Lilith Gao, "Limits of Universality: Reassessing Xu Bing's Language Experiments" Monday, May 6 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, Lecture Hall Ibrar Mirzai, "Energy, Infrastructure, and Sustainability, Mapping Ukraine's Post-War Reconstruction with EU Alignment" Monday, May 6 | 1:00-1:30pm, P24 SR 8 Zoe Whiteman, "Metamorphic Digestion: The Aesthetic’s of Fear in La Casa Lobo" Monday, May 6 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, P98a Lecture Hall Kai Bradley-Gutiérrez de Terán, "Consitutional Barriers: Evaluating the Efficiency of the German Constitution in Safeguarding Against Fascist Resurgence" Tuesday, May 7 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR 8 Rylee Mora, "Historical Narratives of Artificial Intelligence and their Ethical Implications" Tuesday, May 7 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P98 SR 1 Abdullah Zahidi, "The European Union's Regulatory Framework for Crypto-Assets: The Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) Regulation" Tuesday, May 7 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P98 SR 2 Yensen LeBeau, "The Cost of Being Known: How Overexposure to Media Online Leads to Apathetic and Extreme Identity" Tuesday, May 7 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, K24 SR 12 Héctor Miró Beltrán, "Byung-Chul Han’s Catalunya: An Understanding of the Catalan Independence Movement through Han's Psychopolitics" Tuesday, May 7 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, P98 SR 2 Izzy Monroe, "The Subject of Accountability: Bridging Critical Theory and Transformative Justice Practice" Tuesday, May 7 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, K24 SR 11 Maria Castillo Gomez, "Under the Banner of Peace and Friendship: Latin American Intellectuals Interpreting Soviet Cultural Diplomacy at the 1957 Moscow World Youth Festival" Tuesday, May 7 | 1:00pm, 1:30pm, P24 SR 8 Leonie Hüppe, "More-than-Human Storytelling and Interspecies Communication in Richard Powers' The Overstory" Tuesday, May 7 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, K24 SR 11 Gracie Kuppenbender, "Embracing Modernity: An Exploration of Young Indigenous Artists' Search for Cultural Preservation" Tuesday, May 7 | 3:45pm-4:15pm, K24 SR 12 Andrej Jovičić, "Jugonostalgija: The Response to the Aftermath of Genocidal and Economic Violence in Post-Conflict and Post-Transition Bosnia and Herzegovina" Wednesday, May 8 | 10:00am-10:30am, Lecture Hall Imogen Hilton-Barber, "Russia's Invasion of Ukraine and South Africa's 'Neutrality'" Wednesday, May 8 | 10:00am-10:30am, W15 Cafe Katie Lyle, "The Connection Between Death and Nightmare in the Art of Bosch and Redon" Wednesday, May 8 | 10:30am-11:00am, W15 Cafe Kaitlyn Woodburn, "Colonizing The Stars: Space Age Aesthetics and High Frontier Visions of Utopia" Wednesday, May 8 | 11:00am-11:30am, W15 Cafe Elena Eßer, "Examining The Difference Between Counterterrorism Policies In Right-Wing Extremism And Islamic Extremism - A Case Study Of Germany" Wednesday, May 8 | 11:30am-12:00pm, W15 Cafe Júlia Tamási, "From 'Existing Socialism' to Existing Capitalism - What Can we Learn from Hungary's Transition" Wednesday, May 8 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, P24 Seminar Room 8 Lily Ellerbrock, "Soft Facts of Education: A Student's Guide to Creativity" Wednesday, May 8 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR 8 Fiona French, "Empowered Mothering: Painterly Expressions of Motherhood in Contemporary Art" Wednesday, May 8 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, K24 SR 11 Christin Alhalabi, "Peddling, Assimilation and Racial Democracy, Levantine Arab Memory in Rio de Janeiro" Wednesday, May 8 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, Lecture Hall Drinlon Madani, "The Different Effects of Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation on Employees' Job Engagement and Satisfaction" Wednesday, May 8 | 2:30pm-3:00pm, P98 SR 2 Jasmin Rossi, "Policy Analysis of the Government Subsidized Psychotherapy in Finland - Who is Eligible and Why?" Wednesday, May 8 | 11:00am-11:30am, P24 SR 8 Lena Brun, "Stories for a Better World: The Interaction Between Jewish Storytelling and Speculative Fiction" Friday, May 10 | 9:15am-09:45am, P98 SR 2 Bianca Hopkins Friday, May 10 | 9:45am-10:15am, P98 SR 2 Deborah Cesar Oliveira, "To What Extent do Different Countries' Data Regulations Limit Interpol's Role in Combating Cross-Border Financial Crimes? A Case Study on the United States" Friday, May 10 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, P98 SR 2 Attila Noyan, "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2001-2021) and the Hazara Genocide" Friday, May 10 | 2:00pm-2:30pm, P98 Seminar Room 2 Frances Grimm, "From the Mine Wars to a Just Transition: A Marxist Analysis of the UMWA" Online Daria Khomiakova, "The Arctic - A Political Struggle for Sustainable Development" The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron CurtainLecture by Matthew LongoMonday, April 22, 2024P98a Lecture Hall (Platanenstraße 98a, 13156 Berlin) |
Creative Component Exhibition: Spring 2024Tuesday, April 23, 2024BCB Factory (Eichenstrasse 43, 13156 Berlin) |
Meet University College UtrechtWednesday, April 24, 2024P24, Seminar Room 5 |
Passover Scavenger HuntThursday, April 25, 2024W15 Cafe |
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Watching Russia From Afar: Adapting to an Age of War, Repression, and EmigrationMonday, April 29, 2024W15 Cafe at Bard College Berlin (Waldstraße 15, 13156 Berlin) |
Experimental Cartography WorkshopTuesday, April 30, 2024Location TBD |
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Tuesday, April 2, 2024
K24, Seminar Room 11
As a part of the Civic Engagement Network Course, and the Climate Teach-In, the BCB community will gather to watch the end product of a year-long project of Abdullah Naseer's: a documentary short film, titled Silent Storm, which touches upon the intersection between mental health and climate disaster in Pakistan.
Alumni Career Talk: Aurora Energy Research with Lucari Jordan (Spring '21)
Date: Tuesday, March 5
Time: 11:45am-12:45pm
Location: Lecture Hall
Join us for an Alumni Talk with Lucari Jordan '21, an EPST graduate from New Mexico, who started their career in the energy and economics sector in Berlin with the goal of eventually working at the intersection of the power industry and regulatory institutions. Lucari will share their experience at their current company, Aurora Energy Research, with BCB students: what they have found helpful for entry into the Berlin job market, and what they have found to be the most important qualities of a company in the early stages of building a career. We will also hear more about Aurora's Graduate Analyst Program, a traineeship which lasts 18-21 months, and allows you to get a perspective of the three main departments of the company (Advisory, Commercial, and Research) by completing a rotation working in each.
Bureaucracy in Reverse: Residence Permits, Health Insurance, Paperwork, and More!
Date: Wednesday, April 3
Time: 5:00pm-6:00pm
Location: Online
You did it, but now what? Come learn about how to wrap up your time at BCB and transition to your next adventure, be that in Berlin or across the globe. In this session we will cover:
BCB Career Services Workshop for Graduating Students
Date: Monday, April 15
Time: 10:00am-11:30am
Location: Lecture Hall
Whether you are graduating this semester or are still in the midst of your studies, come find out more about what BCB Career Services has to offer! Together with the Senior Research Colloquium we will learn about the BCB Career website with a monthly Career Newsletter, a Resource Guide, and CV & cover letter templates. You will also find out more about our personalized career counseling; post-grad options in Berlin, Germany and abroad; deadlines for MA & PhD applications; tips on how to overcome networking anxiety, and much more.
Wednesday, April 3, 2024
Online Event
You did it, but now what? Come learn about how to wrap up your time at BCB and transition to your next adventure, be that in Berlin or across the globe.
In this session we will cover:
This event is part of Student Life's Preparing for Life After BCB event series.Sponsored by: Bard College Berlin.
Thursday, April 4, 2024
Bard College Berlin, W15 Cafe (Waldstr. 15, Berlin 13156)
Join us for an Alumni Talk with Dr. Denise Kripper (AY ‘09), a translation studies scholar, literary translator, and Bard College Berlin/ECLA alumna. As an associate professor of Spanish at Lake Forest College in Chicago, USA, and the translation editor at Latin American Literature Today, Denise will share insights into her remarkable journey, emphasizing the impact of her experiences at BCB/ECLA on her career. The event will close with a Q&A, where she will provide insights about building a career in academia and valuable perspectives on navigating the world post-graduation. Facilitated by Prof. Dr. Matthias Hurst and Dr. David Hayes.
Please register for the discussion through this Google Form.
Monday, April 8, 2024
Online (Zoom)
This lecture by the Head of the Witness Support Office at the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina will take place on April 8th at 5:30pm.
Students, faculty, and alumni are welcome to join this online lecture organized within Prof. Dr. Ajla Škrbić's course 'Sexual Violence, Gender and War'. Zoom link (Meeting ID: 838 975 1341).
Sexual violence is one of the most serious violations of human rights, often resulting in lasting psychological and social consequences not only for the surviving victim but also for those close to them and their entire community. Testimonies from victims frequently trigger a resurgence of symptoms, irrespective of one's inherent coping mechanisms. The re-emergence of these symptoms during testimony can be as vivid and distressing as immediately after the assault itself. Consequently, comprehensive support from all actors involved in criminal proceedings remains crucial.
In this lecture, Ms. Alma Taso Deljković will share her insights into working with survivors of wartime sexual violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Drawing upon experiences from the Bosnian judicial system, we can glean insights into the daily challenges faced by witness support officers. Navigating the psychological aftermath of trauma, maintaining a professional yet empathetic approach towards victims and witnesses, and possessing a nuanced understanding of the legal procedures all intersect in this context. By delving into these experiences, students and other audiences will gain valuable insights that can deepen their understanding of this critical issue.
Alma Taso Deljković is the Head of the Witness Support Office of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and has been working with witnesses/victims since 2005. In addition to providing direct support to witnesses at the Court, she strongly advocates for the development and promotion of the witness support system in the judiciary in Bosnia and Herzegovina and beyond. She promotes the rights of witnesses/victims and improves dialogue and communication with local communities regarding the needs and rights of witnesses/victims. In her daily work as a psychologist and trained trauma and family counselor, she uses her knowledge and skills to help witnesses navigate the process of testifying as painlessly as possible for their psychophysical state. Taso Deljković has been an educator for many years and is the author of several professional and scientific articles in the field of psychology, support, and protection of witnesses and victims. From 2015 to 2018, she served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Fund for Victims at the International Criminal Court for Bosnia and Herzegovina. She also acts as an independent expert on issues of support and protection of witnesses and victims in criminal processes and beyond. Taso Deljković is a PhD candidate in the field of psychology at the University of Sarajevo and an international justice affiliate fellow of Georgetown Law University, Washington. She lives and works in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
P24 Seminar Room 8
Aiming to remedy the lacuna in the interdisciplinary mobility and migration literature, the main objective of the present research project is to examine Central Asian migrant women in Berlin through their commuting experience on public transport. Dr. Cholpon Turdalieva aims to address several issues and questions: To what extent is Central Asian women's integration in the host city influenced by daily commuting on different modes of public transit? How are women's employment, studying, income, and kinship networks realized or imposed in Germany's ethnocultural communities and other diverse multiethnic groups?
Following these questions, Turdalieva's research will be geared to produce academic and practical insights into the intersection of gendered mobility, migration, and public transit. We argue that Central Asian women migrants realize their socio-economic, educational, professional, and other personal and public goals in Germany by navigating their mobility, presumably through public transit transport. In this vein, we may think that automobility technologies, particularly the well-developed public transit in Berlin, empower Central-Asian migrant women by allowing them to move through different public spaces and traverse physical and social boundaries with greater ease and practice.
Cholpon Turdalieva is a Professor in Anthropology Program at American University of Central Asia. In 2004-05, she was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington; in 2004-2008, she became an OSI Fellow and researched the Western travel literature about Central Asia. During 2016-2012, she was a recipient of the Volkswagen Foundation grant and defended her PhD dissertation at Humboldt University. Currently, she is doing her research on “Gendered Mobilities of Central Asian Females in Germany through the Perspectives of Public Transport”. This research is supported by the OSUN Sabbatical Fellowship Program.
This presentation is part of the Faculty Colloquium Series.
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
Bard College Berlin Lecture Hall (Platanenstr. 98A, 13156)
The BCB chapter of the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network together with BCB courses 'Game changers in 20th and 21st century Art,' 'Introduction to Critical and Cultural Theory,' and 'The Art of Making Videos' has the pleasure to invite you to a film screening and artist talk with Berlin-based filmmaker Maya Schweizer.
Maya Schweizer's cinematic works revolve around questions of history, identity, and memory. Urban spaces as interfaces of individual and collective modes of action are often the starting point of her observation. In her perception of these places and spaces, she uncovers social realities, inscribed narratives, and overlapping histories.
Maya will show three of her short films: A Tall Tale (16'30''), Voices and Shells (18'20''), and L’étoile de mer (The Starfish) (11'). The screening will be accompanied by a Q&A with the artist moderated by BCB faculty Clio Nicastro, Dorothea von Hantelmann, and Janina Schabig.
All participants are warmly invited to a reception with wine and snacks following the event.
Thursday, April 11, 2024
W15 Cafe
The Student Life Committee and the DEI Office invite you to a Community Forum to discuss accessibility-related issues at BCB and to learn more about the process for receiving disability-related accommodations.
Friday, April 12, 2024
K30 Study Room
Last month, a fire broke out in the refugee camp of Tegel, where Ukrainians, who have fled after the Russian invasion, were staying. As a result of fire, many private belongings, from clothes to essential documents, burned down. BCB's Ï Club (Ukrainian Club) wishes to raise funds to cover the costs of translators and document restoration, without which it is impossible to do anything.
The Ï Club will be selling some delicious goods and pastries, so come by and help raise awareness and provide support.
Friday, April 12, 2024
48 Hours of BCB is a film challenge in which students must make teams and will have 48 hours to create a short film.Your team will have only 48h to write, shoot, and edit a short movie. On Friday, April 12th team representatives will gather in the lecture hall for the opening ceremony and receive a random genre and a topic. Then 48h begin: create your movies throughout the weekend and submit on Sunday night. Next week our jury will be rating the films and winners get prizes. The closing ceremony is the following Friday (April 19th, 18:00-21:00).
Register here.
Organized by students Anna Shafranska and Maya Ponomarenko.
Friday, April 12, 2024
The Factory
Hear ye, hear ye! The Open Mic Night is back for the last time this year, and for the last time with Yensen LeBeau as the host. Finishing up the thesis is hard work, and given that the due date is at 3pm on April 12th too, we want to honor the graduates for all their hard work with a spot on the throne. Gowns, crowns, and capes welcome and encouraged. Anyone is allowed to perform - bring a talent, song, reading, stand-up routine, or anything else that you'd like!
If you would like to perform, you can sign up to do so through this form, as well as in-person night of.
Monday, April 15, 2024
Lecture Hall, Platanenstraße 98A, 13156 Berlin
Whether you are graduating this semester or are still in the midst of your studies, come find out more about what BCB Career Services has to offer!
Together with the Senior Research Colloquium we will learn about the BCB Career website with a monthly Career Newsletter, a Resource Guide, and CV & cover letter templates. You will also find out more about our personalized career counseling; post-grad options in Berlin, Germany and abroad; deadlines for MA & PhD applications; tips on how to overcome networking anxiety, and much more.
This event is part of Student Life's Preparing for Life After BCB event series.Sponsored by: Bard College Berlin.
Monday, April 15, 2024
Hybrid (Zoom and K24 SR11)
This is a hybrid lecture by Nikolay Koposov open to the public. Register to watch via Zoom here. The in-person location is K24 seminar room 11 (Kuckhoffstraße 24, 13156 Berlin).
Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, a joint venture between Bard College (New York) and Saint Petersburg State University, was founded in 1998. It developed from the faculty seminar “Critique of Social Sciences,” which started its work a year earlier. The goal of the seminar was to explore the role of social sciences as the basis of the then-dominant democratic ideology. Liberal education looked at that time as a critical aspect of Russia’s (and, more broadly, Eastern Europe’s) transition to democracy and as a possible solution to the problems created by the social sciences’ increasing specialization and their declining ideological effectiveness in the changing world.
Since then, Russia has become a dictatorship and has declared war on democracy domestically and internationally. Smolny has survived primarily as several projects in exile. The development of liberal education in some other East European countries (most notably, Hungary) has also been obstructed by the rise of right-wing populism and the emergence of neo-authoritarian regimes. However, the road to unfreedom has been largely paved by the internal evolution of democratic ideology, social sciences, and liberal education. The paper will discuss this evolution using the example of historiography, which, in recent decades, has become increasingly dependent on memory and identity politics promoted by both anti-globalist ethno-populist groups on the right and the anti-discrimination minority movements on the left.
Nikolay Koposov is a Distinguished Professor of the Practice at the School of History and Sociology and the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, USA). Previously, he worked at Johns Hopkins University, Emory University, Helsinki University, and École des hautes études en sciences sociales. In 1998-2009, he was Founding Dean of Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, a joint venture of Saint-Petersburg State University and Bard College (New York). His academic interests include modern European intellectual history, post-Soviet Russia, historiography, historical memory, and comparative politics of the past. He has authored six books, including Memory Laws, Memory Wars: The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2018), and De l’imagination historique (Éditions de l’ÉHÉSS, 2009). He has also edited several collective volumes and translations.
Monday, April 15, 2024
Online (Zoom)
On behalf of the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network (EHCN) we would like to share a new exciting opportunity: research stipends for BCB students pursuing independent experimental humanities projects in the summer of 2024.
We welcome applications from students who answer "yes" to any of the following questions:
Students can apply via this form and are welcome to attend a Zoom info session on 15 April, 7pm at this link.
The application deadline is 30 April.
Monday, April 15, 2024
This online lecture by Maria Avxentevskaya will take place over Zoom.
Early modern medical theories and practices transitioned from perusing ancient texts to processing observations. Keen attention to the human body and its mechanics, standardized training for physicians and midwives, as well as various popular healing methods, created a rich palette of medical knowledge and experience. Many practitioners addressed female health and encouraged women to learn more about their bodies. However, women were mostly limited to practicing medicine within the household. We will discuss the promises and pitfalls of early medicine for women as part of gender relations in science.
View the two readings for the lecture here and here.
Maria Avxentevskaya specializes in the premodern history of science and medicine and the longue durée history of scientific communication, including humanism, semiotics, translation, rhetoric, and networking. Her research has been supported by the Max Planck Society, Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Klassik Stiftung Weimar, the Herzog August Bibliothek, and the Warburg Institute. Maria is currently working on the monograph Rhetoric and Persuasion in Early Modern English Science. Her publications include the forthcoming volume Signs and Signification in a Global Comparative Perspective, co-edited with Glenn W. Most (Brill, 2024) and Premodern Experience of the Natural World in Translation, co-edited with Katja Krause and Dror Weil (Routledge, 2022). Maria has taught science communication, early modern science, and knowledge in translation at Bard College Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and the University of Sydney. Her science journalism pieces have been republished by the Independent and Scientific American.
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
K24, SR11
The BCB Internship Program gives you the opportunity to gain an off-campus workplace experience in a field that interests you. You can work 10-13h/week in an internship while also exploring various questions regarding work in the internship seminar taught by Agata Lisiak and Florian Duijsens. Most internships are generally unpaid, but you can earn academic credits through the internship seminar.
If you are a current or upcoming third-year student and curious about BCB’s Internship Program and the opportunity to gain practical experience alongside your studies while interning for an organization/individual in Berlin, please save the date.
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Bard College Berlin Lecture Hall (Platanenstr 98a, 13156 Berlin)
The initiative Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen convinced almost 60% of Berliners to vote for the socialization of large profit-oriented real estate companies. At its peak, thousands were active in the referendum. There is still an active neighborhood team in almost every Berlin district. How does the initiative organize the involvement of so many activists? What is the relationship with local tenants' initiatives that are active around specific problems in their houses and estates? And what role does the concept of "organizing" play in this?
These questions will be discussed by Kalle Kunkel, who is active in the AG Starthilfe of Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen.
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Lecture Hall
The lecture offers an insight into the work of “Freunde des Syrischen Volks e.V.” (FdSV), a non-profit organization founded in Berlin in 2014 aiming at bringing accountability and transitional justice to the victims of the Syrian Civil War. FdSV engages in projects that empower Syrian communities and give them agency in the field of legal development and accountability for core crimes committed during the Syrian conflict. In recent years, FdSV contributed to the arrest and conviction of over a dozen perpetrators in EU countries.
Dr. Usahma Felix Darrah is the managing director of FdSV. He studied political economy, public law and Islamic Studies in Damascus and Heidelberg before working as a lecturer and speech writer for over 10 years. He’s been a consultant in Berlin since 2013.
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Kuckhoffstr. 24 (K24), seminar room 11
Sandy Kaltenborn, housing activist and co-founder of the rent and urban policy initiative Kotti & Co, will give a talk as part of the course Civic Engagement and Engaged Research: Berlin Lab.
Starting in 2012, the tenant’s initiative Kotti & Co turned a summer street fair into a permanent protest camp at Kottbusser Tor (Kotti) in Berlin Kreuzberg. Their protest hut, called Gecekondu, became a central platform to render tenants’ concerns visible and to make the struggle of many accessible and concrete. At the initiative's core were demands that opposed an infinite raise in rent for privately owned subsidized housing declared in 2011. Kotti & Co was impactful in shifting media attention and academic research to the structural problem of social housing and the city’s increasingly pressing housing question, and, most importantly, putting it back onto Berlin’s political agenda. On 17 September 2021, after 10 years of hard, passionate work, the great demand for the (re)communalization of houses was met by the state-owned housing associations, a total of 14,500 apartments around Kotti and in the rest of Berlin. Sandy Kaltenborn will talk about urban policy and neighborhood mobilization since 1990, and the beginning of a housing movement.
Please register via email to Faiza Lynar: [email protected]
Sandy Kaltenborn, actually Alexander Sandy Paul Omar Abdullah Kaltenborn, is a communication designer and runs the design studio image-shift, which operates in social, cultural, artistic, as well as political and urban contexts. Kaltenborn has been living in Berlin since 1990, is co-founder of the rent and urban policy initiative Kotti & Co, and has been actively engaged in socio-political matters for many years. Currently, he teaches as a visiting professor at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle.
Saturday, April 20, 2024
This event is for admitted students only.
Congratulations on your admission!
We're delighted to invite you to get to know Bard College Berlin on Admitted Students Day. Join us for a day on our campus where you can meet fellow admitted students, attend a seminar with our professors, meet our staff, and hear from our current students about life as a Bard Berliner.
Register now through your applicant portal to decide which seminar you'll attend and begin planning your trip to Berlin!
Saturday, April 20, 2024
Bard College Berlin, Kuckhoff Str. 24
On behalf of the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network (EHCN) we warmly invite you to a hands-on workshop titled: Open Soil Research. This workshop is about experimental learning, muddy hands, and curious minds! Far more than just the dirt under our feet, soil is a truly complex and dynamic ecosystem. It is a constantly changing mix of minerals, living organisms, decaying organic matter, air, and water. It is the living skin of our planet, allowing new forms of life to come into being.
Guided by workshop facilitators Antonia von Schöning (HU Berlin) and Julian Chollet (mikroBIOMIK Society), the participants will collect samples and – using binocular and transmitted light microscopes – observe tiny creatures as they turn organic waste into fertile soil. Together, we will explore questions such as: Who lives in our soil? What infrastructures permeate the underground? How do organic, technical, and human beings co-exist and form complex soil ecologies?
Important Notes:
The number of participants is limited, so please sign up for the workshop using this Google Form. If you have any questions about the event, please email BCB faculty Janina Schabig at [email protected].
We hope to see many of you there!
Agata Lisiak & Janina Schabig
EHCN representatives at BCB
Monday, April 22 | 12:45pm-1:15pm, Lecture Hall
Sarah Wolbach, "The New Marriage Plot: Sally Rooney and the Legacy of Jane Austen"
Friday, April 26 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, Lecture Hall
Maia Angela Villarica, "Democracy and Disinformation: Addressing the Problem of Post-Truth in Social Media"
Monday, April 29 | 11:30am-12:00pm, P24 SR 8
Camila Rosales, "Reconceiving Spaces of Consumption: A Look into Interactions in a Berlin Mall"
Monday, April 29 | 11:30am-12:00pm, Lecture Hall
Ana Mihajlovska, "Empty Shelves: Causes of the Toilet Paper Shortage During the Covid-19 Crisis in the U.S."
Monday, April 29 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, P24 SR 8
Tay Mitchell, "Multiculturalism and the Promotion of Yiddishism through Labour Unions: An Archival Research"
Monday, April 29 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, Lecture Hall
Olivia Thayer, "Structures of Change: The Breaking of Binaries in Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook"
Monday, April 29 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR 8
Renata Álvarez León, "Reclaiming the Capital: Women's Reappropriation of Urban Public Spaces in Mexico City"
Monday, April 29 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, P24 SR 8
Carla Schwingler, "(In)Accessible Education: A Case Study of Bard College Berlin"
Monday, April 29 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, Lecture Hall
Jasmine Ahmed, "Making Waves in the Pacific: Examining the Reasons behind the Chinese Naval Build Up; and the Potential US response"
Monday, April 29 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, Lecture Hall
Aisha Khurram, "Education as a Lifeline; The Imperative of Including Education as a Humanitarian Response in Afghanistan"
Monday, April 29 | 2:00pm-2:30pm, Lecture Hall
Ayman Ndam Njoya, "Navigating Modernity: Assessing the Leverage of Traditional Authorities within a Republic and Decentralized Territorial Collectivities "
Monday, April 29 | 2:30pm-3:00pm, Lecture Hall
Sultana Taib, "The Socio-Economic Implications of Policy Reforms in Higher Education: A Case of the UK"
Tuesday, April 30 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, Lecture Hall
Mouadh Elarbi, "Microfinance in North Africa: Learning from Past Failures"
Tuesday, April 30 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, Lecture Hall
Anđela Despotović, "In Search of a Mother’s Tongue: Dinçer Güçyeter’s Unser Deutschlandmärchen as a Writing in 'Postmonolingual' Condition"
Thursday, May 2 | 11:30am-12:00pm, W70 SR 10
Eve Sanchez, "A Critical Inquiry into Israel’s Mobilization of Happiness Discourse to Stimulate Normalization of Occupation: Exploring the Relationship Between Governments and National Happiness"
Thursday, May 2 | 11:30am-12:00pm, W15 Cafe
Elma Talić, "Where Did The Enemy Go? Performing LAIBACH In Post-Ideological Era"
Thursday, May 2 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, W70 SR 10
Milica Vučić, "Democracy in Crisis: a Historical Analysis from the Time of Kemalist Reforms to the AKP and How Secularism Became the Defining Force of Turkish Politics"
Thursday, May 2 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, W15 Cafe
Wanda Alvesová, "Staging Authenticity: An Exploration of ‘Real People’ in She She Pop’s Theatre"
Thursday, May 2 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR 2
Lara Habboub, "The Algorithmic Oracle: Decoding the Human-Machine Feedback Loop of Value Capture"
Thursday, May 2 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR8
Andrea Kalife de la Garza, "A Symbolic Disorder: Language & Addiction"
Thursday, May 2 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, K24 SR 11
Grace Klein, "Unveiling the Layers: Deconstructing Ethnic and Racial Hierarchies in Zionist Thought"
Thursday, May 2 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, K24 SR 11
Salma Barakat, "Settler Colonialism in Kashmir and Palestine: Exploring Themes of Ecocide, Memoricide, and Spaciocide"
Thursday, May 2 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, P24 SR 8
Jacob Horack, "Artificial Cognition: An Ethics of the Creation of Minds"
Friday, May 3 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, Lecture Hall
Harri Thomas, "Peace After Parapolitics: The Red Right Hand of Liberal Democracy and its Challenges for Peacebuilding"
Friday, May 3 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, Lecture Hall
Isabel Castro Dominguez, "Safeguarding Indigenous Cultural Heritage in the Face of Land Grabbing in the Colombian Amazon"
Monday, May 6 | 11:30am-12:00pm, P98a Lecture Hall
Hang Nguyen, "Echoed Narratives: Transnational and Transgenerational Memories of Former Vietnamese Contract Workers in Germany"
Monday, May 6 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, P98a Lecture Hall
Julia Mazal, "Redefining 'Arte Popular' in Mexico. Past and Present"
Monday, May 6 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P98 Seminar Room 2
Selo Uğuzeş, "Aesthetics, Politics, and Life: Autonomous Zones as Places of Cultural Production"
Monday, May 6 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR 8
Lilith Gao, "Limits of Universality: Reassessing Xu Bing's Language Experiments"
Monday, May 6 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, Lecture Hall
Ibrar Mirzai, "Energy, Infrastructure, and Sustainability, Mapping Ukraine's Post-War Reconstruction with EU Alignment"
Monday, May 6 | 1:00-1:30pm, P24 SR 8
Zoe Whiteman, "Metamorphic Digestion: The Aesthetic’s of Fear in La Casa Lobo"
Monday, May 6 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, P98a Lecture Hall
Kai Bradley-Gutiérrez de Terán, "Consitutional Barriers: Evaluating the Efficiency of the German Constitution in Safeguarding Against Fascist Resurgence"
Tuesday, May 7 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR 8
Rylee Mora, "Historical Narratives of Artificial Intelligence and their Ethical Implications"
Tuesday, May 7 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P98 SR 1
Abdullah Zahidi, "The European Union's Regulatory Framework for Crypto-Assets: The Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) Regulation"
Tuesday, May 7 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P98 SR 2
Yensen LeBeau, "The Cost of Being Known: How Overexposure to Media Online Leads to Apathetic and Extreme Identity"
Tuesday, May 7 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, K24 SR 12
Héctor Miró Beltrán, "Byung-Chul Han’s Catalunya: An Understanding of the Catalan Independence Movement through Han's Psychopolitics"
Tuesday, May 7 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, P98 SR 2
Izzy Monroe, "The Subject of Accountability: Bridging Critical Theory and Transformative Justice Practice"
Tuesday, May 7 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, K24 SR 11
Maria Castillo Gomez, "Under the Banner of Peace and Friendship: Latin American Intellectuals Interpreting Soviet Cultural Diplomacy at the 1957 Moscow World Youth Festival"
Tuesday, May 7 | 1:00pm, 1:30pm, P24 SR 8
Leonie Hüppe, "More-than-Human Storytelling and Interspecies Communication in Richard Powers' The Overstory"
Tuesday, May 7 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, K24 SR 11
Gracie Kuppenbender, "Embracing Modernity: An Exploration of Young Indigenous Artists' Search for Cultural Preservation"
Tuesday, May 7 | 3:45pm-4:15pm, K24 SR 12
Andrej Jovičić, "Jugonostalgija: The Response to the Aftermath of Genocidal and Economic Violence in Post-Conflict and Post-Transition Bosnia and Herzegovina"
Wednesday, May 8 | 10:00am-10:30am, Lecture Hall
Imogen Hilton-Barber, "Russia's Invasion of Ukraine and South Africa's 'Neutrality'"
Wednesday, May 8 | 10:00am-10:30am, W15 Cafe
Katie Lyle, "The Connection Between Death and Nightmare in the Art of Bosch and Redon"
Wednesday, May 8 | 10:30am-11:00am, W15 Cafe
Kaitlyn Woodburn, "Colonizing The Stars: Space Age Aesthetics and High Frontier Visions of Utopia"
Wednesday, May 8 | 11:00am-11:30am, W15 Cafe
Elena Eßer, "Examining The Difference Between Counterterrorism Policies In Right-Wing Extremism And Islamic Extremism - A Case Study Of Germany"
Wednesday, May 8 | 11:30am-12:00pm, W15 Cafe
Júlia Tamási, "From 'Existing Socialism' to Existing Capitalism - What Can we Learn from Hungary's Transition"
Wednesday, May 8 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, P24 Seminar Room 8
Lily Ellerbrock, "Soft Facts of Education: A Student's Guide to Creativity"
Wednesday, May 8 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR 8
Fiona French, "Empowered Mothering: Painterly Expressions of Motherhood in Contemporary Art"
Wednesday, May 8 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, K24 SR 11
Christin Alhalabi, "Peddling, Assimilation and Racial Democracy, Levantine Arab Memory in Rio de Janeiro"
Wednesday, May 8 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, Lecture Hall
Drinlon Madani, "The Different Effects of Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation on Employees' Job Engagement and Satisfaction"
Wednesday, May 8 | 2:30pm-3:00pm, P98 SR 2
Jasmin Rossi, "Policy Analysis of the Government Subsidized Psychotherapy in Finland - Who is Eligible and Why?"
Wednesday, May 8 | 11:00am-11:30am, P24 SR 8
Lena Brun, "Stories for a Better World: The Interaction Between Jewish Storytelling and Speculative Fiction"
Friday, May 10 | 9:15am-09:45am, P98 SR 2
Bianca Hopkins
Friday, May 10 | 9:45am-10:15am, P98 SR 2
Deborah Cesar Oliveira, "To What Extent do Different Countries' Data Regulations Limit Interpol's Role in Combating Cross-Border Financial Crimes? A Case Study on the United States"
Friday, May 10 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, P98 SR 2
Attila Noyan, "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2001-2021) and the Hazara Genocide"
Friday, May 10 | 2:00pm-2:30pm, P98 Seminar Room 2
Frances Grimm, "From the Mine Wars to a Just Transition: A Marxist Analysis of the UMWA"
Online
Daria Khomiakova, "The Arctic - A Political Struggle for Sustainable Development"
Monday, April 22, 2024
P98a Lecture Hall (Platanenstraße 98a, 13156 Berlin)
In August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists organized a picnic on the border of Hungary and Austria. But this was not an ordinary picnic—it was located on the dangerous militarized frontier known as the Iron Curtain. Tacit permission from the highest state authorities could be revoked at any moment. On wisps of rumor, thousands of East German “vacationers” packed Hungarian campgrounds, awaiting an opportunity, fearing prison, surveilled by lurking Stasi agents. The Pan-European Picnic set the stage for the greatest border breach in Cold War history: hundreds crossed from the Communist East to the longed-for freedom of the West.
Drawing on dozens of original interviews—including Hungarian activists and border guards, East German refugees, Stasi secret police, and the last Communist prime minister of Hungary—Matthew Longo tells a gripping and revelatory tale of the unraveling of the Iron Curtain and the birth of a new world order. Just a few months after the Picnic, the Berlin Wall fell, and the freedom for which the activists and refugees had abandoned their homes, risked imprisonment, sacrificed jobs, family, and friends, was suddenly available to everyone. But were they really free? And why, three decades since the Iron Curtain was torn down, have so many sought once again to build walls?
Register for the event through this Google Form.
Matthew Longo is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Leiden University. He is the author of two books: The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain (W. W. Norton, 2023) and The Politics of Borders: Sovereignty, Security, and the Citizen After 9/11 (Cambridge University Press, 2018).Sponsored by: Bard College Berlin.
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
BCB Factory (Eichenstrasse 43, 13156 Berlin)
We cordially invite you to the public exhibition of art works from this year’s graduating cohort.
The exhibition shows the outcomes of a two semester long creative research that students conducted as part of their senior thesis projects; it includes painting, film, theater and performance art, installation, video art, and creative writing.
Please join us and celebrate this special occasion!
Works by Fiona French, Gracie Kuppenbender, Hang Nguyen, Jiayao Gao, Kaitlyn Woodburn, Katie Lyle, Lena Brun, Selo Uğuzeş, Wanda Alvesová, Yensen LeBeau and Zoé Whiteman.
The exhibition opens at 5pm. Participatory performance by Wanda Alvesová at 6:30pm. Film screening by Yensen LeBeau at 8:00pm.
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
P24, Seminar Room 5
Thinking of studying abroad in the Netherlands? Come meet colleagues from University College Utrecht, learn about academics, student life, and what awaits you during a study abroad semester. Faculty and staff are also welcome to join to learn more about the academic offerings at our Erasmus partner university, UCU.
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
P24 Seminar Room 8
Imperialism is back in our everyday vocabulary to describe Russian expansionism. Yet the theoretical contours of the term imperialism are notoriously hard to pin down and its analytical added value is often disputed. The term exists as a descriptor of government action to qualify Russia or the US as ‘imperialist’ states. It also denotes the structural logic of capitalism on the world scale which tends towards war, value extraction and the bifurcation of the world into core and peripheries.
In this paper, Prof. Dr. Kai Koddenbrock investigates this dual meaning of imperialism with a view to Germany’s history, policy, and political economy. He suggests a contemporary analysis of imperialism focusing on domestic state-capital relations, military violence, and the extraction of value from the Global South. Applying this troika of imperialism to German state-capital relations, the paper focuses on its corporate giants Volkswagen and BASF, recent shifts in security and economic policy as well as the quest for mineral supplies from the Global South and argue that Germany can be – with some qualifications - called an imperialist state. In conclusion the paper shows that imperialism as an analytical term allows to go beyond the overly generic term of capitalism and is uniquely placed to make sense of a more openly violent world engulfed in war and crisis.
This presentation is part of the Faculty Colloquium Series.
Kai Koddenbrock is a professor of political economy at Bard College Berlin. He is working on economic sovereignty and self-determination in the Global South and particularly on the role of the international monetary system and global and domestic financial markets in helping and constraining this quest. Located at the intersections of international relations and international political economy, he also works on geopolitics and geoeconomics and the new scramble for rare earths.
He co-founded with Ndongo Sylla and Maha ben Gadha the African Monetary and Economic Sovereignty conferences, which have been held in Tunis and Dakar in 2019 and 2022. He leads the Politics of Money Network with Benjamin Braun, funded by the German Research Council, and heads a research group at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth.
Kai has held academic positions at several German universities, worked for the United Nations in NYC, the World Food Programme in Rome, and the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. He has been a fellow at Columbia University, the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Societies, Sciences Po, University of Sussex, as well as the Institute for Advanced Studies and the École des Hautes Études Internationales in Paris.
He has contributed essays to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and to Jacobin and Soziopolis among others. His most recent academic articles are: "Beyond financialisation: the longue durée of finance and production in the Global South" and "International financial subordination: a critical research agenda." He has recently edited Capital Claims: Power and Global Finance (Routledge), with Benjamin Braun, and African Monetary and Economic Sovereignty in the 21st Century (Pluto Press), with Maha ben Gadha, Ndongo Samba Sylla, Fadhel Kaboub, and Ines Mahmood. His latest monograph was The practice of humanitarian intervention: Aid workers, agencies and institutions in the DR Congo (Routledge, 2015).
Kai tweets @kaikodden and his publications can be accessed through Google Scholar and on this PDF.
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
W15 Cafe
This study explores the socio-demographic factors driving migration within the Kyrgyz Republic. The collapse of the Soviet Union triggered significant outward migration, raising concerns about its impact on the country's economic and national security. Dr. Meerim Djakypova from the American University of Central Asia delves into this critical issue, analyzing the link between unemployment, poverty, and social vulnerability with migration patterns.
By employing a comparative approach, Dr. Djakypova examines migration trends in the Kyrgyz Republic compared to other countries. This analysis informs the development of policy recommendations for effective migration management. Additionally, the presentation explores the potential demographic consequences, such as a gender imbalance and workforce decline, resulting from uncontrolled migration.
To register, send an email to [email protected]
Meerim A. Djakypova is an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at the American University of Central Asia. She holds a PhD in Economics and Management of the National Economy, Bishkek, KR and a Master of Arts in Management from Webster University in Vienna, Austria. Her research focuses on migration patterns and their impact on the Kyrgyz Republic's economy and social development. Dr. Djakypova has published research on migration, economic security, and poverty in Central Asia, and is a frequent speaker on migration issues in Kyrgyzstan and the region. She is a passionate advocate for evidence-based policymaking and her research has helped to inform policy debates on migration in Kyrgyzstan.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
W15 Cafe
Meet us in the W15 Cafe to hear the story of Passover and then join us for a scavenger hunt in the garden (including a prize for the winner!). Passover snacks will be served.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Lecture Hall
It has become commonplace to observe that we live in dark times. With the proliferation of irredentist wars, ethno-nationist patterns of organizing violence, and the revenant racial logics by which risk and protection are distributed, it seems we are living through a kind of Gramscian interregnum, redolent of the “morbid symptoms” of his time. But when did this crisis really begin? Like with all caesuras, the focus on the spectacular symptoms occludes the continuities by which historical techniques of governance are adapted to new conditions of social domination. Rather than understanding our historical moment as the breakdown of prevailing orders, and hence a return to violence, this talk will propose that what marks our time is an experimentation with the organization and localization of violence in the everyday.
Thinking with Sudan and Gaza as two places where the moral and ontological status extraordinary violence remains hotly debated, this talk proposes a larger set of questions about what it means that over the last decades, we have seen what Manuel Schwab calls the “enclosure of the everyday” by various globally distributed economies, from humanitarian assistance, which will be my main topic, to communications platforms, remittance networks, and payment spaces. As civil infrastructures that sustain pedestrian practices, these have not traditionally been seen as the focal point for understanding how violence is organized. Nevertheless, the talk will propose that the “enclosure of the everyday,” which entails significant and intimate-yet-speechless entanglement with the lives of others, constitutes a central driver of the “new new wars,” even as they descend into extraordinary depths of annihilating force. With an eye towards debates unfolding in Germany today, it will be shown that public memory must also be seen as one of these infrastructures.
Please register for the lecture through this Google form.
Manuel Schwab is a writer and professor of Anthropology at the American University in Cairo. Working at the nexus between Economic and Political Anthropology, his work is concerned with valorization and securitization and their relation to humanitarian practice and the logics of military force. Drawing from seemingly unrelated social fields like public memory, practices of care, and accusations of supernatural force, he is interested in how these come to shape temporal and ethical imaginaries. He has worked in Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Germany, and the US. In addition to his work on value in the Sudanese context, he is in the early stages of a new research undertaking on the relationship between extractive economies and the new politics of “post-humanitarian” crisis management. Manuel’s work has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, The Ford Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation, among others. In addition to his academic research, Manuel is finishing a Manuscript of speculative fiction in with an artist from Guinea, where he works at the nexus between experimental ethnography and fiction proper. The work began when he was a Fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude 2019-2020.
Thursday, April 25, 2024
Ulme35 (Ulmenallee 35, 14050 Berlin)
Fighting Russian crimes and propaganda in Germany: What can Ukrainian and Syrian diasporas learn from each other?
This event is a panel talk between journalist Kristin Helberg, BCB alum Ameenah Sawwan, and Mariia Borysenko (NGO “Vitsche”); moderated by BCB student Yelizaveta Mamon. It will take place at Ulme35 (Ulmenallee 35, 14050 Berlin) in Westend.
The talk will focus on the parallels in Russia's warfare and propaganda in Syria and Ukraine, and what the civil societies of both diasporas can learn from each other. Civil society in diaspora has been organizing itself, documenting the crimes, and countering the propaganda. There are lessons to learn how to organize and create publicity, and what campaign strategies are helpful to denounce these crimes and achieve their criminal prosecution, in front of international courts as well as national courts on the grounds of the principle of universal jurisdiction.. In the past decade, both of the diasporas have become powerful engines for political and social justice, organizing themselves to document Russian crimes, undermine disinformation, and amplify their voices in the German informational landscape. In this Real Talk we will discuss Ukrainian and Syrian diaspora experiences, case studies and effective campaign strategies to denounce these crimes, raise public awareness and achieve their criminal prosecution.
No registration necessary.Sponsored by: Ulme35.
Monday, April 29, 2024
W15 Cafe at Bard College Berlin (Waldstraße 15, 13156 Berlin)
This event at Bard College Berlin will bring together prominent journalists, sociologists, and academics who have spent their careers tracking developments in Russian politics and society. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the many convulsions that have resulted, have made this work exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. Conducting interviews or field research is extraordinarily fraught. But monitoring events and developments from abroad contains no less difficulties. Led in discussion by BCB's writer-in-residence, expert panelists will discuss the adjustments in their work and share their adaptations and methodologies. What is difficult to understand without being on the ground? But at the same time, what is impossible to measure from inside Russia? What should we admit we don't and can't know? The evening promises an open, enlightening, and educational conversation for all those interested in following and making sense of events in Russia and their relevance for Western societies.
Register here.
Valerie Hopkins is an international correspondent for The New York Times, covering the war in Ukraine, as well as Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union. She covered the Balkans and eastern Europe for a decade, most recently for the Financial Times, before moving to Moscow to join The New York Times. She is a 2022 recipient of Newswomen’s Club of New York’s Marie Colvin Award for Foreign Correspondence and the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) Distinguished Fellow Award.
Svetlana Erpyleva is a researcher with the Public Sociology Laboratory and a post-doctoral researcher at the Research Centre for East European Studies, University of Bremen. Her articles have been published in American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Childhood, Current Sociology, Journal of Youth Studies, Sociological Forums, and a number of Russian and international academic journals and media. Currently, she coordinates a large-scale research project on how Russians perceive the war in Ukraine.
Joshua Yaffa is a contributing writer for The New Yorker. He is also the author of "Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia," which won the Orwell Prize in 2021. He has also written for Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, National Geographic, and other publications. He is currently the inaugural writer-in-residence at Bard College Berlin and was previously a fellow at The American Academy in Berlin.
Monday, April 29, 2024
Online (Zoom)
This guest lecture by Sonia E. Sultan, Professor of Biology at Wesleyan University, will take place online over Zoom.
Darwin's idea of Natural Selection explained how small, heritable differences between individual animals and plants would cause adaptive change in their features over time. In the 20th century, this idea was joined to simple Mendelian genetics in a Neo-Darwinian approach that redefined evolution as change in gene frequencies. Although this gene-centric approach remains dominant, new insights to the responsive flexibility of living systems are calling it into question.
View the readings for the lecture here.
Sonia Sultan is Alan M. Dachs Professor of Science at Wesleyan University, where she is on the Biology Faculty and affiliated with the Environmental Studies Program. Sultan’s research examines the interplay between genetic and environmental influences on plant development and the evolutionary implications of this complex interplay. She holds a BA in History and Philosophy of Science from Princeton University and a PhD in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University.
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
Location TBD
Dr. Moses März introduces participants to experimental cartography as an artistic research method of translating different kinds of texts (academic, literary, encyclopedic) into lines, images, and quotations. The method combines elements of the visual arts, science, geography, social activism and storytelling to share knowledge in an intuitively accessible and inclusionary manner.
In preparation for the workshop, participants are invited to bring along a text or reading notes they would like to turn into a map. Please bring your own pencils and erasers.
Film Screening of Silent Storm by Abdullah Naseer
Tuesday, April 2, 2024
3:45–5 pm
K24, Seminar Room 11As a part of the Civic Engagement Network Course, and the Climate Teach-In, the BCB community will gather to watch the end product of a year-long project of Abdullah Naseer's: a documentary short film, titled Silent Storm, which touches upon the intersection between mental health and climate disaster in Pakistan.
Contact: [email protected]
Preparing for Life after BCB
Runs through Monday, April 15, 2024
Student Life invites you to attend our series of programs aimed at supporting students as you make plans for post-graduation life.Alumni Career Talk: Aurora Energy Research with Lucari Jordan (Spring '21)
Date: Tuesday, March 5
Time: 11:45am-12:45pm
Location: Lecture Hall
Join us for an Alumni Talk with Lucari Jordan '21, an EPST graduate from New Mexico, who started their career in the energy and economics sector in Berlin with the goal of eventually working at the intersection of the power industry and regulatory institutions. Lucari will share their experience at their current company, Aurora Energy Research, with BCB students: what they have found helpful for entry into the Berlin job market, and what they have found to be the most important qualities of a company in the early stages of building a career. We will also hear more about Aurora's Graduate Analyst Program, a traineeship which lasts 18-21 months, and allows you to get a perspective of the three main departments of the company (Advisory, Commercial, and Research) by completing a rotation working in each.
Bureaucracy in Reverse: Residence Permits, Health Insurance, Paperwork, and More!
Date: Wednesday, April 3
Time: 5:00pm-6:00pm
Location: Online
You did it, but now what? Come learn about how to wrap up your time at BCB and transition to your next adventure, be that in Berlin or across the globe. In this session we will cover:
- How to wrap up your academic time at BCB
- What bureaucratic paperwork you need to take care of
- Job seekers visa and residence permit questions
BCB Career Services Workshop for Graduating Students
Date: Monday, April 15
Time: 10:00am-11:30am
Location: Lecture Hall
Whether you are graduating this semester or are still in the midst of your studies, come find out more about what BCB Career Services has to offer! Together with the Senior Research Colloquium we will learn about the BCB Career website with a monthly Career Newsletter, a Resource Guide, and CV & cover letter templates. You will also find out more about our personalized career counseling; post-grad options in Berlin, Germany and abroad; deadlines for MA & PhD applications; tips on how to overcome networking anxiety, and much more.
Contact: [email protected]
Bureaucracy in Reverse: Residence Permits, Health Insurance, Paperwork, and more!
Part of the Life After BCB event series
Wednesday, April 3, 2024
5–6 pm
Online EventYou did it, but now what? Come learn about how to wrap up your time at BCB and transition to your next adventure, be that in Berlin or across the globe.
In this session we will cover:
- How to wrap up your academic time at BCB
- What bureaucratic paperwork you need to take care of
- Job seekers visa and residence permit questions
This event is part of Student Life's Preparing for Life After BCB event series.Sponsored by: Bard College Berlin.
Contact: [email protected]
Alumni Talk with Denise Kripper '09: Translation studies scholar and literary translator
Thursday, April 4, 2024
7 pm
Bard College Berlin, W15 Cafe (Waldstr. 15, Berlin 13156)Join us for an Alumni Talk with Dr. Denise Kripper (AY ‘09), a translation studies scholar, literary translator, and Bard College Berlin/ECLA alumna. As an associate professor of Spanish at Lake Forest College in Chicago, USA, and the translation editor at Latin American Literature Today, Denise will share insights into her remarkable journey, emphasizing the impact of her experiences at BCB/ECLA on her career. The event will close with a Q&A, where she will provide insights about building a career in academia and valuable perspectives on navigating the world post-graduation. Facilitated by Prof. Dr. Matthias Hurst and Dr. David Hayes.
Please register for the discussion through this Google Form.
Contact: [email protected]
Supporting Victims of Wartime Sexual Violence: Insights from Bosnia and Herzegovina
Monday, April 8, 2024
5:30–7 pm
Online (Zoom)This lecture by the Head of the Witness Support Office at the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina will take place on April 8th at 5:30pm.
Students, faculty, and alumni are welcome to join this online lecture organized within Prof. Dr. Ajla Škrbić's course 'Sexual Violence, Gender and War'. Zoom link (Meeting ID: 838 975 1341).
Sexual violence is one of the most serious violations of human rights, often resulting in lasting psychological and social consequences not only for the surviving victim but also for those close to them and their entire community. Testimonies from victims frequently trigger a resurgence of symptoms, irrespective of one's inherent coping mechanisms. The re-emergence of these symptoms during testimony can be as vivid and distressing as immediately after the assault itself. Consequently, comprehensive support from all actors involved in criminal proceedings remains crucial.
In this lecture, Ms. Alma Taso Deljković will share her insights into working with survivors of wartime sexual violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Drawing upon experiences from the Bosnian judicial system, we can glean insights into the daily challenges faced by witness support officers. Navigating the psychological aftermath of trauma, maintaining a professional yet empathetic approach towards victims and witnesses, and possessing a nuanced understanding of the legal procedures all intersect in this context. By delving into these experiences, students and other audiences will gain valuable insights that can deepen their understanding of this critical issue.
Alma Taso Deljković is the Head of the Witness Support Office of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and has been working with witnesses/victims since 2005. In addition to providing direct support to witnesses at the Court, she strongly advocates for the development and promotion of the witness support system in the judiciary in Bosnia and Herzegovina and beyond. She promotes the rights of witnesses/victims and improves dialogue and communication with local communities regarding the needs and rights of witnesses/victims. In her daily work as a psychologist and trained trauma and family counselor, she uses her knowledge and skills to help witnesses navigate the process of testifying as painlessly as possible for their psychophysical state. Taso Deljković has been an educator for many years and is the author of several professional and scientific articles in the field of psychology, support, and protection of witnesses and victims. From 2015 to 2018, she served as a member of the Board of Directors of the Fund for Victims at the International Criminal Court for Bosnia and Herzegovina. She also acts as an independent expert on issues of support and protection of witnesses and victims in criminal processes and beyond. Taso Deljković is a PhD candidate in the field of psychology at the University of Sarajevo and an international justice affiliate fellow of Georgetown Law University, Washington. She lives and works in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Contact: [email protected]
Gendered Mobilities of Central Asian Females in Germany through the Perspectives of Public Transport
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
12:30–1:30 pm
P24 Seminar Room 8Aiming to remedy the lacuna in the interdisciplinary mobility and migration literature, the main objective of the present research project is to examine Central Asian migrant women in Berlin through their commuting experience on public transport. Dr. Cholpon Turdalieva aims to address several issues and questions: To what extent is Central Asian women's integration in the host city influenced by daily commuting on different modes of public transit? How are women's employment, studying, income, and kinship networks realized or imposed in Germany's ethnocultural communities and other diverse multiethnic groups?
Following these questions, Turdalieva's research will be geared to produce academic and practical insights into the intersection of gendered mobility, migration, and public transit. We argue that Central Asian women migrants realize their socio-economic, educational, professional, and other personal and public goals in Germany by navigating their mobility, presumably through public transit transport. In this vein, we may think that automobility technologies, particularly the well-developed public transit in Berlin, empower Central-Asian migrant women by allowing them to move through different public spaces and traverse physical and social boundaries with greater ease and practice.
Cholpon Turdalieva is a Professor in Anthropology Program at American University of Central Asia. In 2004-05, she was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington; in 2004-2008, she became an OSI Fellow and researched the Western travel literature about Central Asia. During 2016-2012, she was a recipient of the Volkswagen Foundation grant and defended her PhD dissertation at Humboldt University. Currently, she is doing her research on “Gendered Mobilities of Central Asian Females in Germany through the Perspectives of Public Transport”. This research is supported by the OSUN Sabbatical Fellowship Program.
This presentation is part of the Faculty Colloquium Series.
Contact: [email protected]
Repeating, Remembering, Working Through Images
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
7–9 pm
Bard College Berlin Lecture Hall (Platanenstr. 98A, 13156)The BCB chapter of the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network together with BCB courses 'Game changers in 20th and 21st century Art,' 'Introduction to Critical and Cultural Theory,' and 'The Art of Making Videos' has the pleasure to invite you to a film screening and artist talk with Berlin-based filmmaker Maya Schweizer.
Maya Schweizer's cinematic works revolve around questions of history, identity, and memory. Urban spaces as interfaces of individual and collective modes of action are often the starting point of her observation. In her perception of these places and spaces, she uncovers social realities, inscribed narratives, and overlapping histories.
Maya will show three of her short films: A Tall Tale (16'30''), Voices and Shells (18'20''), and L’étoile de mer (The Starfish) (11'). The screening will be accompanied by a Q&A with the artist moderated by BCB faculty Clio Nicastro, Dorothea von Hantelmann, and Janina Schabig.
All participants are warmly invited to a reception with wine and snacks following the event.
Contact: [email protected]
SLC Community Forum with DEI Office: Accessibility & Accommodations
Thursday, April 11, 2024
12:30–1:30 pm
W15 CafeThe Student Life Committee and the DEI Office invite you to a Community Forum to discuss accessibility-related issues at BCB and to learn more about the process for receiving disability-related accommodations.
Contact: [email protected]
Fundraiser for Ukrainian Refugees in Tegel
Friday, April 12, 2024
12:30–2 pm
K30 Study RoomLast month, a fire broke out in the refugee camp of Tegel, where Ukrainians, who have fled after the Russian invasion, were staying. As a result of fire, many private belongings, from clothes to essential documents, burned down. BCB's Ï Club (Ukrainian Club) wishes to raise funds to cover the costs of translators and document restoration, without which it is impossible to do anything.
The Ï Club will be selling some delicious goods and pastries, so come by and help raise awareness and provide support.
Contact: [email protected]
48 Hours of BCB
Friday, April 12, 2024
6–8 pm
48 Hours of BCB is a film challenge in which students must make teams and will have 48 hours to create a short film.Your team will have only 48h to write, shoot, and edit a short movie. On Friday, April 12th team representatives will gather in the lecture hall for the opening ceremony and receive a random genre and a topic. Then 48h begin: create your movies throughout the weekend and submit on Sunday night. Next week our jury will be rating the films and winners get prizes. The closing ceremony is the following Friday (April 19th, 18:00-21:00).Register here.
Organized by students Anna Shafranska and Maya Ponomarenko.
Contact: [email protected]
Open Mic Night: Graduation Special
Friday, April 12, 2024
6:30–9 pm
The FactoryHear ye, hear ye! The Open Mic Night is back for the last time this year, and for the last time with Yensen LeBeau as the host. Finishing up the thesis is hard work, and given that the due date is at 3pm on April 12th too, we want to honor the graduates for all their hard work with a spot on the throne. Gowns, crowns, and capes welcome and encouraged. Anyone is allowed to perform - bring a talent, song, reading, stand-up routine, or anything else that you'd like!
If you would like to perform, you can sign up to do so through this form, as well as in-person night of.
Contact: [email protected]
BCB Career Services Workshop for Graduating Students
Part of the Life After BCB event series
Monday, April 15, 2024
10–11 am
Lecture Hall, Platanenstraße 98A, 13156 BerlinWhether you are graduating this semester or are still in the midst of your studies, come find out more about what BCB Career Services has to offer!
Together with the Senior Research Colloquium we will learn about the BCB Career website with a monthly Career Newsletter, a Resource Guide, and CV & cover letter templates. You will also find out more about our personalized career counseling; post-grad options in Berlin, Germany and abroad; deadlines for MA & PhD applications; tips on how to overcome networking anxiety, and much more.
This event is part of Student Life's Preparing for Life After BCB event series.Sponsored by: Bard College Berlin.
Contact: [email protected]
How the World Has Changed Since We Founded Smolny
Monday, April 15, 2024
5:30–7 pm
Hybrid (Zoom and K24 SR11)This is a hybrid lecture by Nikolay Koposov open to the public. Register to watch via Zoom here. The in-person location is K24 seminar room 11 (Kuckhoffstraße 24, 13156 Berlin).
Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, a joint venture between Bard College (New York) and Saint Petersburg State University, was founded in 1998. It developed from the faculty seminar “Critique of Social Sciences,” which started its work a year earlier. The goal of the seminar was to explore the role of social sciences as the basis of the then-dominant democratic ideology. Liberal education looked at that time as a critical aspect of Russia’s (and, more broadly, Eastern Europe’s) transition to democracy and as a possible solution to the problems created by the social sciences’ increasing specialization and their declining ideological effectiveness in the changing world.
Since then, Russia has become a dictatorship and has declared war on democracy domestically and internationally. Smolny has survived primarily as several projects in exile. The development of liberal education in some other East European countries (most notably, Hungary) has also been obstructed by the rise of right-wing populism and the emergence of neo-authoritarian regimes. However, the road to unfreedom has been largely paved by the internal evolution of democratic ideology, social sciences, and liberal education. The paper will discuss this evolution using the example of historiography, which, in recent decades, has become increasingly dependent on memory and identity politics promoted by both anti-globalist ethno-populist groups on the right and the anti-discrimination minority movements on the left.
Nikolay Koposov is a Distinguished Professor of the Practice at the School of History and Sociology and the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, USA). Previously, he worked at Johns Hopkins University, Emory University, Helsinki University, and École des hautes études en sciences sociales. In 1998-2009, he was Founding Dean of Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, a joint venture of Saint-Petersburg State University and Bard College (New York). His academic interests include modern European intellectual history, post-Soviet Russia, historiography, historical memory, and comparative politics of the past. He has authored six books, including Memory Laws, Memory Wars: The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia (Cambridge University Press, 2018), and De l’imagination historique (Éditions de l’ÉHÉSS, 2009). He has also edited several collective volumes and translations.
Contact: [email protected]
Info Session: EHCN Summer Research Stipends
Monday, April 15, 2024
7 pm
Online (Zoom)On behalf of the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network (EHCN) we would like to share a new exciting opportunity: research stipends for BCB students pursuing independent experimental humanities projects in the summer of 2024.
We welcome applications from students who answer "yes" to any of the following questions:
- Are you already working on an experimental humanities project that could benefit from additional financial support?
- Are you hoping to start an independent experimental humanities research project this summer? Maybe one that could develop into a creative component?
- Have you been inspired by EHCN activities on campus and talking to friends about starting a new experimental humanities initiative?
Students can apply via this form and are welcome to attend a Zoom info session on 15 April, 7pm at this link.
The application deadline is 30 April.
Contact: [email protected]
Women in Early Modern Medicine
Monday, April 15, 2024
7:30–9 pm
This online lecture by Maria Avxentevskaya will take place over Zoom.Early modern medical theories and practices transitioned from perusing ancient texts to processing observations. Keen attention to the human body and its mechanics, standardized training for physicians and midwives, as well as various popular healing methods, created a rich palette of medical knowledge and experience. Many practitioners addressed female health and encouraged women to learn more about their bodies. However, women were mostly limited to practicing medicine within the household. We will discuss the promises and pitfalls of early medicine for women as part of gender relations in science.
View the two readings for the lecture here and here.
Maria Avxentevskaya specializes in the premodern history of science and medicine and the longue durée history of scientific communication, including humanism, semiotics, translation, rhetoric, and networking. Her research has been supported by the Max Planck Society, Fritz Thyssen Stiftung, Klassik Stiftung Weimar, the Herzog August Bibliothek, and the Warburg Institute. Maria is currently working on the monograph Rhetoric and Persuasion in Early Modern English Science. Her publications include the forthcoming volume Signs and Signification in a Global Comparative Perspective, co-edited with Glenn W. Most (Brill, 2024) and Premodern Experience of the Natural World in Translation, co-edited with Katja Krause and Dror Weil (Routledge, 2022). Maria has taught science communication, early modern science, and knowledge in translation at Bard College Berlin, Technische Universität Berlin, and the University of Sydney. Her science journalism pieces have been republished by the Independent and Scientific American.
Contact: [email protected]
Internship Program Info Session Fall '24
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
12:30–1:30 pm
K24, SR11The BCB Internship Program gives you the opportunity to gain an off-campus workplace experience in a field that interests you. You can work 10-13h/week in an internship while also exploring various questions regarding work in the internship seminar taught by Agata Lisiak and Florian Duijsens. Most internships are generally unpaid, but you can earn academic credits through the internship seminar.
If you are a current or upcoming third-year student and curious about BCB’s Internship Program and the opportunity to gain practical experience alongside your studies while interning for an organization/individual in Berlin, please save the date.
How Does a Movement Organize Itself?: Organizing Experiences with Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
3:30–5:30 pm
Bard College Berlin Lecture Hall (Platanenstr 98a, 13156 Berlin)The initiative Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen convinced almost 60% of Berliners to vote for the socialization of large profit-oriented real estate companies. At its peak, thousands were active in the referendum. There is still an active neighborhood team in almost every Berlin district. How does the initiative organize the involvement of so many activists? What is the relationship with local tenants' initiatives that are active around specific problems in their houses and estates? And what role does the concept of "organizing" play in this?
These questions will be discussed by Kalle Kunkel, who is active in the AG Starthilfe of Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen.
Contact: [email protected]
How NGOs are tracking down Syrian war criminals across Europe and pushing for accountability
Thursday, April 18, 2024
12:30–2 pm
Lecture HallThe lecture offers an insight into the work of “Freunde des Syrischen Volks e.V.” (FdSV), a non-profit organization founded in Berlin in 2014 aiming at bringing accountability and transitional justice to the victims of the Syrian Civil War. FdSV engages in projects that empower Syrian communities and give them agency in the field of legal development and accountability for core crimes committed during the Syrian conflict. In recent years, FdSV contributed to the arrest and conviction of over a dozen perpetrators in EU countries.
Dr. Usahma Felix Darrah is the managing director of FdSV. He studied political economy, public law and Islamic Studies in Damascus and Heidelberg before working as a lecturer and speech writer for over 10 years. He’s been a consultant in Berlin since 2013.
Housing Struggles in Berlin: Talk with Sandy Kaltenborn
Thursday, April 18, 2024
4–5:15 pm
Kuckhoffstr. 24 (K24), seminar room 11Sandy Kaltenborn, housing activist and co-founder of the rent and urban policy initiative Kotti & Co, will give a talk as part of the course Civic Engagement and Engaged Research: Berlin Lab.
Starting in 2012, the tenant’s initiative Kotti & Co turned a summer street fair into a permanent protest camp at Kottbusser Tor (Kotti) in Berlin Kreuzberg. Their protest hut, called Gecekondu, became a central platform to render tenants’ concerns visible and to make the struggle of many accessible and concrete. At the initiative's core were demands that opposed an infinite raise in rent for privately owned subsidized housing declared in 2011. Kotti & Co was impactful in shifting media attention and academic research to the structural problem of social housing and the city’s increasingly pressing housing question, and, most importantly, putting it back onto Berlin’s political agenda. On 17 September 2021, after 10 years of hard, passionate work, the great demand for the (re)communalization of houses was met by the state-owned housing associations, a total of 14,500 apartments around Kotti and in the rest of Berlin. Sandy Kaltenborn will talk about urban policy and neighborhood mobilization since 1990, and the beginning of a housing movement.
Please register via email to Faiza Lynar: [email protected]
Sandy Kaltenborn, actually Alexander Sandy Paul Omar Abdullah Kaltenborn, is a communication designer and runs the design studio image-shift, which operates in social, cultural, artistic, as well as political and urban contexts. Kaltenborn has been living in Berlin since 1990, is co-founder of the rent and urban policy initiative Kotti & Co, and has been actively engaged in socio-political matters for many years. Currently, he teaches as a visiting professor at the Burg Giebichenstein University of Art and Design in Halle.
Admitted Students Day
Saturday, April 20, 2024
10 am – 4 pm
This event is for admitted students only. Congratulations on your admission!
We're delighted to invite you to get to know Bard College Berlin on Admitted Students Day. Join us for a day on our campus where you can meet fellow admitted students, attend a seminar with our professors, meet our staff, and hear from our current students about life as a Bard Berliner.
Register now through your applicant portal to decide which seminar you'll attend and begin planning your trip to Berlin!
Open Soil Research
Saturday, April 20, 2024
2–5 pm
Bard College Berlin, Kuckhoff Str. 24On behalf of the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network (EHCN) we warmly invite you to a hands-on workshop titled: Open Soil Research. This workshop is about experimental learning, muddy hands, and curious minds! Far more than just the dirt under our feet, soil is a truly complex and dynamic ecosystem. It is a constantly changing mix of minerals, living organisms, decaying organic matter, air, and water. It is the living skin of our planet, allowing new forms of life to come into being.
Guided by workshop facilitators Antonia von Schöning (HU Berlin) and Julian Chollet (mikroBIOMIK Society), the participants will collect samples and – using binocular and transmitted light microscopes – observe tiny creatures as they turn organic waste into fertile soil. Together, we will explore questions such as: Who lives in our soil? What infrastructures permeate the underground? How do organic, technical, and human beings co-exist and form complex soil ecologies?
Important Notes:
The number of participants is limited, so please sign up for the workshop using this Google Form. If you have any questions about the event, please email BCB faculty Janina Schabig at [email protected].
We hope to see many of you there!
Agata Lisiak & Janina Schabig
EHCN representatives at BCB
Contact: [email protected]
BA Thesis Presentations Spring 2024
Runs through Friday, May 10, 2024
This semester's Senior Thesis Presentations are taking place from April 22 to May 10. The presentations are an essential step towards graduation for every senior, and they are an established and cherished event in the BCB academic year.Monday, April 22 | 12:45pm-1:15pm, Lecture Hall
Sarah Wolbach, "The New Marriage Plot: Sally Rooney and the Legacy of Jane Austen"
Friday, April 26 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, Lecture Hall
Maia Angela Villarica, "Democracy and Disinformation: Addressing the Problem of Post-Truth in Social Media"
Monday, April 29 | 11:30am-12:00pm, P24 SR 8
Camila Rosales, "Reconceiving Spaces of Consumption: A Look into Interactions in a Berlin Mall"
Monday, April 29 | 11:30am-12:00pm, Lecture Hall
Ana Mihajlovska, "Empty Shelves: Causes of the Toilet Paper Shortage During the Covid-19 Crisis in the U.S."
Monday, April 29 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, P24 SR 8
Tay Mitchell, "Multiculturalism and the Promotion of Yiddishism through Labour Unions: An Archival Research"
Monday, April 29 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, Lecture Hall
Olivia Thayer, "Structures of Change: The Breaking of Binaries in Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook"
Monday, April 29 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR 8
Renata Álvarez León, "Reclaiming the Capital: Women's Reappropriation of Urban Public Spaces in Mexico City"
Monday, April 29 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, P24 SR 8
Carla Schwingler, "(In)Accessible Education: A Case Study of Bard College Berlin"
Monday, April 29 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, Lecture Hall
Jasmine Ahmed, "Making Waves in the Pacific: Examining the Reasons behind the Chinese Naval Build Up; and the Potential US response"
Monday, April 29 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, Lecture Hall
Aisha Khurram, "Education as a Lifeline; The Imperative of Including Education as a Humanitarian Response in Afghanistan"
Monday, April 29 | 2:00pm-2:30pm, Lecture Hall
Ayman Ndam Njoya, "Navigating Modernity: Assessing the Leverage of Traditional Authorities within a Republic and Decentralized Territorial Collectivities "
Monday, April 29 | 2:30pm-3:00pm, Lecture Hall
Sultana Taib, "The Socio-Economic Implications of Policy Reforms in Higher Education: A Case of the UK"
Tuesday, April 30 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, Lecture Hall
Mouadh Elarbi, "Microfinance in North Africa: Learning from Past Failures"
Tuesday, April 30 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, Lecture Hall
Anđela Despotović, "In Search of a Mother’s Tongue: Dinçer Güçyeter’s Unser Deutschlandmärchen as a Writing in 'Postmonolingual' Condition"
Thursday, May 2 | 11:30am-12:00pm, W70 SR 10
Eve Sanchez, "A Critical Inquiry into Israel’s Mobilization of Happiness Discourse to Stimulate Normalization of Occupation: Exploring the Relationship Between Governments and National Happiness"
Thursday, May 2 | 11:30am-12:00pm, W15 Cafe
Elma Talić, "Where Did The Enemy Go? Performing LAIBACH In Post-Ideological Era"
Thursday, May 2 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, W70 SR 10
Milica Vučić, "Democracy in Crisis: a Historical Analysis from the Time of Kemalist Reforms to the AKP and How Secularism Became the Defining Force of Turkish Politics"
Thursday, May 2 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, W15 Cafe
Wanda Alvesová, "Staging Authenticity: An Exploration of ‘Real People’ in She She Pop’s Theatre"
Thursday, May 2 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR 2
Lara Habboub, "The Algorithmic Oracle: Decoding the Human-Machine Feedback Loop of Value Capture"
Thursday, May 2 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR8
Andrea Kalife de la Garza, "A Symbolic Disorder: Language & Addiction"
Thursday, May 2 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, K24 SR 11
Grace Klein, "Unveiling the Layers: Deconstructing Ethnic and Racial Hierarchies in Zionist Thought"
Thursday, May 2 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, K24 SR 11
Salma Barakat, "Settler Colonialism in Kashmir and Palestine: Exploring Themes of Ecocide, Memoricide, and Spaciocide"
Thursday, May 2 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, P24 SR 8
Jacob Horack, "Artificial Cognition: An Ethics of the Creation of Minds"
Friday, May 3 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, Lecture Hall
Harri Thomas, "Peace After Parapolitics: The Red Right Hand of Liberal Democracy and its Challenges for Peacebuilding"
Friday, May 3 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, Lecture Hall
Isabel Castro Dominguez, "Safeguarding Indigenous Cultural Heritage in the Face of Land Grabbing in the Colombian Amazon"
Monday, May 6 | 11:30am-12:00pm, P98a Lecture Hall
Hang Nguyen, "Echoed Narratives: Transnational and Transgenerational Memories of Former Vietnamese Contract Workers in Germany"
Monday, May 6 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, P98a Lecture Hall
Julia Mazal, "Redefining 'Arte Popular' in Mexico. Past and Present"
Monday, May 6 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P98 Seminar Room 2
Selo Uğuzeş, "Aesthetics, Politics, and Life: Autonomous Zones as Places of Cultural Production"
Monday, May 6 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR 8
Lilith Gao, "Limits of Universality: Reassessing Xu Bing's Language Experiments"
Monday, May 6 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, Lecture Hall
Ibrar Mirzai, "Energy, Infrastructure, and Sustainability, Mapping Ukraine's Post-War Reconstruction with EU Alignment"
Monday, May 6 | 1:00-1:30pm, P24 SR 8
Zoe Whiteman, "Metamorphic Digestion: The Aesthetic’s of Fear in La Casa Lobo"
Monday, May 6 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, P98a Lecture Hall
Kai Bradley-Gutiérrez de Terán, "Consitutional Barriers: Evaluating the Efficiency of the German Constitution in Safeguarding Against Fascist Resurgence"
Tuesday, May 7 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR 8
Rylee Mora, "Historical Narratives of Artificial Intelligence and their Ethical Implications"
Tuesday, May 7 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P98 SR 1
Abdullah Zahidi, "The European Union's Regulatory Framework for Crypto-Assets: The Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) Regulation"
Tuesday, May 7 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P98 SR 2
Yensen LeBeau, "The Cost of Being Known: How Overexposure to Media Online Leads to Apathetic and Extreme Identity"
Tuesday, May 7 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, K24 SR 12
Héctor Miró Beltrán, "Byung-Chul Han’s Catalunya: An Understanding of the Catalan Independence Movement through Han's Psychopolitics"
Tuesday, May 7 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, P98 SR 2
Izzy Monroe, "The Subject of Accountability: Bridging Critical Theory and Transformative Justice Practice"
Tuesday, May 7 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, K24 SR 11
Maria Castillo Gomez, "Under the Banner of Peace and Friendship: Latin American Intellectuals Interpreting Soviet Cultural Diplomacy at the 1957 Moscow World Youth Festival"
Tuesday, May 7 | 1:00pm, 1:30pm, P24 SR 8
Leonie Hüppe, "More-than-Human Storytelling and Interspecies Communication in Richard Powers' The Overstory"
Tuesday, May 7 | 1:30pm-2:00pm, K24 SR 11
Gracie Kuppenbender, "Embracing Modernity: An Exploration of Young Indigenous Artists' Search for Cultural Preservation"
Tuesday, May 7 | 3:45pm-4:15pm, K24 SR 12
Andrej Jovičić, "Jugonostalgija: The Response to the Aftermath of Genocidal and Economic Violence in Post-Conflict and Post-Transition Bosnia and Herzegovina"
Wednesday, May 8 | 10:00am-10:30am, Lecture Hall
Imogen Hilton-Barber, "Russia's Invasion of Ukraine and South Africa's 'Neutrality'"
Wednesday, May 8 | 10:00am-10:30am, W15 Cafe
Katie Lyle, "The Connection Between Death and Nightmare in the Art of Bosch and Redon"
Wednesday, May 8 | 10:30am-11:00am, W15 Cafe
Kaitlyn Woodburn, "Colonizing The Stars: Space Age Aesthetics and High Frontier Visions of Utopia"
Wednesday, May 8 | 11:00am-11:30am, W15 Cafe
Elena Eßer, "Examining The Difference Between Counterterrorism Policies In Right-Wing Extremism And Islamic Extremism - A Case Study Of Germany"
Wednesday, May 8 | 11:30am-12:00pm, W15 Cafe
Júlia Tamási, "From 'Existing Socialism' to Existing Capitalism - What Can we Learn from Hungary's Transition"
Wednesday, May 8 | 12:00pm-12:30pm, P24 Seminar Room 8
Lily Ellerbrock, "Soft Facts of Education: A Student's Guide to Creativity"
Wednesday, May 8 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, P24 SR 8
Fiona French, "Empowered Mothering: Painterly Expressions of Motherhood in Contemporary Art"
Wednesday, May 8 | 12:30pm-1:00pm, K24 SR 11
Christin Alhalabi, "Peddling, Assimilation and Racial Democracy, Levantine Arab Memory in Rio de Janeiro"
Wednesday, May 8 | 1:00pm-1:30pm, Lecture Hall
Drinlon Madani, "The Different Effects of Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivation on Employees' Job Engagement and Satisfaction"
Wednesday, May 8 | 2:30pm-3:00pm, P98 SR 2
Jasmin Rossi, "Policy Analysis of the Government Subsidized Psychotherapy in Finland - Who is Eligible and Why?"
Wednesday, May 8 | 11:00am-11:30am, P24 SR 8
Lena Brun, "Stories for a Better World: The Interaction Between Jewish Storytelling and Speculative Fiction"
Friday, May 10 | 9:15am-09:45am, P98 SR 2
Bianca Hopkins
Friday, May 10 | 9:45am-10:15am, P98 SR 2
Deborah Cesar Oliveira, "To What Extent do Different Countries' Data Regulations Limit Interpol's Role in Combating Cross-Border Financial Crimes? A Case Study on the United States"
Friday, May 10 | 1:15pm-1:45pm, P98 SR 2
Attila Noyan, "Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2001-2021) and the Hazara Genocide"
Friday, May 10 | 2:00pm-2:30pm, P98 Seminar Room 2
Frances Grimm, "From the Mine Wars to a Just Transition: A Marxist Analysis of the UMWA"
Online
Daria Khomiakova, "The Arctic - A Political Struggle for Sustainable Development"
The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain
Lecture by Matthew Longo
Monday, April 22, 2024
7–9:30 pm
P98a Lecture Hall (Platanenstraße 98a, 13156 Berlin)In August 1989, a group of Hungarian activists organized a picnic on the border of Hungary and Austria. But this was not an ordinary picnic—it was located on the dangerous militarized frontier known as the Iron Curtain. Tacit permission from the highest state authorities could be revoked at any moment. On wisps of rumor, thousands of East German “vacationers” packed Hungarian campgrounds, awaiting an opportunity, fearing prison, surveilled by lurking Stasi agents. The Pan-European Picnic set the stage for the greatest border breach in Cold War history: hundreds crossed from the Communist East to the longed-for freedom of the West.
Drawing on dozens of original interviews—including Hungarian activists and border guards, East German refugees, Stasi secret police, and the last Communist prime minister of Hungary—Matthew Longo tells a gripping and revelatory tale of the unraveling of the Iron Curtain and the birth of a new world order. Just a few months after the Picnic, the Berlin Wall fell, and the freedom for which the activists and refugees had abandoned their homes, risked imprisonment, sacrificed jobs, family, and friends, was suddenly available to everyone. But were they really free? And why, three decades since the Iron Curtain was torn down, have so many sought once again to build walls?
Register for the event through this Google Form.
Matthew Longo is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Leiden University. He is the author of two books: The Picnic: A Dream of Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain (W. W. Norton, 2023) and The Politics of Borders: Sovereignty, Security, and the Citizen After 9/11 (Cambridge University Press, 2018).Sponsored by: Bard College Berlin.
Contact: [email protected]
Creative Component Exhibition: Spring 2024
Tuesday, April 23, 2024
5–9:30 pm
BCB Factory (Eichenstrasse 43, 13156 Berlin)We cordially invite you to the public exhibition of art works from this year’s graduating cohort.
The exhibition shows the outcomes of a two semester long creative research that students conducted as part of their senior thesis projects; it includes painting, film, theater and performance art, installation, video art, and creative writing.
Please join us and celebrate this special occasion!
Works by Fiona French, Gracie Kuppenbender, Hang Nguyen, Jiayao Gao, Kaitlyn Woodburn, Katie Lyle, Lena Brun, Selo Uğuzeş, Wanda Alvesová, Yensen LeBeau and Zoé Whiteman.
The exhibition opens at 5pm. Participatory performance by Wanda Alvesová at 6:30pm. Film screening by Yensen LeBeau at 8:00pm.
Contact: [email protected]
Meet University College Utrecht
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
12:30–1:30 pm
P24, Seminar Room 5Thinking of studying abroad in the Netherlands? Come meet colleagues from University College Utrecht, learn about academics, student life, and what awaits you during a study abroad semester. Faculty and staff are also welcome to join to learn more about the academic offerings at our Erasmus partner university, UCU.
Contact: [email protected]
Walking a Fine Line: Germany and the Question of Imperialism
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
12:30–1:30 pm
P24 Seminar Room 8Imperialism is back in our everyday vocabulary to describe Russian expansionism. Yet the theoretical contours of the term imperialism are notoriously hard to pin down and its analytical added value is often disputed. The term exists as a descriptor of government action to qualify Russia or the US as ‘imperialist’ states. It also denotes the structural logic of capitalism on the world scale which tends towards war, value extraction and the bifurcation of the world into core and peripheries.
In this paper, Prof. Dr. Kai Koddenbrock investigates this dual meaning of imperialism with a view to Germany’s history, policy, and political economy. He suggests a contemporary analysis of imperialism focusing on domestic state-capital relations, military violence, and the extraction of value from the Global South. Applying this troika of imperialism to German state-capital relations, the paper focuses on its corporate giants Volkswagen and BASF, recent shifts in security and economic policy as well as the quest for mineral supplies from the Global South and argue that Germany can be – with some qualifications - called an imperialist state. In conclusion the paper shows that imperialism as an analytical term allows to go beyond the overly generic term of capitalism and is uniquely placed to make sense of a more openly violent world engulfed in war and crisis.
This presentation is part of the Faculty Colloquium Series.
Kai Koddenbrock is a professor of political economy at Bard College Berlin. He is working on economic sovereignty and self-determination in the Global South and particularly on the role of the international monetary system and global and domestic financial markets in helping and constraining this quest. Located at the intersections of international relations and international political economy, he also works on geopolitics and geoeconomics and the new scramble for rare earths.
He co-founded with Ndongo Sylla and Maha ben Gadha the African Monetary and Economic Sovereignty conferences, which have been held in Tunis and Dakar in 2019 and 2022. He leads the Politics of Money Network with Benjamin Braun, funded by the German Research Council, and heads a research group at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth.
Kai has held academic positions at several German universities, worked for the United Nations in NYC, the World Food Programme in Rome, and the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. He has been a fellow at Columbia University, the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Societies, Sciences Po, University of Sussex, as well as the Institute for Advanced Studies and the École des Hautes Études Internationales in Paris.
He has contributed essays to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and to Jacobin and Soziopolis among others. His most recent academic articles are: "Beyond financialisation: the longue durée of finance and production in the Global South" and "International financial subordination: a critical research agenda." He has recently edited Capital Claims: Power and Global Finance (Routledge), with Benjamin Braun, and African Monetary and Economic Sovereignty in the 21st Century (Pluto Press), with Maha ben Gadha, Ndongo Samba Sylla, Fadhel Kaboub, and Ines Mahmood. His latest monograph was The practice of humanitarian intervention: Aid workers, agencies and institutions in the DR Congo (Routledge, 2015).
Kai tweets @kaikodden and his publications can be accessed through Google Scholar and on this PDF.
Contact: [email protected]
Migration in Kyrgyz Republic: Socio-Demographic Drivers and Policy Solutions
Wednesday, April 24, 2024
5:30–7 pm
W15 CafeThis study explores the socio-demographic factors driving migration within the Kyrgyz Republic. The collapse of the Soviet Union triggered significant outward migration, raising concerns about its impact on the country's economic and national security. Dr. Meerim Djakypova from the American University of Central Asia delves into this critical issue, analyzing the link between unemployment, poverty, and social vulnerability with migration patterns.
By employing a comparative approach, Dr. Djakypova examines migration trends in the Kyrgyz Republic compared to other countries. This analysis informs the development of policy recommendations for effective migration management. Additionally, the presentation explores the potential demographic consequences, such as a gender imbalance and workforce decline, resulting from uncontrolled migration.
To register, send an email to [email protected]
Meerim A. Djakypova is an Assistant Professor in the Economics Department at the American University of Central Asia. She holds a PhD in Economics and Management of the National Economy, Bishkek, KR and a Master of Arts in Management from Webster University in Vienna, Austria. Her research focuses on migration patterns and their impact on the Kyrgyz Republic's economy and social development. Dr. Djakypova has published research on migration, economic security, and poverty in Central Asia, and is a frequent speaker on migration issues in Kyrgyzstan and the region. She is a passionate advocate for evidence-based policymaking and her research has helped to inform policy debates on migration in Kyrgyzstan.
Contact: [email protected]
Passover Scavenger Hunt
Thursday, April 25, 2024
12:30–1:30 pm
W15 CafeMeet us in the W15 Cafe to hear the story of Passover and then join us for a scavenger hunt in the garden (including a prize for the winner!). Passover snacks will be served.
Contact: [email protected]
The Lives of Others: Political Economies of Security and the Gifts of Empire
Thursday, April 25, 2024
7–9:30 pm
Lecture HallIt has become commonplace to observe that we live in dark times. With the proliferation of irredentist wars, ethno-nationist patterns of organizing violence, and the revenant racial logics by which risk and protection are distributed, it seems we are living through a kind of Gramscian interregnum, redolent of the “morbid symptoms” of his time. But when did this crisis really begin? Like with all caesuras, the focus on the spectacular symptoms occludes the continuities by which historical techniques of governance are adapted to new conditions of social domination. Rather than understanding our historical moment as the breakdown of prevailing orders, and hence a return to violence, this talk will propose that what marks our time is an experimentation with the organization and localization of violence in the everyday.
Thinking with Sudan and Gaza as two places where the moral and ontological status extraordinary violence remains hotly debated, this talk proposes a larger set of questions about what it means that over the last decades, we have seen what Manuel Schwab calls the “enclosure of the everyday” by various globally distributed economies, from humanitarian assistance, which will be my main topic, to communications platforms, remittance networks, and payment spaces. As civil infrastructures that sustain pedestrian practices, these have not traditionally been seen as the focal point for understanding how violence is organized. Nevertheless, the talk will propose that the “enclosure of the everyday,” which entails significant and intimate-yet-speechless entanglement with the lives of others, constitutes a central driver of the “new new wars,” even as they descend into extraordinary depths of annihilating force. With an eye towards debates unfolding in Germany today, it will be shown that public memory must also be seen as one of these infrastructures.
Please register for the lecture through this Google form.
Manuel Schwab is a writer and professor of Anthropology at the American University in Cairo. Working at the nexus between Economic and Political Anthropology, his work is concerned with valorization and securitization and their relation to humanitarian practice and the logics of military force. Drawing from seemingly unrelated social fields like public memory, practices of care, and accusations of supernatural force, he is interested in how these come to shape temporal and ethical imaginaries. He has worked in Sudan, South Sudan, Syria, Germany, and the US. In addition to his work on value in the Sudanese context, he is in the early stages of a new research undertaking on the relationship between extractive economies and the new politics of “post-humanitarian” crisis management. Manuel’s work has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, The Ford Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation, among others. In addition to his academic research, Manuel is finishing a Manuscript of speculative fiction in with an artist from Guinea, where he works at the nexus between experimental ethnography and fiction proper. The work began when he was a Fellow at the Akademie Schloss Solitude 2019-2020.
Contact: [email protected]
Real Talk: Syrian and Ukrainian Views on Fighting Russian Crimes from Germany
Thursday, April 25, 2024
7–9 pm
Ulme35 (Ulmenallee 35, 14050 Berlin)Fighting Russian crimes and propaganda in Germany: What can Ukrainian and Syrian diasporas learn from each other?
This event is a panel talk between journalist Kristin Helberg, BCB alum Ameenah Sawwan, and Mariia Borysenko (NGO “Vitsche”); moderated by BCB student Yelizaveta Mamon. It will take place at Ulme35 (Ulmenallee 35, 14050 Berlin) in Westend.
The talk will focus on the parallels in Russia's warfare and propaganda in Syria and Ukraine, and what the civil societies of both diasporas can learn from each other. Civil society in diaspora has been organizing itself, documenting the crimes, and countering the propaganda. There are lessons to learn how to organize and create publicity, and what campaign strategies are helpful to denounce these crimes and achieve their criminal prosecution, in front of international courts as well as national courts on the grounds of the principle of universal jurisdiction.. In the past decade, both of the diasporas have become powerful engines for political and social justice, organizing themselves to document Russian crimes, undermine disinformation, and amplify their voices in the German informational landscape. In this Real Talk we will discuss Ukrainian and Syrian diaspora experiences, case studies and effective campaign strategies to denounce these crimes, raise public awareness and achieve their criminal prosecution.
No registration necessary.Sponsored by: Ulme35.
Contact: [email protected]
Watching Russia From Afar: Adapting to an Age of War, Repression, and Emigration
Monday, April 29, 2024
7–9 pm
W15 Cafe at Bard College Berlin (Waldstraße 15, 13156 Berlin)This event at Bard College Berlin will bring together prominent journalists, sociologists, and academics who have spent their careers tracking developments in Russian politics and society. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the many convulsions that have resulted, have made this work exceedingly difficult, if not impossible. Conducting interviews or field research is extraordinarily fraught. But monitoring events and developments from abroad contains no less difficulties. Led in discussion by BCB's writer-in-residence, expert panelists will discuss the adjustments in their work and share their adaptations and methodologies. What is difficult to understand without being on the ground? But at the same time, what is impossible to measure from inside Russia? What should we admit we don't and can't know? The evening promises an open, enlightening, and educational conversation for all those interested in following and making sense of events in Russia and their relevance for Western societies.
Register here.
Valerie Hopkins is an international correspondent for The New York Times, covering the war in Ukraine, as well as Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union. She covered the Balkans and eastern Europe for a decade, most recently for the Financial Times, before moving to Moscow to join The New York Times. She is a 2022 recipient of Newswomen’s Club of New York’s Marie Colvin Award for Foreign Correspondence and the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE) Distinguished Fellow Award.
Svetlana Erpyleva is a researcher with the Public Sociology Laboratory and a post-doctoral researcher at the Research Centre for East European Studies, University of Bremen. Her articles have been published in American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Childhood, Current Sociology, Journal of Youth Studies, Sociological Forums, and a number of Russian and international academic journals and media. Currently, she coordinates a large-scale research project on how Russians perceive the war in Ukraine.
Joshua Yaffa is a contributing writer for The New Yorker. He is also the author of "Between Two Fires: Truth, Ambition, and Compromise in Putin's Russia," which won the Orwell Prize in 2021. He has also written for Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, National Geographic, and other publications. He is currently the inaugural writer-in-residence at Bard College Berlin and was previously a fellow at The American Academy in Berlin.
Contact: [email protected]
Evolutionary Biology and the Nature of Nature
Monday, April 29, 2024
7:30–9 pm
Online (Zoom)This guest lecture by Sonia E. Sultan, Professor of Biology at Wesleyan University, will take place online over Zoom.
Darwin's idea of Natural Selection explained how small, heritable differences between individual animals and plants would cause adaptive change in their features over time. In the 20th century, this idea was joined to simple Mendelian genetics in a Neo-Darwinian approach that redefined evolution as change in gene frequencies. Although this gene-centric approach remains dominant, new insights to the responsive flexibility of living systems are calling it into question.
View the readings for the lecture here.
Sonia Sultan is Alan M. Dachs Professor of Science at Wesleyan University, where she is on the Biology Faculty and affiliated with the Environmental Studies Program. Sultan’s research examines the interplay between genetic and environmental influences on plant development and the evolutionary implications of this complex interplay. She holds a BA in History and Philosophy of Science from Princeton University and a PhD in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University.
Contact: [email protected]
Experimental Cartography Workshop
Tuesday, April 30, 2024
4–6 pm
Location TBDDr. Moses März introduces participants to experimental cartography as an artistic research method of translating different kinds of texts (academic, literary, encyclopedic) into lines, images, and quotations. The method combines elements of the visual arts, science, geography, social activism and storytelling to share knowledge in an intuitively accessible and inclusionary manner.
In preparation for the workshop, participants are invited to bring along a text or reading notes they would like to turn into a map. Please bring your own pencils and erasers.
Contact: [email protected]