Hartmut Rosa (Jena/Erfurt) and Elisabeth Herrmann (Warwick)

Moderator: Irina Hron (Copenhagen)

Public Event at Jonsered Manor, Gothenburg

Monday, 27th March, 13:00-16:00 (CET)

Abstract

How does social reality come into being? Where do social impulses originate and how do they enter the public sphere?

Imaginaries are at least partly constitutive for what societies are, how they develop, how they are modified and continuously negotiated. Fictional stories, whether in the form of literary texts, visual media, or music and lyrics, can be catalysts for social transformation by reflecting the present from alternative viewpoints, including looking back at the past and imagining possible futures. Fictional stories turn imaginings into possibilities, taking them into the world, bringing them to mind and prototyping possible social realities through images and narration, figures and plots. How do social imaginaries emerge? How does fiction contribute to social transformation – and how are social transformations reflected in social imaginaries? What is social energy and how is it set in motion?

The School of Modern Languages and Cultures (SMLC) wamly invites applications from outstanding candidates for doctoral study commencing in September/October 2023. The SMLC will support pre-selected candidates for the Chancellor’s International Scholarships and Midlands4Cities scholarships

To express an interest, please send your CV and a two-page research proposal to smlcoffice@warwick.ac.uk (cc I.de-Smet@warwick.ac.uk) as soon as possible, ideally by 16 November 2022.

Interested in applying for a Midlands4Cities scholarship for doctoral study in Modern Languages or Translation Studies at Warwick? Register for the online Application Writing Workshops for M4C scholarship candidates on 19 November 2022, 10 am-1 pm. Registration details and the link to subscribe are on the M4C website.

Waswasa - A Soul City Arts Production For the Birmingham 2022 Festival, with contributions by Dr James Hodkinson. Running from Aug 25- Sept 3, this is a multi media spectacle, including film, live physical theatre, immersive sound and graphic arts. The project aims to detoxify and demystify the often misunderstood tradition of Islamic prayer, and uses a blend of high-end digital art and the tactile productions of community arts projects to ensure local voices are at the heart of this internationally renowned project

Constructions of Gender, Nation and Jewishness as Constellation – Intersectionality and Critical Theory

The School for Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Warwick warmly invites expressions of interest in its MPhil/PhD programmes in French Studies, German Studies, Hispanic Studies, Italian, and Translation and Transcultural Studies (including a theoretical/academic and a practice-based route).

Teleworkability as a new digital divide – Webinar

July 14^th, 11am-12pm

What has the extent of teleworking been in the EU before and during the Covid-19 outbreak? Are we seeing a trend of new teleworkers across occupations and types of workers who weren’t able to work remotely previously?

This webinar, facilitated by Professor Chris Warhurst from the Institute of Employment Research and Dr Enrique Fernández-Macías of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, examines how Covid-19 has changed the profile of the teleworker and what it means for the future of work. Find out more: https://warwick.ac.uk/research/priorities/productivity/webinars/teleworkabilityasanewdigitaldivide/

Warwick Food GRP and the Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts (CRPLA) seek contributions for the WARWICK DINNER PARTY - a creative project to highlight different food cultures, memories, ideas and goals, to be displayed on campus in July 2021. Deadline for brief proposals: 1 June, 5.00 pm.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/research/researchcentres/phillit/currentevents/dinnerparty/

Sponsored by the Warwick Food GRP and CRPLA.

Oliver Davis has published a new article on the work of philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, as part of a special issue of Angelaki on Sloterdijk, edited by Patrick Roney and Andrea Rossi. 'Anthropotechnical Practising in the Foam-World' can be accessed here. Abstract: I begin by acknowledging the profusion of Peter Sloterdijk’s published work, the suggestion by Bruno Latour that it may be on the side of design, and Sloterdijk’s pugnacious aversion to professorial critique. I focus on what I consider to be the crucial and vexed relationship between the general immunology of the Spheres trilogy [1998–2004] and the general ascetology of You Must Change Your Life [2009]. I present an analytical reconstruction of Sloterdijk’s account of originary spheric being-with in the trilogy, focused on its culmination in the foam-world; I suggest this account is too ambiguous on key matters of basic ontological structure and I question whether the foam metaphor is adequate as a description of intersubjectivity today. Against the backdrop of this discussion I consider whether the general ascetology of Sloterdijk’s second anthropotechnics involves practising in, or practising on, the shells of symbolic immunity and conclude the latter. Setting this alongside the trilogy’s insistence that cells in the foam are “co-fragile,” I argue that anthropotechnical practising in the foam-world is suffused with a violence which Sloterdijk is reluctant to theorize. Registering one significant undeclared context of his discussion of self-enhancement, in postmodern management theory, I suggest that successful anthropotechnical practising in the foam-world requires the capacity to ignore other people and their interests. I note that Sloterdijk’s one-eyed embrace of competitive self-enhancement in You Must Change Your Life has since been qualified in brief remarks in What Happened in the 20th Century? [2016] but not substantively reconsidered. In conclusion, I pay tribute to the anthropotechnical lesson of Sloterdijk’s theoretical project, notwithstanding its design flaws and continuity errors.

As part of the Women in German Studies conference, Warwick is honoured to be hosting an online keynote lecture by Dr Rosemarie H. Peña, which will be open to all who register via the booking form (deadline: 3rd November).

Rosemarie H. Peña holds a PhD in Childhood Studies from Rutgers University-Camden where she also earned her MA in Childhood Studies and BAs in German and Psychology. She identifies as a dual heritage Black (Senegalese) German American transnational adoptee and is the founder and president of the Black German Heritage and Research Association (BGHRA).

Rosemarie has published in several academic journals, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies (2020), and is a contributing author in five edited volumes. Her most recent essay, “Stories Matter: Contextualizing the Black German American Adoptee Experience(s)” is included in Marion Kraft’s edited volume Children of the Liberation: Transatlantic Experiences of Black Germans of the Postwar Generation (2019).

"Scholarly Activism: The Black German Heritage and Research Association (BGHRA) and Black German Studies in the United States"

Black Germans were among the first children whose natural lives would be forever altered by postwar “child-saving” initiatives that inspired the institutionalization of transnational adoption in the United States. The adoptees are thereby among the experiential pioneers of the juristic process effectuating multicultural families by awarding guardianship of children born to mothers in one country and culture to genetically unrelated persons living in another. For nearly three decades, Black Germans born in the wake of the World War II who grew up in Germany, Denmark, and the United States have been searching for their original families and sharing their life experiences.

As this postwar cohort re-emerges as a topic of academic interest, the adoptees and their non-adopted peers who grew up in Germany without their fathers are reconnecting with their biological kin. The U.S. adoptees are, therefore, concomitantly reuniting in discourse and actuality with other Black Germans having disparate backgrounds, cultural roots, and connections to Germany. Many of the adoptees, whose ages now range from the early sixties to mid-seventies, are learning about their German ancestral roots in dialogue with journalists, academics, and filmmakers who are eager to hear their stories, write about them, and portray their adoption experiences in documentary films.

In her keynote, Rosemarie Peña will discuss the role of the Black German Heritage and Research Association (BGHRA) with respect to Black German family and community reunification, and the expansion of Black German Studies in the U.S. as an interdisciplinary field of academic research.

Please register for the keynote lecture using this booking form by Tuesday 3rd November. Once registration has closed, you will be sent a link to join the virtual keynote.

Warwick is delighted to host the 32nd Annual, and 1st virtual, Women in German Studies conference on 5-7th November. The event will include a keynote lecture on “Scholarly Activism: The Black German Heritage and Research Association (BGHRA) and Black German Studies in the United States” from Dr Rosemarie Peña (Black German Heritage & Research Association), which is open to all, as well as a PG/ECR workshop on "Finding your Academic Voice" and a special workshop on online teaching. The full programme and details of how to register can be found on the conference website (https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/academic/ks/womeningermanstudies).

Over several years, working with Dr Benedict Schofield (KCL) James Hodkinson has curated an important volume of essays that asses the state of German Studies in education, but also in the worlds beyond it. Published by Camden House (Boydell & Brewer), James has written a blog reflecting on the book and its relevance. Read the entry here!

Listen to Warwick Undergraduate student podcasts ahead of the visit to Warwick by our writer in residence 2018 Olga Grjasnowa!

A !FREE! poetry reading featuring winners from the Two Chairs Creative Writing Competition, and judges Ian McMillan, Hanan Issa, Momtaza Mehri.

The Annual PG Symposium of the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Warwick, will take place on 23rd May 2018

James Hodkinson has won a further £38 K towards his collaborative arts project, which connects his research into Islam in Germany with the lives and experiences of local Muslim communities in the Midlands.

Love, Eros, & Desire in Contemporary German-Language Literature & Culture

Edited by HELMUT SCHMITZ & PETER DAVIES

The University of Warwick’s Institute for Advanced Study has today opened its call for applications under the Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions COFUND scheme (deadline: 30th November 2017). The fellowships offer successful applicants two years at Warwick, starting in September 2018. These fellowships are intended to be strongly linked to Warwick’s Global Research Priorities. As such, Warwick's School of Modern Languages and Cultures (SMLC) strongly encourages applications tied especially to the ‘Connecting Cultures’ priority.