Warwick Workshop for Interdisciplinary German Studies
Funded with the generous support of Warwick's Humanities Research Centre.
This is an interdisciplinary workshop series dedicated to all areas of German cultural studies. Meeting two to three times during term in the German Studies Section, or online, the workshop hosts presentations (usually) on a Wednesday afternoon by senior national and international scholars, Warwick colleagues and doctoral students. Presentations can be delivered both as finished conference-style papers, or more informally as work-in-progress. Please contact the workshop convenor, thomas dot crew at warwick dot ac dot uk, if you wish to offer or attend a presentation.
WWIGS 2025-26
Please note: days and times vary, please see below
Term 1
- Wednesday 19th November 5:00-6:30 pm, FAB4.74
Thomas Crew (Warwick)
The Gestalt of the Worker: The New Man in Ernst Jünger's Weimar Photobooks
Between 1928 and 1933, Ernst Jünger edited or otherwise contributed to no fewer than seven photo anthologies. Some of these feature his own photography, others introductory essays and commentary. Each of them, however, relates to what George F. Kennan called the “great seminal catastrophe” of the First World War. For Jünger, the conflict represented a symbolic watershed between two historical eras – not the cause but the most emphatic expression of a radically new order: “Im Mittelpunkt der Auseinandersetzung”, he suggests in 1932, “steht nicht etwa die Verschiedenartigkeit der Nationen, sondern die Verschiedenartigkeit zweier Zeitalter, von denen ein werdendes ein untergehendes verschlingt.”
The central concern of the anthologies – as well as the related essays Die totale Mobilmachung (1930), Der Arbeiter (1932) and Über den Schmerz (1934) – is the development of a fundamentally new kind of humanity, what Jünger called the “worker”. Not to be confused with the proletariate, Jünger’s worker is a universal figure that makes a mockery of conventional social distinctions, whether of class, race, or gender. The worker ultimately represents a triumphant, if nihilistic, successor to the nineteenth-century bourgeois, whose defining characteristic is not the open individuality of Robinson Crusoe but the disciplined uniformity of the Unknown Soldier. Jünger’s new man is an eminently standardized, objectified, and replacable figure, whose body, bearing, and face reflect the harsh imperatives of the new machine age.
- Wednesday 10th December, 5:00-6:30 pm, German studio space, (FAB 4th floor)
"GeFo im Studio"
- Wednesday 10th December, 6:00-9:00 pm, FAB Cinema [Note new date]
Ian Roberts (Warwick) as part of the Weimar 100 Project
Die freudlose Gasse (G. W. Pabst, 1925), Modernity and Misery
As part of the ongoing Weimar 100 project based within German Studies at the University of Warwick, Ian Roberts presents an introductory lecture on Pabst's study of social inequality, exploring the socio-economic conditions which prevailed in the middle years of Weimar Germany (and Austria) and considering the extent to which Die freudlose Gasse offers a 'realistic' depiction of social deprivation or seeks to shape political discourse in the so-called 'Golden Years' of Weimar.
The event includes a free screening of the film in the cinema of the Faculty of Arts Building, with a reception.
Term 2
- Wednesday 28th January 2026, 5:00-6:30 pm, FAB4.79
Jerome Carroll (Nottingham)
'Lost causes’ and ‘cross-winds’: complexity and holism in Johann Karl Wezel’s Essay on the Knowledge of Man andTobias Knaut
The secondary literature on Johann Karl Wezel’s Versuch über die Kenntnis des Menschen (1784-85) tends to identify his position either as materialist-empiricist (Henning 1984, Schmitt, Ammermann 1978) or as vitalist-materialist (Futterknecht 1993, Minter 2002). The former cites his sense of phenomena existing in a chain of cause and effect which observation can reveal. The latter cites his privileging of fleeting and diverse particularity which expose the limitations of generalising concepts. There is textual support for each but I will argue that both labels overlook Wezel’s antipathy to foundationalist philosophy, which is better reflected in what Ammermann identifies as the ‘anti-metaphysical’ quality in his writing (Ammermann 1978). This paper explores this anti-metaphysical quality in Versuch and in his first novel, Tobias Knaut (1773-75), in three common elements: 1) his explicit statements about foundationalist philosophy, 2) a holism that incorporates mind, body and thought-external reality, reflecting 3) an ‘anti-reductive’ (Duchesneau 1985, writing about vitalism generally) approach that seeks to do justice to the complexity of experience.
- Wednesday 25th February, 2026, 5:00-6:30 pm, FAB4.74
James Hodkinson (Warwick)
The representation of Islam and Muslims in Western cultural discourse remains a vexing problem to this day. Edward Said’s now conventional critique, namely that Muslims remain the consummate ‘others’ and ‘outsiders’ of European history and culture, has itself been subject to critical revision, not least in critical studies of German Orientalism from the 1980s to the present. Presenting selected findings from his forthcoming study on the topic, James Hodkinson attempts a further paradigm shift.
This paper examines the form and function of historical representations of ‘kinship’, of shared cultural and religious origins, doctrinal resemblances and cultural compatibilities that were shown to exist between German-speaking peoples and cultures, Islam and the Muslim across a range of literary and visual sources from the Enlightenment and into the age of Empire. In place of irreconcilable foes, we find representations of fraternity, sorority, and figurative or even literal familial bonds. These relationships suggest a new conceptualisation, and so the starker binaries of mutual alienation, difference, and otherness within postcolonial criticism are replaced with the concept of ‘similarity’ (Ähnlichkeit, Bhatti & Kimmich, 2015), which articulates connections and commonalities at moments of intercultural encounter. Crucially, though, the paper asks why, at various points along this historical axis, Muslims and Islam are shown to connect, to resemble, to be similar enough to relate to or even belong within Western culture? Critically placing representations of kinship and cultural similarity within contexts such Enlightenment cosmopolitanism, oriental scholarship, and the emerging political discourses of Wilhelmine and Austro-Hungarian Empire, reminds us that narratives and models of Islam’s ‘belonging’ are contingent, that similarity can also mean ‘assimilation’ or ‘domestication’, and that, much as they do today, historical forms of cultural ‘inclusivity’ are accompanied by the impulse or requirement to exclude aspects of that which we seek to embrace.
- Wednesday 18th March, 5:00-6:30 pm, FAB4.79
Molly Harrabin (Warwick)
'From Thesis to Book: Rethinking Gender and Sexuality in Weimar Germany'
This talk maps out the next stages of my research journey as I transition from PhD candidate to postdoctoral researcher and rework my thesis into a monograph publication.
As contemporary society queries whether it is experiencing its own ‘Weimar moment’, my research offers a fresh intervention into our understanding of one of the most influential periods in cinema history. Building and expanding on a rich body of scholarship that has challenged the traditional focus on male subjectivities in crisis within Weimar Film Studies, the study further develops these insights by foregrounding representations of gender and sexuality in German cinema (1918-1933) that articulate more complex and diverse identities than the stereotypical virgin/vamp dichotomy implies. Film is approached not only as an aesthetic expression, but as a window onto the sociopolitical and cultural tensions of the Weimar Republic where societal discourses were both reflected and shaped. Drawing on feminist media historiographical approaches, the research delves into both canonical and lesser-known Weimar films, including lost works, to recover alternative narratives and expand the cinematic canon. Engaging with queer, trans, and intersectional perspectives, the book reveals how Weimar cinema navigates the tensions and contradictions shaping the lives of women and other historically excluded subjects. In doing so, it contributes to broader efforts to rethink film history through a more inclusive framework, placing questions of embodiment and the politics of representation at its heart. The study therefore resonates with ongoing discourses on identity, representation, historical memory, and democratic fragility.
