Warwick German Studies Workshop - past workshops
2025-26
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.
Term 3
- Wednesday 6th May, 5:00-6:30 pm, FAB4.74
Abhimanyu Sharma (JNU, New Delhi)
Location of Power in Language Policies: Comparing Wales and Luxembourg
In this talk, I discuss the location of power in language policies. Precisely, I comparatively examine language policies in Wales and Luxembourg. The aim of the comparison is to investigate the various power constellations in these polities and examine how these constellations interact with each other. These constellations are located at various levels (macro, micro, meso), as there are multiple stakeholders such as regional and local governments and the EU institutions and agencies that influence language policies by partaking in the policymaking process. Moreover, grassroots level activists have played their own part in shaping language policies in Wales and Luxembourg, either through direct action such as the boycott of license fee in Wales or through public petitions in Luxembourg. The paper aims to bring to the fore the interaction of these power constellations and show how they influence policies related to protecting and promoting minority languages in Wales and Luxembourg.
References
Horner, K. & Weber, J.-J. 2008. ‘The Language Situation in Luxembourg’, Current Issues in
Language Planning, 9, 69–128.
Sharma, A. (2022). Power and Language Policies in Luxembourg. In: Reconceptualising Power in Language Policy. Language Policy, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09461-3_3Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window
Sharma, A. (2022). Power and Language Policies in Wales. In: Reconceptualising Power in Language Policy . Language Policy, vol 30. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09461-3_4Link opens in a new windowLink opens in a new window
Williams, C. 1976. ‘Non-violence and the development of the Welsh Language Society’, Welsh History Review, 8, 426–455.
Williams, C. 2015. ‘Legislative Devolution and the Enactment of the Official Status of Welsh
in Wales’, in X. Irujo, J.-P. Massias & I. Urrutia (eds.), Droits culturels et Démocratisation -
Cultural Rights and Democratisation. Institut Universitaire Varenne, pp. 181–203.
- Wednesday 13th May, 5:00-6:30 pm, FAB4.79
Marlene Meuer (Warwick)
Feminist Avant-Gardes
The term ‘feminist avant-garde’ – much like the concept of the avant-garde itself – is an external, retrospective attribution, introduced for progressive female artists of the 1970s but never firmly established within the canon. Whilst the concept of the avant-garde was created as a laudatory external designation for the historical avant-gardes, since the neo-avant-gardes it has gained traction primarily where it is proclaimed as a self-designation – a contradiction also evident in the feminist context. For although feminist art and literature often exhibit central characteristics of the avant-garde, many female artists refrain from explicitly styling themselves as avant-gardists. This raises the question of what influence self-stylisation exerts on processes of canonisation – particularly given that many male authors ostentatiously situated themselves within lines of tradition before these were validated by audiences. The lecture discusses the concept of the avant-garde as a value judgement and, using selected examples, examines the extent to which it makes sense to reflect on feminist art and literature against the backdrop of avant-garde discourse.
2023-24
Symposium: Critical Theory in the Digital Age
Friday 8 March 2024, 1 pm – 5 pm, S2.77 (Cowling Room), Social Sciences Building, and on MS Teams (see emails sent out to SMLC)
Ever since its beginnings, Critical Theory has been concerned with the constitution of human subjectivity. Its proponents have understood this constitution as a process between individuals and society that changes historically. In this symposium, we will explore how social imperatives today form and deform human faculties – sensually and intellectually – and critically investigate the extent to which the work of early Frankfurt School theorists (Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin, and others) enables us to shed light on these contemporary processes.
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1 – 1.50 pm |
Alexandra Schauer (Institute for Social Research, Goethe University, Frankfurt): ‘Man without a World: On the Disappearance of the Idea of Social Agency’ |
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2 – 2.50 pm |
Lars Rensmann (University of Passau): ‘On the Politics of Unreason in the Digital Age: Reading Social Media and Reconfigurations of Authoritarianism with Adorno’ |
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Break |
|
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3.10 – 4 pm |
Sebastian Tränkle (Free University, Berlin): ‘Deformation or Perfection. On the Dialectic of Aesthetic Self-Formation’ |
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4.10 – 5 pm |
Antonia Hofstätter (University of Warwick): ‘Atrophied Images: Childhood as Critique in T.W. Adorno’ |
This event is co-organised by the Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts and the Warwick Workshop for Interdisciplinary German Studies.
Contact: Antonia Hofstätter (antonia.hofstatter@warwick.ac.uk) or Christine Achinger (c.e.achinger@warwick.ac.uk)
All welcome!
WWIGS 2023-24
Please note: Days and times vary, please see below
Term 1
Wednesday 25 October, 4-5:30pm, FAB2.32
Justin Cammy (Smith College, MA): ‘From the Vilna Ghetto to Nuremberg’
In cooperation with the Centre for Global Jewish Studies
A discussion of the ghetto memoir (1946) and testimony of Abraham Sutzkever, one of the great Yiddish poets to emerge from the Holocaust, translated into English by Justin Cammy. Why was the memoir ignored by critics and even by the author himself for so long? And why should we look anew at early post-liberation efforts to document events that established a foundation for both justice and collective memory?
Wednesday, 22 November, 5:00-7:00pmpm, Ramphal R1.15
Laura Demir (Duke / NYU in Berlin): ‘Where we come from. A literary perspective on post-migrant German(y)’
Hybrid - join us on Teams here
My talk will focus on three different aspects:
First, I will discuss the concepts of “Herkunft” and “Zugehörigkeit” and the importance of literature and storytelling as they are depicted in contemporary German-speaking novels written by authors with a background of forced migration (e.g. Saša Stanišić) and or a transnational background (e.g. Fatma Aydemir). How does the authors’ “Herkunft” influence their writing? How do they speak about “Herkunft” and “Zugehörigkeit”? What narratives do they engage, scrutinize and play with? Which literary devices and poetic strategies do they engage? What metaphors do authors who had to learn German as a second or foreign language use to describe the language they now have perfect command of? Reading authors who grew up with at least two languages immediately raises the question of whether and how this shapes their poetic language. Another intriguing topic are the insights readers might gain through a transnational perspective on and experience with Germany and German.
Second, I would like to scrutinize our stance as readers and scholars: Are we, by asking this kind of questions, othering “this” literature? I am afraid so. We will therefore take a closer look at different labels and terms for “this” literature that have been discussed for a long time and which still have not led to a satisfying solution as to what name would be appropriate and fitting.
Third, I would like to ponder the question of why and how the above-mentioned questions are relevant and of special interest within the context of German Studies in an international context.
Tuesday 05 December, 5:30-7pm, R0.14
Helmut Schmitz: ‘How To Have One's Cake And Eat It: Navid Kermani's Große Liebe, Sufi Mysticism, And Paradoxical Cultural Identities’
In cooperation with the Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts
Navid Kermani’s novel Große Liebe (2014, Love Writ Large) charts the development of a young teenager’s infatuation with an A-level student in the early 1980s in Germany. The love story is refracted through the adult narrator’s reflections and through readings from Sufi mysticism and Nizami’s 12th ct. epic poem Lailï and Majnûn. This creates a narrative framework in which (Iranian and Muslim) cultural sources and (West German) cultural memory subtly comment on one another, allowing Kermani to ironically undermine both contemporary masculinity and his narrator’s former self as lover while simultaneously reflecting on the cultural and religious traditions of his own background and their relations to a Western tradition of love. The paper examines Kermani’s ironic narrative construction in the context of his construction of a paradoxical cultural identity.
Term 2
Tuesday 30 January, 5:30-7pm, Ramphal R3.41
Caroline Summers (Warwick SMLC)
Narrative afterlife: translating lived experience into literary texts
Literary studies is fond of the metaphor of an ‘afterlife’ to describe the enduring resonance and visibility of an author’s work long after they have died. Meanwhile, in Translation Studies, the term has a more specific meaning, rooted in Walter Benjamin’s exploration of the concept in his 1923 essay ‘The Task of the Translator’. Benjamin tells us that true translation is the point at which ‘a work, in its continuing life, has reached the age of its fame. […] In [translation], the original’s life achieves its constantly renewed, latest and most comprehensive development’. Thus, for Benjamin, translation is a form that embodies something not otherwise captured in the original text. The possibility of translation is something that both is inherent in the essence of an original and contributes to its transformational fulfilment of self: it is at once a remainder of the past and a projection of the future.
Building chiefly on the work of Bella Brodzki (2007), who frames the text as a ‘literary invigoration’ of memory, this paper reads the literary narrative as a ‘translation’ of experience and asks what Benjamin’s reading of afterlife might teach literary studies more broadly about the relationship between the stories we live and those that we read or write. Exploiting the intersection between literary narratology and a sociological understanding of experience as narrative, the paper draws on literary accounts of German Reunification (1989/90) to explore how these texts create a space in which the spectres of experience can enjoy a long afterlife.
Friday 08 March, 1pm – 5pm, Social Sciences S2.77
Symposium: Critical Theory in the Digital Age
Ever since its beginnings, Critical Theory has been concerned with the constitution of human subjectivity. Its proponents have understood this constitution as a process between individuals and society that changes historically. In this workshop, we will explore how social imperatives today form and deform human faculties – sensually and intellectually – and critically investigate the extent to which the work of early Frankfurt School theorists (Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin, and others) enables us to shed light on these contemporary processes.
|
1 – 1.50 pm |
Alexandra Schauer (Institute for Social Research, Goethe University Frankfurt): ‘Man without a World: On the Disappearance of the Idea of Social Agency’ |
|
2 – 2.50 pm |
Lars Rensmann (University of Passau): ‘On the Politics of Unreason in the Digital Age: Reading Social Media and Reconfigurations of Authoritarianism with Adorno’ |
|
Break |
|
|
3.10 – 4 pm |
Sebastian Tränkle (Free University Berlin): ‘Deformation or Perfection. On the Dialectic of Aesthetic Self-Formation’ |
|
4.10 – 5 pm |
Antonia Hofstätter (University of Warwick): ‘Atrophied Images: Childhood as Critique in T.W. Adorno’ |
Workshop Programme 2022-23
All talks at 5pm unless otherwise indicated.
Term 1
20 October 2022
Clara Verri (Gießen/Helsinki): Satisfaction and consumption in Houellebecq’s Submission: an imposing mode of narration
FAB 3.25
02 November 2022
Yuliia Lysanets (Poltava State Medical University): Metaphors and Metonymies in Medical Discourse as a Challenge for Cross-Cultural Communication
In cooperation with TTS
FAB 2.32
23 November 2022
Nora Michaelis (Warwick): A linguist’s fascination, an interpreter’s pain, a language teacher’s headache: English as a Lingua Franca and the concept’s implications for Foreign Language Teaching
FAB 3.30
07 December 2022
Research Roundtable with colleagues from the German Department
FAB 4.73
Term 2
25 January 2023
Nicholas Lawrence (Warwick): 'Everything Changes': Brecht, Benjamin, Adorno
FAB 3.30
8 February 2023
Marlene Gallner (University of Vienna): The Leftist Self-Betrayal: Jean Améry's essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left
FAB 3.31
23 February 2023
Christine Kirchhoff (International Psychoanalytic University, Berlin): The 'Non-Identical and the 'Leftover'. Critical Theory, Psychoanalysis and Ideology
H2.44
25 February 2023
Symposium on ‘Adorno’s “Sexual Taboos and Law Today” – Sixty Years On’
10 am – 6 pm S0.20 and on Zoom
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/news/conference/adorno/
In cooperation with the Department of Philosophy
15 March 2023
Katie Stone (Warwick): “Slaves and Objects of Amusement: West German Women under the Yoke of the American Colonizers”: Sexual Violence, Moral Outrage, and Propaganda in Cold War East Germany.
Postponed due to industrial action
FAB 3.30
Term 3
3 May 2022
Lydia Goehr (Columbia University): On working-through—durcharbeiten—with musical notes: Adorno, Fanon, Freud
In cooperation with the CRPLA
Abstract:
My talk discusses the many uses of the term “durch” in the thought of Adorno, Fanon, and Freud. But it focuses on two sentences of almost compulsive repetition. In the first, Adorno exposes the dissonance in the way of teaching music in a verwalteten (topsy-turvy) world: “Only through the [form of the] process, through the experience of the works, and not through self-sufficient, blind music-making, […] can music education fulfill its function. [….] [O]nly through specialization, not through its denial, does music save the part in the human that seems to have been dismembered by specialization.” There is one notion of work that belongs to music’s production and another to a broader scheme of social formation and labor. In introducing his 1952 Black Skin, White Masks, Frantz Fanon noted the “juxtaposition of the white and black races” that had “created a massive psychoexistential complex,” after which he wrote that by “analyzing it,” he hoped to “destroy it.” Performed as a deconstruction, the analysis left the question strategically hanging as to what happens after the work has been done. What is involved in this work by way of a working through? When does analysis become only an analytic breakdown?
S0.18
17 May 2022
Yara Staets (Warwick): Presentation of PhD project on ‘Coming to Terms with the Present: Non-Realist Representations of War in early post-1945 German Literature’
Previous years
Workshop 2018-19Link opens in a new window
Workshop 2017-18Link opens in a new window
Workshop 2016-17Link opens in a new window
Workshop recordings