Lecture with Dr. Dr. h.c. Siri Hustvedt on June 18, 2016: “The Writing Self and the Psychiatric Patient'”

Lecture with Dr. Dr. h.c. Siri Hustvedt on June 18, 2016: “The Writing Self and the Psychiatric Patient'”

Lecture with

Dr. Dr. h.c. Siri Hustvedt

(Brooklyn)

The Writing Self and the Psychiatric Patient

June 18, 2016; 6 am (18 Uhr c.t.)
Alte Mensa, Atrium Maximum
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Drawing from my experiences as a volunteer writing teacher for psychiatric patients on the locked wards of the Payne Whitney Clinic in New York City, I ask how in an age of “biological psychiatry,” writing might be framed as a therapeutic activity for people diagnosed with mental illness. I argue that many of the current models in psychiatry are too rigid and/or confused to adequately address the subtle and beneficial effects writing has for individual patients. The objectification of inner thoughts, stories, and emotions in texts can help organize a person’s view of his or her subjectivity in ways that enhance reflection.

About Siri Hustvedt:
She is one of the most significant contemporary American writers. She received her PhD in English from Columbia University with a dissertation on Charles Dickens. With a body of work comprising 7 internationally received novels and 4 collections of essays, she has opened new ways of connecting fiction and literary criticism. In her work, she draws on philosophical, psychoanalytical, neuroscientific and gender theories in order to establish a reciprocal subjectivity connecting body and mind; a notion that also informs her work as a lecturer of psychiatry at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College. Siri Hustvedt is an associate member of the DFG-funded research training group “Life Sciences, Life Writing: Experiences at the Boundaries of Human Life between Biomedical Explanation and Lived Experience” (GRK 2015/1), at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz.

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Lecture with Prof. Benjamin Fagan on 06/09/16: “Transnational Feminism and Freedom’s Journal”

Lecture with

Prof. Benjamin Fagan

(Auburn University, Alabama)

Transnational Feminism and Freedom’s Journal

Juni 09, 2016; 12 am – 2 pm
P10
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

This talk will focus on “Theresa, A Haytien Tale,” a short story published in the black newspaper Freedom’s Journal in the spring of 1828. The lecture will situate “Theresa” within the context of the newspaper in general, and especially the paper’s coverage of and commentary on women’s activism in the United States and Europe, exploring how the short story works as part of the newspaper’s broader attempts to imagine a transnational feminism.

Workshop “Religion and New Media” with Heidi Campbell, June 17, 2016.

Workshop Religion and New Media with Heidi Campbell

Organized by Anja‐Maria Bassimir and Oliver Scheiding as part of the research project
“Enterprising Evangelicalism: Distinction and Inclusion in Contemporary American Christian Religious Periodicals,” DFG Research Group 1939 UnDoing Differences: Practices in Human Differentiation

Friday, June 17, 2016
Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz
Kleine Bibliothek (Room 01‐618, access through room 01‐612), Philosophicum

Preliminary Program (last updated May 31, 2016)

Lecture with Dr. Allison Stagg on 06/08/16: “The Transatlantic Circulationof Political Caricatures in the Nineteenth Century”

Lecture with

Dr. Allison Stagg

(Technische Universität Berlin)

The Transatlantic Circulation of Political Caricatures in the Nineteenth Century

Juni 08, 2016; 6 pm (18 Uhr c.t.)
Georg Forster Gebäude, 02.521
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Between 1770 and 1830, a large number of caricature prints were published in London, resulting in a period that is referred to today by art historians as the “golden age of caricature”. These colorful caricatures were frequently sent from London to European cities such as Paris, Rome, and Berlin, sparking both negative and positive commentary in newspapers; the arrival of such imagery helped to shape a growing market in Europe for visual satire. In recent years academic scholarship has focused primarily on the movement of caricatures from London to Europe, ignoring the circulation of European caricatures to America. However, European caricatures were sent in large batches to America. These European images influenced an early tradition of early American caricature. This paper will approach the knowledge in America for European caricature by focusing on the American market for visual satire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, drawing on the rich narrative of circulation of objects between London and early America.

 

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