“Disappearing Landscapes/Disappearing Cultures: What happens to Language and Culture when Keystone Landscapes Disappear?”
May 22, 2024, 16:15-17:45, P110 (Philosophicum)
This class will explore the relationship between environmental and cultural crises. What happens to culture when a keystone landscape, a landscape that is fundamental to a people’s existence and cultural identity, is damaged or even destroyed due to climate change? How does the culture respond to this crisis? How should it respond? How well can it respond? To answer these questions, we will look at the impact of disappearing glaciers in Iceland on Icelandic culture in the autobiographical text “N64 35.378, W16 44.691” by the Icelandic author Andri Snær Magnason. We will also look at melting permafrost in Russia and sea level rise in Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay region to assess adaptation strategies in different cultures. In doing so, we will see that there is no “one size fits all” answer to these difficult questions, and that the responses are often dependent upon the very cultural attitudes that were shaped by these keystone landscapes.
Dr. Pincikowski is environmental humanist, professor of German, chair of the Department of Global Languages and Cultures, and student of Environmental Biology at Hood College. His research focus has been on medieval German culture and literature, and now explores how different cultures perceive nature and the environment. He is the author of Bodies of Pain: Suffering in the Works of Hartmann von Aue and co-editor of End-Times in Medieval German Literature: Sin, Evil, and the Apocalypse. He is currently working on a chapter on tree nationalism in German culture for his book project on memory and the German Middle Ages. He was Fulbright Visiting Professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences in at the University of Innsbruck, Austria in 2014 and Visiting Professor of German at the University of Pennsylvania in 2012.
“Environmental Humanities 101: Solving the Problems of Climate Change with the Environmental Humanities”
May 22, 2024, 10:15-11:45am, P1 (Philosophicum)
What are the environmental humanities? What role do they play in solving environmental issues? This lecture explores the problem of climate change through the lens of the environmental humanities. The talk will investigate American cultural attitudes towards the environment and how these attitudes impact the response to the climate crisis. In addition, we will investigate how different modes of cultural expression, such as literature, film, music, and art, suggest new ways for thinking about climate change and afford opportunities for imagining a more optimistic future. To pursue such an investigation, this lecture will introduce key concepts to the environmental humanities such as NatureCulture, the Anthropocene, and post-humanism. Ultimately, this talk will focus on the role that cross pollinating the natural sciences with the humanities will play in affecting the cultural paradigm shift from the consumerism of late capitalism to the sustainability of a green society that is willing to adapt to the global climate crisis.
Dr. Pincikowski is environmental humanist, professor of German, chair of the Department of Global Languages and Cultures, and student of Environmental Biology at Hood College. His research focus has been on medieval German culture and literature, and now explores how different cultures perceive nature and the environment. He is the author of Bodies of Pain: Suffering in the Works of Hartmann von Aue and co-editor of End-Times in Medieval German Literature: Sin, Evil, and the Apocalypse. He is currently working on a chapter on tree nationalism in German culture for his book project on memory and the German Middle Ages. He was Fulbright Visiting Professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences in at the University of Innsbruck, Austria in 2014 and Visiting Professor of German at the University of Pennsylvania in 2012.
“Assessing our Relationship with Nature through the Environmental Humanities: A Bioethics Approach to Sarah Orne Jewett’s ‘A White Heron’ (1886)”
May 21, 2024, 16:15-17:45, Fakultätssaal, 01-185 (Philosophicum)
In this class we will analyze Sarah Orne Jewett’s short story “A White Heron” through the lens of the environmental humanities. We will treat this text as a prototypical example of eco-literature, experimenting with different ecological readings based upon varying bioethical modes of thinking. In doing so, we will discuss the possibilities and limitations of opening a fictional text to multiple interpretations of environmental worldviews, evaluating what role literature, and the humanities for that matter, can have helping people assess their own relationship with nature, and helping shape their attitudes about the environment. As part of this discussion, we will also attempt to “rewild” “A White Heron,” reimagining the story through traditional ecological knowledge and indigenous American bioethics as found in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s groundbreaking book Braiding Sweetgrass.
Dr. Pincikowski is environmental humanist, professor of German, chair of the Department of Global Languages and Cultures, and student of Environmental Biology at Hood College. His research focus has been on medieval German culture and literature, and now explores how different cultures perceive nature and the environment. He is the author of Bodies of Pain: Suffering in the Works of Hartmann von Aue and co-editor of End-Times in Medieval German Literature: Sin, Evil, and the Apocalypse. He is currently working on a chapter on tree nationalism in German culture for his book project on memory and the German Middle Ages. He was Fulbright Visiting Professor in the Humanities and Social Sciences in at the University of Innsbruck, Austria in 2014 and Visiting Professor of German at the University of Pennsylvania in 2012.
“Moses Biofictions as Critiques of Nazism: Zora Neale Hurston and Thomas Mann”
May 13, 2024, 10:15-11:45am, P5 (Philosophicum)
This lecture presents an interpretation of Thomas Mann’s and Zora Neale Hurston’s criticism of Nazis’ deadly political propaganda by using the Biblical figure of Moses in their biofictions: Hurston, Moses, Man of the Mountain; Mann “Das Gesetz” (English, 1943; German, 1944). The comparison of the different analyses of the African American writer and Thomas Mann in the American exile will be based on current research about anti-Nazi biofictions from the 1930s and 1940s.
Prof. Michael Lackey is the Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris. He is an internationally renowned expert on all forms of life writing, with a special area of concentration on biofictions. He spent a year of graduate studies at the Univ. of Heidelberg and was a research fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Siegen. Major publications include: Biofiction: An Introduction. New York and London: Routledge, 2022; Ireland, the Irish, and the Rise of Biofiction. New York and London: Bloomsbury, 2021; African American Atheists and Political Liberation: A Study of the Socio-Cultural Dynamics of Faith. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007.
May 14, 2024, 4:15pm, Fakultätssaal (01-185, Philosophicum)
In the North American context, fascism has taken a distinctive look and rhetorical pattern. Trump’s brand of fascism can be traced to deeply embedded racial and economic disparities which became key elements of his presidential campaigns. Tapping into the culture wars concerning racial, gender, and sexual minorities simmering in American political discourse, Trump’s brilliant abuse of social media and demagogic rhetoric elevated him into a Jesus-like figure, the only one who really understood underprivileged and uneducated white people in fly-over country. In this lecture, Dr Fuchs traces the historical roots of the peculiar brand of fascism surrounding the figure of Donald Trump and how, as a cult leader of the alt-right, Trump has gained complete totalitarian control of the Republican Party and transformed it into a classic fascist “Führer” party, exemplified by the violence not only advocated but implemented by Trump on January 6, 2021.
Thomas Fuchs is an independent researcher. He has taught English at a number of Colleges and Universities in Germany and the United States. He obtained his PhD in philosophy at the University of Oregon with a dissertation about financier Henry Villard.
Beyond liberation or assimilation: LGBTQ rights, health care, and the limits of bodily autonomy in the United States in the 1970s and 1980s Jonathan Bell – University College London
Assessing our Relationship with Nature through the Environmental Humanities: A Bioethics Approach to Sarah Orne Jewett’s A White Heron (1886) Scott Pincikowksi – Hood College
Disappearing Landscapes/Disappearing Cultures: What happens to Language and Culture when Keystone Landscapes Disappear? Scott Pincikowksi – Hood College
Inventing the Immigration Problem: The Dillingham Commission of 1907-1911 and the Origins of Modern Immigration Policy Katherine Benton-Cohen – Georgetown University
June 11 2.30–4pm, 01-618, kl. Bibl., Philosophicum
Migrants, Minorities, and Consumption (Colloquium: Transnational Approaches to American Studies) Katherine Benton-Cohen – Georgetown University
June 14 & 15 9am-5pm, 00.212, Philosophicum II
Creative Writing Workshop – OPEN TO EVERYONE Ian Afflerbach, University of North Georgia
Quiet Money: The Family Fortune that Transformed New York, the American Southwest, and the Modern Middle East Katherine Benton-Cohen – Georgetown University
Selective Anti-Imperialism, Settler Colonialism and the Lure of Racial Capitalist Progress in Spanish-Language Periodicals in Paris David Luis-Brown – Claremont Graduate University
Dos Hemisferios: Racial Capitalism and the Problem of Latinidad in Hispano-American Newspapers in Paris and New York City, 1852-1856 David Luis-Brown – Claremont Graduate University
Annual Fourth of July Obama Lecture & Summer Get-together (snacks and drinks)
with Keynote “World-losers elsewhere, conquerors here!”: The Fourth of July in American Poetry Thomas Austenfeld – Université de Fribourg and Red, White, and Blue—and Greenbacks: Money and American Identity since the Civil War Atiba Pertilla – German Historical Institute Washington plus Exhibition of Student Posters and Presentations
