Spring 2010 Lectures and Events:

Thursday, April 15th, 5:00PM, Lobero Room, UCen
"Time's Witnesses: Narratives from Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen"
A Lecture by Professor Jakob Lothe, University of Oslo.
Part of the Wittenstein Lecture Series.

Spring 10 German Film Series:
Thursday, 7:00PM, PSYCH 1902
April 22nd, "Sophie Scholl--die letzten Tage" (Sophie Scholl--the last Days)
May 6th, "Solo Sunny"
May 20th, "Was tun wenn's brennt?" (What to do in case of fire?)

Thursday, May 6th, 5:00PM, Phelps 6320
"Fear in a Safe Place: Napoleonic Aesthetics and the Photography of War"
A lecture by Jan Mieszkowski, Associate Professor of German and Humanities, Reed College.

Wednesday, May 26th, 3:30PM, Phelps 6309
2009-10 Departmental Awards Ceremony
Each year, the department honors some of the outstanding students in Germanic, Slavic & Semitic Studies at the end-of-year awards ceremony. Please join us in congratulating these hardworking students and say goodbye to seniors in the graduating class of 2010!

Thursday, May 27th, 4:00PM, Phelps 6320
"Brotherhood as a Social Metaphor"
A lecture by Dr. Susanne Lüdemann, University of Chicago

In the European context, ‘brotherhood’ has been a social metaphor long before the French Revolution - a metaphor because it describes extra-familial bonds in terms of natality and kinship, ‘social’ because it shapes a certain idea of community, communion and communitarianism. Unlike Liberty and Equality, however, Brotherhood (or Fraternity) has never been conceived of in juridical or institutional terms. It is the central term of a civil religion which is supposed to turn the social bond into ‘more’ than just a contract, it is “a decent drapery of life”, a “superadded idea” (Edmund Burke), and at the same time a “non-juridical scene of law” (Peter Goodrich). My lecture will trace the idea of brotherhood and its implications for democracy from the French Revolution to Jean- Paul Sartre. It will also ask for the alternative of a democratic imaginary ‘beyond brotherhood’.

Susanne Lüdemann teaches at the University of Chicago. Her areas of specialization include German literature from the 18th to the 20th century (especially 19th- and 20th- century prose and drama), contemporary literary theory and aesthetics. She has also worked extensively on social theory, political theory, and psychoanalytic theory. Before joining the German department at Chicago University, Dr. Lüdemann held appointments at the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Århus (Danmark), at the Department of Sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin, and at the University of Konstanz (Germany). She has been a Research Associate at the Center for Literary and Cultural Studies in Berlin for many years. Her books include Mythos und Selbstdarstellung. Zur Poetik der Psychoanalyse (Freiburg, Rombach Verlag, 1994), Metaphern der Gesellschaft. Studien zum soziologischen und politischen Imaginären (München, Fink-Verlag, 2004) and Der Fiktive Staat. Konstruktionen des politischen Körpers in der Geschichte Europas (together with Albrecht Koschorke, Thomas Frank and Ethel Matala de Mazza, Frankfurt am Main, Fischer-Verlag, 2006).
Dr. Lüdemann’s recent interests focus on the Poetics of the Example in Arts and Sciences (18th to 20th century), with a strong emphasis on the history of case studies between law, literature and medicine (psychiatry), and on Literary Realism and the Semiotic Crisis of Modernity. She is currently writing a book on Jacques Derrida.

Thursday, June 3rd, 7:00PM, Phelps 6309
Presentation in celebration of UCSB's 2010 inductees to Dobro Slovo, the National Slavic Honor Society:
"Lake Baikal: Examining Facets of the Jewel of Siberia"
A lecture by Dr. Stephanie E. Hampton, Deputy Director UCSB National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis.