American Academy

Politics
Daimler Lecture
Europe and the Nation State

European integration has always entailed "more Europe," but it has never entailed autonomous democratic and constitutional legitimacy. For that, national institutions have remained crucial. In his book Power and Legitimacy: Reconciling Europe and the Nation State, Peter Lindseth offers a historical synthesis to understand integration as an extension of administrative governance. His lecture will explore the implications of integration moving forward.
Detail of "Lehman Brothers" by David Shankbone

Economics
Stephen M. Kellen Lecture
The Second Great Contraction

The Great Recession may be dwindling, but the global economy remains badly overleveraged. Moreover, there is no quick escape without a scheme to transfer wealth from creditors to debtors -- and the global economy will feel it. On February 9, Harvard macroeconomist Kenneth S. Rogoff will assess the continuing crisis he calls the “Second Great Contraction.” Unhappily, it can typically take many years to complete.
Image courtesy Arssenev Shukhov Tower, Moscow, 2009

Social Sciences
Axel Springer Lecture
Dictatorship and Information

Political scientists have long argued that autocratic regimes that lack adequate information about popular preferences will be short-lived and unstable. But communist regimes are on average very resilient. Based on his archival findings on China and Eastern Europe, Martin Dimitrov explores how communist regimes both manage the problem of information scarcity and how they control the flow of the information that does exist.
Image courtesy the artist

Arts and Culture
Guna S. Mundheim Artist Talk
On Beauty, Objects & Dissonance

Leslie Hewitt's photographs are mis en abymes, or stories within stories that are achieved by being scenes within scenes. Her images evince a narrative dynamic between personal iconography and images found in newspapers, magazines, books, and other popular materials. On February 21 she discusses this dynamic and how it can yield new insights into one's own history, generation, culture, or country.
Detail from the cover of Swamplandia!

Arts and Culture
Mary Ellen von der Heyden Reading
The Fantastic

Karen Russell's novel Swamplandia! (2011) features a cast ranging from alligator wrestlers to rioting melaleuca trees, a tale narrated by Ava, one of three Sawtooth grandchildren who run a floundering tourist attraction of the book's title. As a fellow at the Academy this spring, Russell will be summoning new phantasmagorical creations. She reads from her work in progress, The Fantastic, on February 23.
Arts and Culture
American Academy Artist Talk
In Celebration of Reri Grist’s 80th Birthday: A Unique Transatlantic Operatic Career

After Leonard Bernstein cast Reri Grist in the première of West Side Story, she found herself catapulted into stardom on opera stages throughout Europe and America. On February 28, in celebration of her 80th birthday, the Academy welcomes Grist for a discussion of her pathbreaking operatic career.

UPCOMING

Europe and the Nation State

European integration has always entailed "more Europe," but it has never entailed autonomous democratic and constitutional legitimacy. For that, national institutions have remained crucial. In his book Power and Legitimacy: Reconciling Europe and the Nation State, Peter Lindseth offers a historical synthesis to understand integration as an extension of administrative governance. His lecture will explore the implications of integration moving forward.

more >>

The Second Great Contraction

The Great Recession may be dwindling, but the global economy remains badly overleveraged. Moreover, there is no quick escape without a scheme to transfer wealth from creditors to debtors -- and the global economy will feel it. On February 9, Harvard macroeconomist Kenneth S. Rogoff will assess the continuing crisis he calls the “Second Great Contraction.” Unhappily, it can typically take many years to complete.

more >>

Dictatorship and Information

Political scientists have long argued that autocratic regimes that lack adequate information about popular preferences will be short-lived and unstable. But communist regimes are on average very resilient. Based on his archival findings on China and Eastern Europe, Martin Dimitrov explores how communist regimes both manage the problem of information scarcity and how they control the flow of the information that does exist.

more >>

BLOG

What Germans Do Not Understand about America

The US Ambassador to Germany extols American optimism of all stripes

One day after President Obama's State of the Union address, Philip D. Murphy, the US Ambassador to Germany, was at the American Academy to deliver a lively and wide-ranging lecture on "What Germans Do Not Understand about America." Americans are at root an optimistic people, Murphy noted, regardless of the nation's current economic condition. Most Americans, now as before, he said, feel that the future will be better than the past. »

Announcing the Spring 2012 Fellows

The new class of fellows takes up residence on the Wannsee.

A festive January 17 evening welcomed the spring 2012 Berlin Prize Fellows to their semester on the Wannsee. Opening remarks were delivered by the United States Ambassador to Germany, Philip D. Murphy, and the welcoming talk by Klaus Reichert, honorary president of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung, in Darmstadt. The American Academy in Berlin is proud to welcome the following scholars, writers, and artists to work on their respective projects at the Hans Arnhold Center over the coming five months: »

Voices in the Dream Palace: Dramatic Language in Pre-Code Movies

Film noir aficionado and pulp-fiction expert Geoffrey O'Brien on the odd shift to morality at the dawn of the talkies.

The films made during the half decade between 1929-1934 mark the triumph of the talking picture format, which began in 1927 with Al Jolson's Jazz Singer. Films of the early talkie era were the product of a culture ravaged by the Depression, a growing sense of liberated cynicism, and, most importantly for Geoffrey O'Brien, a Bosch Fellow at the Academy, an environment prior to the enforcement of the Production Code, a statute that regulated what could be said and seen on film. »

Kindness: A Novel in Progress

Adam Haslett's newest literary plunge

Prize-winning, bestselling author Adam Haslett (You Are Not A Stranger Here; Union Atlantic) is not yet finished with the novel he has been working on while at the Academy this fall as the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow in Fiction. The title of his budding book, Kindness, reflects not only an overarching narrative theme, but as well the author's willingness to share a few tidbits with an anticipatory crowd. »

Memorial Mania!

The American Academy in Berlin hosts a symposium at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt on the politics of public memorialization.

Ten years after 9/11, and six years after the opening of the Holocaust Memorial Berlin, the American Academy in Berlin held a symposium to deliberate "the memorial" as a form of memory culture and as a site of clashing political strategies. Questions by a panel of distinguished experts included, Does a memorial heed our changing perceptions of “the event” over time, or does it dull our collective recollection? Should a memorial urge catharsis or categorically avoid normative reactions? »