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The Fantastic
Karen Russell's novel Swamplandia! (2011) features a cast ranging from alligator wrestlers and a balding brown bear named Judy Garland, to a Bird Man specializing in buzzard removal and rioting melaleuca trees, all narrated by Ava, one of three Sawtooth grandchildren who run a floundering tourist attraction of the book's title. As a Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow in Fiction at the Academy this spring, Russell will be working on some new phantasmagorical creations. She reads from her work in progress, The Fantastic, on February 23. Moderated by Andrew Gross, Assistant Professor of Literature, John-F.-Kennedy-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
How the Other Half Worships
Over a period of four years, the photographer and sociologist Camilo José Vergara, a 2010 alumnus of the American Academy in Berlin, visited churches in the poorest parts of America, taking part in Sunday worship and choir practice, and interviewing churchgoers and pastors alike. The result of his engagement was the study How the Other Half Worships, published by Rutgers University Press in 2005, a densely illustated book with over 300 photographs from places of worship in Harlem, Los Angeles, Bridgeport, Chicago, Brooklyn, and Newark. Now, as the closing speaker of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt's "Global Prayers" weekend event, Vergara discusses his methodology and the state of religious movements in the hardest-hit sections of the American metropolis.
Joining the discussion will be Regina Bittner (cultural studies, Dessau), Filip de Boeck (anthropology, Leuven, Kinshasa), Helmut Draxler (art and cultural theory, Stuttgart, Berlin), Philippe Rekacewicz (journalist and geographer, Paris, Eydehavn), Joseph Vogl (cultural studies, Berlin). The event is moderated by social anthropologist Julia Eckert.
For more on the weekend forum, please visit the Haus der Kulturen der Welt website.
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 in Europe and America. A regular at the Salzburg Festival, her domination of the lyric and coloratura Fach in Strauss and Mozart signaled a breakthrough for African-American singers. Younger generations have since revered Grist for her silvery tone, flawless technique, and stupendous acting. On February 28, in celebration of her 80th birthday, the Academy welcomes Grist for a discussion of her unique operatic career. Moderated by Pamela Rosenberg, the dean of fellows and programs at the American Academy in Berlin.
A Transatlantic Debate for Health Policy Professionals and Experts
Michael E. Porter, Bishop William Lawrence University Professor, Harvard Business School
Generously supported by Daimler-Fonds
Invitation Only
German Health Care: Moving to a Value-Based System
The German health care system is on a collision course with budget realities. Costs are high and rising, and quality problems are becoming ever more apparent. Decades of reforms have produced little change to these troubling trends. Why has Germany failed to solve these cost and quality problems? The reason is that Germany has not set value for patients as the overarching goal, defined as the patient health outcomes achieved per euro expended. This lecture, based on the findings of Michael Porter´s book Redefining German Health Care: Moving to a Value-Based System (co-authored by Clemens Guth), lays out an action agenda to move Germany to a high value system.
Time and location will be announced on this website closer to event. Please check back to register online.
On Beyond Mentoring – Answering Questions with Questions
On the occasion of John Cage’s 100th birthday, composer and performer Joan La Barbara will discuss her longstanding artistic exchange with one of the 20th century’s most influential composers. Their friendship, characterized by mutual respect and shared inspiration, began at the Berliner Philharmonie. La Barbara’s compositional process has often drawn on Cage’s layering of disparate elements, combined with her own bold incorporation of theater and other media into her pieces.
In cooperation with MaerzMusik | Berliner Festspiele
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita
Leland de la Durantaye, Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, speaks with Ijoma Mangold, deputy editor of the feuilleton at Die Zeit; accompanied by a reading from Nabokov's Lolita by Elmar Roloff, an actor at the Schauspiel Stuttgart; moderated by Pamela Rosenberg of the American Academy in Berlin.This discussion inaugurates the "Head to Head" series of the American Academy and Literaturhaus Stuttgart, a set of dialogues between outstanding Academy guests and their German counterparts.
Location: Literaturhaus Stuttgart, Breitscheidstraße 4, 70174 Stuttgart
Tickets under: info@literaturhaus-stuttgart.de or (01805) 70 07 33
In cooperation with Literaturhaus Stuttgart
Generously supported by the Robert Bosch Stiftung GmbH, Daimler AG, Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH, and the Berthold Liebinger Stiftung GmbH
Breitenau: The Workhouse Project
Founded as a Benedictine monastery in the 12th century, Breitenau is a small town fifteen miles south of Kassel. By 1579 the original church was converted into storage for fruit and vegetables. After standing vacant for much of the 18th century, the former monestary began its long history as a place of confinement and “correction." In 1874 Breitenau became a workhouse and correctional facility for the rural poor, targeting “beggars, vagabonds and prostitutes." In 1940, the Kassel Gestapo enlarged the workhouse, and until the end of the war imprisoned approximately 8,500 workers. As part of her work on Documenta 13, Avery Gordon, the Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow at the Academy this spring, takes the long view of incarceration, reform, and political order through her Breitenau Notebooks. Moderated by Anselm Franke, curator of the 2012 Taipei Biennial.
Nahum Glatzer and the German-Jewish Tradition
As a Spring 2010 Berthold Leibinger Fellow at the American Academy, filmmaker Judith Wechsler, now an art history professor emerita of Tufts University, devoted her time to developing a documentary film about her father, the eminent scholar of Judaica Nahum Glatzer. The film premiered in the Fall of 2011 and was awarded the Miller Reel Jewish Woman Filmmaker Award. Wechsler returns to the Academy for a special screening and discussion on March 12.
The Globalization of Clean Energy Technologies
Energy technology development and commercialization no longer occur within one single country. In fact, the energy sector has become highly globalized, with firms and countries acquiring and selling technologies all over the world. It is commonly thought that there are many barriers to the international transfer of cleaner energy technologies: lack of adequate intellectual property rights protections in industrializing countries (or, conversely, the lack of access to these technologies on the part of developing countries), higher costs of cleaner technologies; lack of available financing; and insufficient human and institutional capacity of developing countries to acquire and absorb technologies. At the same time, the current global energy supply market is estimated to be worth more than $1 trillion per year, energy-related goods account for more than 10% of international trade, and energy-related inward foreign direct investment was estimated to be about $60 billion between 2005 and 2007. So, de facto, there is substantial transfer of energy technologies through these markets, though the technologies may not necessarily be environmentally sustainable, according to Gallagher. Based on case studies largely from energy-hungry China, this talk will address the extent to which barriers apply to the transfer of cleaner energy technologies and possible implications for a more sustainable development worldwide.