American Academy in Berlin

Law in the Time of Party Rule: Humboldt University’s Law Faculty Under Socialism

Editor — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:39:00 +0000

The curious dialectic between law and socialism in the former East Germany

“Lawyers make bad Christians,” Martin Luther once said (“Juristen – böse Christen”). Why? Lawyers are too contrary, too skeptical, too willing to argue either side of any controversy in order to win. They have no talent for unquestioning faith, no convictions, no allegiance. This same rationale might explain, says Inga Markovits, the Ellen Maria Gorrissen Fellow at the Academy this spring, why Socialism, a secular religion of sorts, was always wary of its lawyers and kept them under tight control.

Person:

Inga Markovits

Vzaar Video:

Humboldt University’s Law Faculty Under Socialism

How to Do Things with the Ordinary

Editor — Wed, 02 May 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Or, how the lecturer learned to stop worrying and love skepticism

Richard Deming, a poet and theorist at Yale University whose work explores the intersections of poetry, philosophy, and visual culture, thinks that the ordinary has things to teach us about belief and skepticism, and about hope and despair, about our own lives as reflected in the lives of others -- if we pay attention.

Person:

Richard Deming

The Berlin Journal on NPR Berlin (Spring 2012)

Editor — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 22:00:00 +0000

On this episode of the Berlin Journal, Brittani Sonnenberg, editor of the Berlin Journal magazine, speaks with prize-winning author and American Academy fellow Karen Russell (Swamplandia!) about her new book of short stories, tentatively titled Vampires in the Lemon Grove. Author Tara Bray Smith speaks with poet and philosopher Richard Deming, a lecturer in English at Yale University.

“You Can Always Count on a Murderer for a Fancy Prose Style” – On Nabokov’s Lolita

Editor — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Was Vladimir Nabokov's scandalous novel a moral tale?

On April 19, Leland de la Durantaye, the Gardner Cowles Associate Professor of English Literature at Harvard University, spoke about Vladimir Nabokov's scandalous novel Lolita, published in 1955. Nabokov was fifty-six at the time; it was his twelfth novel, his third in English, and "the finest he would ever write, amongst the finest ever written," Durantaye said. Since its publication, Nabokov's work has been read by millions and written about by thousands.

Person:

Leland de la Durantaye

The Steam-Powered Gardens of Potsdam and Berlin: Projecting Industrial Culture into the Landscape

Editor — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Postdam and Berlin's 19th-century idyllic landscaped gardens and their debt to the industrial steam-engine

There were two distinct parts to M. Norton Wise's talk on the steam-powered gardens of Potsdam and Berlin: one that covered the royal gardens around Potsdam from 1815 to 1850, and the second about Berlin's industrial growth during the second half the nineteenth century. Both play a role in the fascinating history of topiary aesthetics and industrialization of Berlin and its lush environs during the swift change of the industrial age.

Person:

M. Norton Wise

The National Gallery in the New Century: The Mellon Legacy

Editor — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:26:00 +0000

Andrew W. Mellon founded the National Gallery of Art in the spirit of public mindedness that continues with its current director

Marina Kellen French, a trustee of the American Academy, introduced the distinguished visitor of her namesake, Earl A. Powell, III, director of the National Gallery of Art. An expert in 19th and 20th European and American art, Powell (or "Rusty," his nickname) has held the esteemed position since 1992, subsequent to positions at the University of Texas and his directorship of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, from 1980-1992, which he transformed, Art in America wrote, "from a local institution to a museum of international stature."

Person:

Earl A. Powell III

On Beauty, Objects, and Dissonance

Editor — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Artist Leslie Hewitt's dimensional interrogations of sculpture, photography, and, now -- film

Artist Leslie Hewitt's photographs are somewhat like mis en abymes, or, as the French writer Andre Gide believed, “self-reflexive embeddings,” which are achieved by being scenes within scenes. Her aesthetic inquiries have taken her from the physical space of sculpture, through the world of photography, to the ethereal yet somehow very present world of film.

Person:

Leslie Hewitt

The Global Condition in the Long Twentieth Century

Editor — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 22:00:00 +0000

The what, where, and how of globalization in our time.

Weltinnenpolitik. This is a German word that attempts to capture how we deal with a condition in which everybody is irreversibly linked, for good and bad, with everybody else. In other words, the world's domestic policy. This is also the condition we have come to call, since the 1980s, "globalization," and it was the topic of a subtle and compelling joint lecture by fellows Charles Bright and Michael E. Geyer on March 27 at the Academy.

Person:

Michael E. Geyer

Vzaar Video:

The Global Condition in the Long Twentieth Century

A Travelling Man’s America

Editor — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Calvin Trillin at the Academy as the 2012 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Visitor

It is not often that an American literary legend strolls through the doors of the American Academy, particularly one who has made over thirty appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, penned countless articles for the New Yorker, The Nation, and Time over forty years, made a name as one of America's most beloved food writers, and who remains, of course, the only "deadline poet" in America.

A Musical Portrait of Annie Gosfield

Editor — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 02:00:00 +0000

The American Academy, MaerzMusik, and Berghain team up for the avant-garde

Later into the chilled evening of March 21, Berlin's cult club Berghain -- located in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin and often dubbed the world capital of techno music -- was the scene for composer Annie Gosfield's sound-breaking Academy concert, which saw roughly 300 guests packed into a room which usually seats 200 (the club itself holds 1500), surrounded by a state-of-the-art audio system. They were there for a concert that was afterwards described as alternately "chest-poundingly powerful" and "otherworldly," and not without ear-to-ear grins.

Person:

Annie Gosfield