A Global History of Health
In this lecture, "A Global History of Health: Reconstructing Humankind’s Encounters with Infectious Diseases," historian Monica Green addresses the need for a narrative of global health that encompasses every continent, across time, and includes all major infectious diseases.
France and Its Rivers
Historian Michael Miller uses French waterways to propose a different framework for exploring the intersection of French geography, history, and identity.
Policies to Decarbonize the Economy
CEO of Energy Innovation, Hal Harvey, examines how decarbonization trends and new technologies indicate that we can arrive at a reasonable climate future with very modest costs and profound benefits.
Mary Cappello: Of Mood, An Atmospheric Reading
Writer Mary Cappello presented a multi-modal reading drawn from her new writing on “mood”— a suite of lyric essays and experimental prose that allows for mood’s mercurial nature and gives free play to mood’s pre-conscious origins.
Denk ich an Deutschland: The World Out of Joint
On September 18, 2015, Gerhard Casper, the acting president of the American Academy in Berlin, joined a panel discussion on the United States and Russia.
Text Destruction in the Ancient World
In this lecture, Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow Nathanial Levtow examines the phenomenon of text destruction from the beginning of writing to the formation of the Bible.
Reflections on a Progressive Economic Policy
In the 2015 Kurt Viermetz Lecture on May 28, economist Lawrence H. Summers drew on a recent international report he co-chaired on inclusive prosperity to discuss the ways in which the global economy has changed over the last generation and how policies need to respond.
Current Strategies for Composition and Performance
Composer and multi-instrumentalist Elliott Sharp uses a wide variety of strategies to compose and perform music. In this lecture, Sharp discusses his compositions and the formal ideas at play in his improvisation, concluding with a brief improvised performance on his eight-string electroacoustic guitarbass.
Thomas Friedman: A Strategy for Surviving in a Fast World
Thomas L. Friedman delivered the Stephen M. Kellen Lecture at the American Academy in Berlin on Wednesday, April 22, 2015. He spoke about our lives being shaped more than ever by these three changes: digital, geo-economical, and ecological. How will civilizations best adapt to these changes and cushion their worst effects?
The Cultural Work of Algorithms
Holtzbrinck Fellow William Uricchio has sought to launch a critical discourse on the cultural importance of algorithms and their impact on present-day society.