discussion

God’s Busted Knee & More: A Visit From Author Marc Degens

Lori Straus — Mon, 11 Jan 2016 16:22:56 +0000

God’s Busted Knee & More: A Visit From Author Marc Degens Lori Straus Mon, 01/11/2016 - 11:22

German author and entrepreneur Marc Degens will be reading from his work in both German and English:

God’s Busted Knee (Novel, Excerpt, Original: Das kaputte Knie Gottes)
The SuKuLTuR Years (Short Story, Original: Die SuKuLTuR Jahre)
Dorsten (Short Story)

A discussion in English will follow.

Marc Degens, born in 1971 in Essen, Germany, has been living in Toronto since 2014. He’s a writer, publisher, program director of the publishing house “SuKuLTuR”, and e-book dealer (minimore.de). He studied German Literature and Sociology in Bochum, Germany. “Unsere Popmoderne,” his column about fictitious novels, ran from 2001 to 2012 in the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” and “Volltext.” In 2009, SuKuLTuR Verlag published the novel “Strobo,” which was the epicentre of a copyright infringement case about Helene Hegemann’s debut novel, “Axolotl Roadkill.” Marc Degens has published numerous books, including four novels. www.marcdegens.tumblr.com

More information available at the UW Daily Bulletin.

Visual, Cultural and Literary Codes: Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies' Annual Conference

Lori Straus — Tue, 19 May 2015 16:56:38 +0000

Visual, Cultural and Literary Codes: Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies' Annual Conference Lori Straus Tue, 05/19/2015 - 12:56

This is the annual conference of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies. Keynote Speakers are Prof. Dr. Beate Henn-Memmesheimer from Universität Mannheim and German filmmaker and artist Marc Bauder. You can read more about it over at their website.

100 Years Since WWI: Dictatorship and Democracy in an Age of Extremes

Lori Straus — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 13:21:12 +0000

100 Years Since WWI: Dictatorship and Democracy in an Age of Extremes Lori Straus Thu, 10/09/2014 - 09:21

Beginning with the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the last century saw the rise of Italian fascism and Soviet communism, the world economic crisis, and the rise of the Nazis to power in Germany, leading to the horrors of World War II. Towards the end of the 20th century, Europe experienced the fall of the Iron Curtain and a journey from the Cold War to peaceful revolutions.

Join us and three high-ranking European diplomats for an engaging panel discussion:

Grzegorz Morawski, Consul General of the Republic of Poland
Jean François Casabonne Masonnave, Consul General of France
Walter Stechel, Consul General of the Federal Republic of Germany

They will present their countries’ perspectives on recent European history and current developments. Gary Bruce, the chair of U��ݮ��Ƶ’s History Department, will offer some historical reflections on a ravaged century. Then ask your questions about European history and current politics.

Organized by the ��ݮ��Ƶ Centre for German Studies in cooperation with the Departments of French, History, and Germanic and Slavic Studies. Download the poster here.

Traditions and transitions - German curricula

Lori Straus — Sun, 30 Mar 2014 18:08:10 +0000

Traditions and transitions - German curricula Lori Straus Sun, 03/30/2014 - 14:08

The ��ݮ��Ƶ Centre for German Studies hosted this international conference at the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ. It brought together scholars from North American and European universities whose research investigated various facets of the post-secondary curriculum for teaching and learning German as a foreign and/or second language and culture.

The potential new influences on the discipline of German are many and varied. New digital technologies, the information economy, globalization and multiculturalism, altered international spheres of influence, the changing manner of communication, the internationalization and corporatization of universities, the rise of cultural studies especially in the English-speaking world, second language acquisition research, and critical applied linguistics are just a few of the current external and internal influences. As a result, many traditionally widespread ideas and approaches in German post-secondary curricula have recently been challenged.

German Studies in the 21st century has to acknowledge a very different geo-political situation, a new generation of students with different expectations, and an advanced and far more complex understanding of its subject matter—German language, culture, and history. The conference provided a forum for discussing the challenges of current transitions and their impact on German curricula and made a major contribution to the global discussion about the learning and teaching of German language and culture at university.

The three keynote speakers were

Claire Kramsch – Professor of German at the University of California, Berkeley,
Alice Pitt – Dean of the Faculty of Education, York University, Toronto, and
Dietmar Rösler – Professor of German as a Foreign and Second Language, Justus-Liebig Universität, Gießen, Germany.

Selected papers from this conference have been published with Wilfrid Laurier University Press as part of the WCGS German Studies book series. Centre member Barbara Schmenk, conference co-chair with John Plews, Saint Mary’s University, headed the local organizing team of members of the WCGS Applied Language Studies research group.

Brecht-Fest

Varmanaa Rajakulendran — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 21:09:59 +0000

Brecht-Fest Varmanaa Rajak… Mon, 01/20/2014 - 16:09

16:00 Vortrag
- Prof. Sigfrid Hoefert: “Die Mühen der Gebirge liegen hinter uns / Vor uns liegen dieMühen der Ebenen”: Brecht während der Kriegs- und Nachriegszeit
- MacKirdy Hall, St. Paul’s College
- 190 Westmount Rd. N. ��ݮ��Ƶ, Ontario N2L 3G5 519-885-1460
- Parken / Eintritt frei

17:30 Brecht-Schmaus:
- Ein deutsches Büffet

20:00 Theatervorstellung
- Bertolt Brecht’s“The Caucasian Chalk Circle” preceded by Cabaret Scenes and Monlogues in the theatre foyer
- performed in English by the Univeristy of ��ݮ��Ƶ Drama Department
- Theatre of the Arts
- (10 Minuten zu Fuß von St. Paul’s College)

Eintrittspreise:
- Brecht-Schmaus und Theatervorstellung:
- Normalpreis: $20
- Studierende, DeutschlehrerInnen: $10

Karten müssen bis zum 19. März telefonisch bestellt werden:

Telefon: 519 888 4567, x32260

“Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral.”

Prof. Sigfrid Hoefert

“Die Mühen der Gebirge liegen hinter uns / Vor uns liegen die Mühen der Ebenen”:

Brecht während der Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit

Zusammenfassung

Der Vortrag befasst sich mit zwei Fragenkomplexen. An erster Stelle soll Brechts Darstellung des Kriegsgeschehens und einiger Umwälzungen in der Nachkriegszeit anhand von relevanten Texten und Äußerungen erfasst werden. In welchem Maße spielten sie währen des Krieges eine Rolle, wie wurden sie eingesetzt, wurden sie propagandistisch angereichert: das sind Fragen, denen nachgegangen werden soll.

An zweiter Stelle wird der Vortrag, in aller Kürze, auf eininge Aspekte der Entstehung des Kaukasischen Kreidekreises hinweisen, insbesondere auf die Problematik des “Vorspiels”. Insgesamt geht es hier um die Wirkung des “Klassikers” Brecht, oder um seine “durchschlagende Wirkungslosigkeit,” wie Max Frisch einmal sagte.

Theatre Visit to Schiller's "Robbers"

Varmanaa Rajakulendran — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 20:28:39 +0000

Theatre Visit to Schiller's "Robbers" Varmanaa Rajak… Mon, 01/20/2014 - 15:28

The ��ݮ��Ƶ Centre for German Studies (WCGS) proudly organized a theatre excursion to Toronto to see Schiller's Robbers, followed by a discussion with the director and cast.

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Varmanaa Rajakulendran — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 19:25:38 +0000

��Գپ��ä��/��ٳ�Ծ��ä��/��ܳٳ��Գپ��ä�� Varmanaa Rajak… Mon, 01/20/2014 - 14:25

Identität / Ethnizität / Authentizität: Fragen der Selbstdarstellung im türkisch-deutschen Kabarett

Erol Boran (University of Toronto)

Co-sponsored by the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies

Ethnic Cleansing 1945 - 1948

Varmanaa Rajakulendran — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 18:37:19 +0000

Ethnic Cleansing 1945 - 1948 Varmanaa Rajak… Mon, 01/20/2014 - 13:37

Poster: Ethnic Cleansing 1945 - 1948 Poster (PDF)

Alfred de Zayas (Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations)

Discussants: Dieter Buse (Laurentian University) and Sebastian Siebel-Achenbach (University of ��ݮ��Ƶ)

Pursuant to the 1945 Nürnberg indictment and 1946 judgment the forced deportation of civilians for purposes of demographic manipulation and/or forced labour constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity. Several Nazi officials were found guilty of having perpetrated these crimes. At the same time as the Nuremberg Trials were conducted, more than 14 million Germans were expelled from their homes in East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, East Brandenburg - territories that were part of the defeated German Reich, from Bohemia and Moravia, from Hungary and Yugoslavia. Nearly two million ethnic Germans were deported to forced labour in the Soviet Union as "reparations in kind". The Statistisches Bundesamt in Wiesbaden and subsequent scientific demographers have estimated that more than two million ethnic Germans perished as a result of their expulsion, either as victims of lethal violence or as a consequence of exposure, hunger and disease. In his 1946 book entitled "Our Threatened Values" Victor Gollancz appealed to a general sense of justice and morality: "If the conscience of mankind ever again becomes sensitive, these expulsions will be remembered to the undying shame of all who committed or connived at them ... The Germans were expelled, not just with an absence of over-nice consideration, but with the very maximum of brutality." Alas, the expulsion of the Germans was given scant press coverage and was seldom discussed or even mentioned in history books. The first UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Jose Ayala Lasso, in a statement to the German expellees assembled at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt am Main on 28 May 1995 stated: "I submit that if in the years following the Second World War the States had reflected more on the implications of the enforced flight and the expulsion of the Germans, today's demographic catastrophes, particularly those referred to as 'ethnic cleansing', would, perhaps, not have occurred to the same extent." Unfortunately there were no "lessons learned" from the expulsion of the Germans. In 1992 the UN General Assembly called the policy of Ethnic Cleansing in the former Yugoslavia "a form of genocide". The ICJ and the ICTY similarly found that the massacre of Srebranica constituted genocide. How many massacres of ethnic Germans 1945-48 reached the threshold of genocide or crimes against humanity? Several professors of public international law have raised this issue and insisted that International Law and human rights law cannot be applied à la carte. The UN General Assembly has affirmed the right to truth. The German expellees and their descendants have at least this right.

Alfred de Zayas is author of the books Nemesis at Potsdam and A Terrible Revenge. These books will be available for purchase after the lecture. For reviews see: http://www.alfreddezayas.com/books.shtml

Alfred de Zayas is a retired senior lawyer with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and a retired Secretary of the United Nations Human Rights Committee. He was the Gordon McKay Brown Chair in International Law at the University of British Columbia in 2003. He has published books on the expulsion of Germans after World War II, has written a handbook on the case-law of the Human Rights Committee, and is a published poet and translator of poetry.

Dieter Buse is Professor emiritus of History. Among his books are The Regions of Germany and Our Grandfather’s Axe: From Krumbeck to Canada by way of Poland and Russia, 1756-1961. He was also the co-editor of Modern Germany: An Encyclopedia of History, People and Culture, 1871-1990.

Sebastian Siebel-Achenbach teaches history at the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ and is a member of the ��ݮ��Ƶ Centre for German Studies. He is the author of Niederschlesien 1942-1949. Alliierte Diplomatie und Nachkriegswirklichkeit.

Mat Schulze: German in KW

Varmanaa Rajakulendran — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 18:27:03 +0000

Mat Schulze: German in KW Varmanaa Rajak… Mon, 01/20/2014 - 13:27

Poster: Mat Schulze: German in KW Poster (PDF)

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Lecture 2010

Varmanaa Rajakulendran — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 18:19:22 +0000

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm Lecture 2010 Varmanaa Rajak… Mon, 01/20/2014 - 13:19

Poster: Grimm Lecture 2010 Lecture Poster (PDF)

Inaugural Jacob-and-Wilhelm Grimm Lecture 2010 given by Professor David Blackbourn at the University of ��ݮ��Ƶ on November 18, 2010.