From the IUPUI School of Liberal Arts Events page.
Please note: all events are open to all (registration required), are free, will be conducted via Zoom, and occur in the Eastern Time Zone.
MKC Book Club
Two scholars will join us this semester to lead us through a text they find inspiring, interesting, or resonant. The texts, originally published in German, are available in English and all discussions
will be conducted in English on Zoom. Read the book on your own (consider purchasing from Indy Reads ) and join us on the date for a guided discussion with our guest scholars.
Oct. 10, 2020 at 12p.m. (Eastern): Dr. Ervin Malakaj (The University of British Columbia, Vancouver) will present Austrian author Stefan Zweig’s novella Confusion.
From the synopsis of the newer NYRB edition: “A young man who is rapidly going to the dogs in Berlin is packed off by his father to a university in a sleepy provincial town. There a brilliant lecture awakens in him a wild passion for learning — as well as a peculiarly intense fascination with the graying professor who gave the talk. The student grows close to the professor, becoming a regular visitor to the apartment he shares with his much younger wife. He takes it upon himself to urge his teacher to finish the great work of scholarship that he has been laboring at for years and even offers to help him in any way he can. The professor welcomes the young man’s attentions, at least on some days. On others, he rages without apparent reason or turns away from his disciple with cold scorn. The young man is baffled, wounded. He cannot understand. But the wife understands. She understands perfectly. And one way or another she will help him to understand too.”
As they dive into Zweig’s novella, Dr. Malakaj, which encourages readers to:
- consider what role longing plays in the story
and - consider what role memory/remembering plays in the story.
RSVP (required) to attend the first iteration of Dr. Malakaj’s presentation of Confusion on 10/10 here.
Information about format and a link to the event will be sent out two days in advance of the discussion.
December, 5, 2020 at 12 p.m. (Eastern): Dr. Priscilla Layne (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) presents German-American author Nora Krug’s graphic novel Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home.
From the Simon & Schuster synopsis: “Nora Krug was born decades after the fall of the Nazi regime, but the Second World War cast a long shadow over her childhood and youth in the city of Karlsruhe, Germany. Yet she knew little about her own family’s involvement; though all four grandparents lived through the war, they never spoke of it. After twelve years in the US, Krug realizes that living abroad has only intensified her need to ask the questions she didn’t dare to as a child. Returning to Germany, she visits archives, conducts research, and interviews family members, uncovering in the process the stories of her maternal grandfather, a driving teacher in Karlsruhe during the war, and her father’s brother Franz-Karl, who died as a teenage SS soldier.”
RSVP (required) to attend Dr. Layne’s presentation of Belonging on 12/5 here.
Guiding themes available here in the coming weeks.
We have partnered with the Athenaeum Foundation (Indianapolis) to provide a few free copies of the text at their little library (located on off New Jersey). Confusion will be available at the end of the week; Belonging will be available 9/27. If you grab a copy and finish early, please return for someone else to enjoy!
Decentering German Cinema Conference – November 13 and 14, 2020
The MKC is incredibly excited to host the conference Decentering German Cinema on November 13 and 14, 2020, which will interrogate and theorize the linguistic and geo-political limits of German Cinema. The public is welcome to watch the presentations and pose questions to the presenters. More information and an opportunity to register can be found on the conference website.
*This conference is generously supported by the Daniel Nuetzel Memorial Conference Fund and the Max Kade German-American Center.
Filmmaker Sheri Hagen in Conversation – November 19, 2020
We are so pleased to invite filmmaker and actor Sheri Hagen to speak with us about filmmaking, diversity, and her film, Auf den zweiten Blick (2012). Partnering with the Africana Studies Program at IUPUI, MKC will offer a screening of her film, followed by a discussion on November 19th. RSVP and more information will be available on the MKC Events page in the coming month.
Sheri Hagen is a German filmmaker and actor and has appeared on stage, as well as in films and television. Born in Nigeria, Hagen also is an advocate for women and diversity in the film arts in Germany. Auf den zweiten Blick is her first full length feature; in 2018 she directed Fenster Blau. She also heads the Berlin-based film production company Equality Film.
Watch the trailer for Auf den zweiten Blick, a film “which tells the story of visually impaired couples in love.”