Categories
Arts and Humanities Events IU Community

Max Kade German -American Center Spring Events

Join the Max Kade Center for their remaining spring 2021 events.  All events are free, online, and open to everyone – please share widely with friends, family, and colleagues. 

All events are listed in the Eastern time zone and event links to RSVP are also on the Max Kade Center’s website. We look forward to seeing you there!

The Athenaeum, in Indianapolis, where the Max Kade Center has an office.

Settle into a cozy chair and pick up a few good books to read with the MKC Book Club.  We’ve invited two scholars to join us this semester to lead us through texts 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.

If you would like to participate, simply procure a copy of the book and begin reading.  At least four weeks before each event, a few copies of each text are dropped at the Athenaeum in Indianapolis (401 E. Michigan Street).  If you choose to purchase the book, please consider buying from Indy Reads in order to support local literacy efforts and more.

 POSTPONED to Mar. 27, 2021 at 12p: Dr. Thorsten Carstensen (IUPUI) will present Austrian author  Peter Handke’s novel Don Juan: His Own Version.

From the publisher’s synopsis: Don Juan’s story—”his own version”—is filtered through the consciousness of an anonymous narrator, a failed innkeeper and chef, into whose solitude Don Juan bursts one day. On each day of the week that follows, Don Juan describes the adventures he experienced on that same day a week earlier. The adventures are erotic, but Handke’s Don Juan is more pursued than pursuer. What makes his accounts riveting are the remarkable evocations of places and people, and the nature of his narration. Don Juan: His Own Version is, above all, a book about storytelling and its ability to burst the ordinary boundaries of time and space.

         Themes for book club discussion forthcoming and updated here.  RSVP to attend here.

Apr. 17, 2021 at 12p: Dr. Sara Luly (Kansas State University) will present ETA Hoffmann’s 1816 short story, The Sandman.

This well-known German tale begins with three letters that center the characters of Nathanael, Clara, and Lothar.  In addition to setting up the main dramatic elements of the story, they reveal the legend of the Sandman, who would prey upon children who wouldn’t go to bed and steal their eyes.  This legend haunts Nathanael throughout the story, following him from his adolescence to adulthood, bearing his childhood trauma and sowing uncertainty in the narrative reality.

  Themes for book club discussion forthcoming and updated here. RSVP to attend here.


May 6 at 5p: Antje Petty: “Public Health and Pandemics in the German-American Press”

Antje Petty, Associate Director of the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, will give a talk on the history of medicine, illness, and attitudes toward health in the German-American Press.  This event will be conducted on Zoom and is free to all.  Registration is required; RSVP here.

Remember!  You can always find our events on the MKC Events page
or our Twitter feed (@mkgaciupui).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *