Events 2023

© Leone Venter | GSPoL

Guest Lecture with Dr. Christina Neuwirth: What my novel taught me about my thesis

24 October 2023 | 6-8 PM | S 1 (Schloss)

In this lecture, the researcher and novelist Dr. Christina Neuwirth will draw on the experience of writing in different forms and for different audiences, broadening out to introduce the work of other writers and scholars who have drawn on scholarly and creative techniques, to argue for playful, boundary-blurring approaches to academic writing. Everyone interested is welcome to join this event!

© Anna Pessoa / Mídia Ninja | GSPoL
© Anna Pessoa / Mídia Ninja

Guest Lecture: The Dramaturgy of Contemporary Politics with Prof. Dr. Luciana Villas Bôas

20 June 2023 | 4-6 PM | English Department, room 24

Drawing on Shakespeare’s and Hobbes’ work on the intrinsic theatricality of power, Luciana Villas Bôas (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro/Universidade de São Paulo) will talk about Lula’s presidential inauguration and the storming of the esplanade as two recent events that have changed the way we relate to the foundations and the future of democracy. 

© Bryce Vickmark

Workshop: The American Academic Job Market with Eugenie Brinkema (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

9 May 2023 | 10 AM -16 PM | English Department, Room 203

The international job market offers great opportunities for early-career researchers, but it often works according to different rules than the German system. In this workshop, participants will gain an insight into academic application processes in the US, with a focus on early-career positions in the humanities (assistant professorships).

© Franzus

Workshop: The Novel in a Postfictional Age with Timothy Bewes

16 June 2023 | 10AM - 3PM | English Department, Room 203

This workshop engages with Prof. Bewes’s latest book, Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional Age (Columbia University Press, 2022), which shakes the grounds on which the theory of the novel has long been standing and offers new ways of seeing and engaging with literature.

William WatkinWilliam Watkin
© William Watkin

Guest lecture: Multiplicities of Silence with Prof. William Watkin (Brunel University)

11 January 2023 | 6-8PM | Lecture Hall JO1 (Johannisstr. 4)

Sigetics is the name for the philosophy of silence. It is concerned with what philosophers cannot say or name. As such it constitutes the outside of philosophy that thinkers need to make their various systems consistent. In his brief history of sigetics, Prof. Watkin visits the quiet cells and still offices of many thinkers and asks if their multiplicities of silences might be less a limit to philosophy, than a mute indication of its future.