Academic freedom is an essential precondition for higher education and, more generally, for democracy. Central to the American understanding of academic freedom is the concept of “extramural utterance,” that is, professorial speech that occurs in the public sphere, which next to research, teaching, and participation in institutional governance counts as a co-equal element of academic freedom. Dr. Tiede’s lecture engages American conceptions of academic freedom, important historical academic freedom cases, and social science research on academic freedom. Central for his interrogation is how academic freedom has been understood in American culture and what role universities play in current culture wars. Hans-Jörg Tiede is Director of Research at the American Association of University Professors.
Events-Collection
The Western is the quintessential American genre the Hollywood movie industry thrived on. Its special aesthetics, narratives, and cinematic conventions forged a particular sense of national identity. However, in a global film market, movement and mobility took place not only on screen; ideas, topics, and artists also moved on. No longer tied to the American frontier, the neo-western has developed into an exciting transcultural cinematic mode. The lecture interrogates how the genre negotiates cultural difference and local context in several parts of the – not just Western – world. Dr. Elfi Bettinger is an independent scholar, living in Berlin.
The lecture interrogates the modernist aesthetics of multiplication in its particular impact on ideas and fantasies of gender. Looking at chorus girls as the emblematic figures of multiplication in the 1910s and 1920s, Prof. Mayer challenges the reading of these figures as reified „mass ornaments“ and shows how the chorus brought forth the flapper. Ruth Mayer holds the chair of American Studies at Leibniz University in Hannover, Germany.
Join us for a special event: Frederick Reiken (Emerson College & Hanse Institute for Advanced Study (HWK))will read from his novel Day for Night (2010) and newer work.
Join us for a lecture by Dr. Karin Esders (Universität Bremen) titled "Aesthetics and Excess: Contemporary Feminist Art"
Join us for a lecture by Dr. Christine Künzel (Universität Hamburg) titled "'I’m going to right this wrong': Rape and Revenge in Amy Hatvany’s novel 'It Happens All the Time'"