Speaker: Sascha Seiler, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

Lecture title: Closing the Transatlantic Gap: American Popular Music and German Culture since the 1960’s

Date, time, place: Monday, March 5, 4:00 pm, Student Center 249

Abstract of the talk:

Today, American popular culture can be found everywhere in Germany, but this was not always the case. Especially German literature, and with it every other form of cultural articulation commonly regarded as ‘high art’, had its problems in accepting these new forms of music, film or writing that came from the USA. In fact, until the end of the 1960s there was such a strict division between what was considered highbrow and lowbrow that it took a major cultural scandal to open German culture up to the aesthetic possibilities that lay in American popular culture. For German intellectuals it was a long and hard way to realize that popular culture in general must be seen as an important aesthetic phenomenon that not only has a big influence on everyday life but also is a basic factor when we consider transatlantic cultural relations between Germany and the USA.

The talk analyzes the great influence that American popular culture had on German literature until the present day, starting with the problematic beginnings in the 1960s and ending with the ironic ‘Popliteratur’-movement that began to surface in the late 1990s.

Sunday February 26th at 6:00p.m. is the UK Confucius Institute's 2012 Spring Gala. The program, performed by the Hubei University Dragan-Lion Dance Troupe, will feature the dragon dance, lion dance, tai chi fan, a kung-fu demonstration, a show of chinese zither, calligraphy, and Han Dynasty Chinese Costumes.

To purchase tickets click here or call (859)-257-4929

Download the flyer.

Synopsis of talk: More than sixty-five years after the end of World War II, the war remains a contested issue in history and memory in many countries   How do views of the war in Europe, Asia, and North America reveal how public memory works and what challenge the present preoccupation with memory poses to what we used to call history?

Professor Gluck is a prize-winning historian whose most recent book is Words in Motion: Toward a Global Lexicon, coedited with Anna Tsing (Duke University Press, 2009). Thinking with the Past: Modern Japan and History is soon available from the University of California Press. Her most recent article is "The End of Elsewhere: Writing Modernity Now," American Historical Review (June 2011).

In 2006 she received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, from the government of Japan and in 2002 was honored with the Japan-United States Fulbright Program 50th Anniversary Distinguished Scholar Award. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Current activities include the National Coalition on Asian and International Studies in the Schools, the board of trustees of Asia Society, the board of directors of the Japan Society, elected member of the Council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and others.

Supported by The Association for Asian Studies North East Asia Distinguished Speakers Bureau; the Japan Studies Program, and the Department of History. 

Who: Professor Dirk Sacré of the Catholic University of Louvain Belgium 

Title of talk: (Tentative) "A Vast and Unexplored Continent: the Latin Literature of the 18th century." 

When: Monday, March 5 from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. 

Where: Room 208 of the Whitehall Classroom Building



Professor Sacré will be here to honor the tenth anniversary of Graduate Curriculum in Latin studies, based in the Division of Classics in MCLLC. 



Sponsored by A&S, MCLLC, History, and Philosophy

GWS Research Matters Series presents:

Melissa Stein

"Bodies of Knowledge:  Historical Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Biological Determinism"