On the 23rd February, the AY and BA1’s regular Thursday seminar session was replaced with a plenary session on modern music and love, which was held in the lecture hall and coordinated by seminar leaders Brendan Boyle and David Hayes. After we had spent the previous sessions on the Song of Songs and old Hispano-Arabic
Lustre and Reality: Short Films at Berlinale
Berlinale, the Berlin-based international film festival, is one of the best-known in the world and after visiting two shows this year I clearly see the reasons for it. My first close encounter with Berlinale began when I got the programme and had to choose the films to see and screenings to attend from amongst the
The Parade
Halfway into the cold February of 2012 at ECLA, it hardly seemed like the shortest month of the year. With the Annual Conference 2012 behind us and a winter trip pending, a few midterm assignments here and there and the usual everyday coursework, the stubborn snow was the only reminder that this cold winter still
What is an Image? James Elkins’ Lecture at ICI Berlin
On February 16th at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry in Berlin, James Elkins, E.C. Chadbourne Chair in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago, gave a lecture titled “What is an image?” The talk was based on a book of the same title issued in
Annual Conference: Technology and Dissent
Between February 6 and 10 2012, ECLA held its annual “Annual Conference”: an event devoted to current global issues in which guest lecturers, ECLA faculty and students explore a particular theme in a series of lectures, panel sessions and seminars. This year the topic was “Censorship” and its connection to the state, religious belief, institutions
Rommel on Sympathy, Self-interest and Literature’s Significance
The influence of literature on popular discourse, and more surprisingly, the dependence that a society has on this discourse, came to light in a January 31st lecture by Professor Thomas Rommel of Jacobs University. During the 18th Century Britain became a primary site for the intensifying relationship between political and cultural concerns. Eventually these concerns
Bruno Macaes: Democratize the economy!
On February 1st, ECLA Professor Bruno Macaes led the first winter term meeting of the Politics Club regarding the Eurozone crisis. Bruno is currently a senior policy adviser to Portugal’s Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho and is on leave from his teaching duties at ECLA. Bruno’s firsthand account of the inner workings of Portuguese politics
Nietzsche and the Third Reich: Max Whyte on the Nazified Nietzsche
On January 30th, Max Whyte, Harper-Schmidt Fellow at the University of Chicago, gave a lecture at ECLA entitled “Nietzsche and the Third Reich”, in which he presented and analyzed some of the ways in which Nietzsche’s philosophy was used for the political purposes of the German National Socialists. From the very beginning, the lecturer stated