On Friday the 16th of February, ECLA hosted a screening of Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth”, which was followed by a stimulating debate on climate change and its implications. The organizer of the event, Rafael Ziegler, invited two guest speakers: Jens Reich (Professor of Bioinformatics at the Medical Faculty of the Humboldt University, Deputy
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Italy trip: On the way to Florence
It feels like winter term has just started, but we are already half-way through and the trip to Florence is just a few weeks away. The ECLA Academy Year core curriculum of the second term is directed toward the Florentine Renaissance in order for students to get the most out of the trip. Meanwhile, intensive
Art and Propaganda
The German Historical Museum in Berlin with its new exhibition ‘Kunst und Propaganda’ (Art and Propaganda) has grown quite popular at ECLA in the last weeks. First the ‘Continental Aesthetics’ class visited this exhibition in order to better understand the conventions of art at the time Heidegger was writing and how art changes its nature
Simple Poetry
“He questioned softly why I failed? ‘For beauty’, I replied. ‘And I for truth’, – the two are one;” (Emily Dickinson, I Died for Beauty) The Yellow House (home of ECLA’s President Laurent Boetsch and his wife Elizabeth) hosted our community again, for what is now a tradition at ECLA –Poetry Night. Students selected and
Martin Ruehl on “Thomas Mann and the Italian Renaissance in Fin-de-Siecle Germany”
The fifth week of Winter Term was started with a guest lecture by Martin Ruehl. Martin – an intellectual historian – studied in Cambridge and Princeton, and is teaching at the University of Cambridge. He visited ECLA for the first time several years ago, presenting a lecture on Nietzsche. He was obviously thrilled to be
Visit to Gemäldegalerie: Renaissance Experience in Berlin
The study of the Florentine Renaissance is in its full motion at ECLA: students attend lectures on art history as well as study literature of the prominent figures of the time. In addition to presentations and discussions in the classroom, the visit to Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie allowed students to see the actual works of art. Visiting various
David Levine: Installation Art at ECLA
On Thursday the 25th of January students participating in the Installation Art class shared their projects with the community. This being their first exhibition, the students channelled their enthusiasm into (as many of them later described it) “the perfect opportunity to express creativity”. According to David Levine, the course tutor, the class presents students with
Maths at ECLA: I Think Therefore i Is
During the second week of the Winter term, ECLA hosted Steve Maurer, a professor of mathematics at Swarthmore College, near Philadelphia in the USA. Prof. Maurer’s task was twofold: to discuss with faculty and students ways in which mathematics might be integrated into the ECLA curriculum and to test run two introductory seminars which could