German Research Seminar Programme 2006-2007
19 October, 4pm (Room Beehive 2.22)
Dr. Regina Weinert (Sheffield University): Differences between spoken and written language. Implications for linguistics and language learning
7 December, 5.30pm to 6.30pm (Room Beehive 2.22)
Prof. Henrike Lähnemann (Newcastle University): Pope Joan and 'Frau Judith' - cunning women in late medieval mass media.
How symbols are created from stories can be studied by looking at two women who have a strong presence in modern feministic discourse: the fictitious female pope Joan (or "Johannes von Engellant" in late-medieval German sources) and the apocryphal figure of Judith, the widow who saved the Israelian people by beheading the leader of the attacking army. Thr modern discourse is reacting to figure-concepts that developed in the late 15th century, co-inciding with the development of print. Both Pope Joan and Judith are shaped for modern conception through the image given to them by the earliest form of Western mass media: through popular history books, broadsheets, ballads and pamphlets they were established as "cunning women". I will look at this transformation process and at the ambivalence of the concept of cunningness.
15 February, 4pm (Room Old Library Building 3.18)
Susanne Ruge (Halle University): The Colour of Penance. Theological Imagination in Hildegard of Bingen's 'Liber vite meritorum'
27 February, 4pm (Room Beehive 2.21)
Dr. Peter Barker (Reading University): 'Vergangenheitsbewältigung ohne Ende?' The new Germany and the legacy of the GDR
This talk will be in the context of the itenerant exhibition on the Berlin Wall, which will be on public display in the Beehive at the time.
8 March, 4pm (Room Old Library Building 3.18)
PD Dr. Birgit Dahlke (Humboldt Universität Berlin / Nottingham University): Von der Frontstadt zur Mauerfall-Metropole. Zum Topos Berlin in Literatur und Film vor und nach 1989
26 April, 4pm (Room Beehive 2.22)
Dr. Bettina Bildhauer (University of St Andrews): Incorporated memory and violent mourning: Kriemhild the murderess in the Nibelungenlied and on film.
11 May, 4pm (Room Beehive 2.22)
Prof. Henrike Lähnemann (Newcastle University): Playing on the Harp Strings of the Soul. Vision and Audition in Medingen Convent (followed by a reception)
The history of imagination, of conjuring up powerful images and making them come alive for a wider audience, is deeply rooted in medieval spirituality.The nuns of Medingen in Northern Germany drew on a long tradition of divine visions and auditions when they composed and illuminated their prayer-books. After a reform of the convent in the late 15th century they wanted to convey the sense of renewed monastic life by collecting German hymns, commenting on the Latin liturgy of the Mass and making all this accessible by explaining the texts as part of an inner process of staging them as sacred drama.
The inaugural lecture, in its turn, will try to make these beautiful illuminated manuscripts accessible. What do they tell us about the spiritual adventures of the late Middle Ages and how does one play on the harp strings of the soul?
31 May, 4pm (Room 2.20)
Anke Kramer (Newcastle University): Gottfried Keller on Nature ("Das sind ja wahre Lumpen, die sich selbst das Klima verhunzen" - Natur und Umwelt bei Gottfried Keller).