Stanford University

Capote and Atxaga versus the Counterterrorists: Why Counterterrorism Fails

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Joseba Zulaika is Professor at the Center for Basque Studies at the University of Nevada, Reno. Professor Zulaika holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Princeton University. His most recent publications include Terrorism: the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), and Contraterrorismo USA: profecía y trampa (Irun: Alberdania, 2009). Professor Zulaika’s ongoing research addresses the Bilbao Guggenheim Museoa and the ethnography of Bilbao with additional emphasis on global culture, architecture, museum politics, and tourism industries. His primary research interests include Basque culture and politics, the international discourse of terrorism, various traditional occupations (fishermen, hunters, farmers), diasporic and global cultures, history of anthropological thought, and theories of symbolism, ritual, and discourse.

Sponsored by the Iberian Studies Program at the Forum on Contemporary Europe, and the Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures at Stanford University.

CISAC Conference Room

Joseba Zulaika Professor, Center for Basque Studies Speaker University of Nevada, Reno
Seminars

Hannah Arendt and the Humanities: On the Relevance of Her Work Beyond the Realm of Politics

In the wake of 9/11 and the so-called War on Terror there has been in recent years an immense interest in Hannah Arendt's thought in a variety of disciplines ranging from Political Science through History to Cultural Criticism. While Arendt's political analysis, especially her insights into the nature of totalitarian ideologies and regimes has received much attention, relatively little has been said on the possible impact of her unique philosophical vocabulary in such works as The Human Condition, Between Past and Future or The Life of the Mind or on our understanding of literature and the arts as they address contemporary society and politics. Giorgio Agamben, as only one example, makes references to Origins of Totalitarianism, but leaves out The Human Condition or Hannah Arendt's writing on literature or culture. A recent collection of Arendt's writings on literature and culture provides a first opportunity to reflect on the status of literature and the arts in Arendt's work, and on the usefulness of her concepts for an understanding of contemporary society and culture (Susannah Young-ah Gottlieb (ed.), Hannah Arendt, Reflections on Literature and Culture (Stanford UP, 2007). But it is precisely Arendt's conviction that literature and the arts contribute indispensably to our understanding of politics and history that calls for an examination of how Arendt's work opens new perspectives and adds a critical vocabulary to address literature and the arts.

The relative dearth of attention to Arendt's possible relevance and impact on our thinking about literature and the arts is especially peculiar given Arendt's reliance on literary texts throughout her writing. The aim of the Stanford Workshop is to consider if Hannah Arendt's work offers a productive vocabulary for thinking about literature, the arts and culture at the intersection of history, politics, and ethics.

Our question is: what may be the usefulness of such concepts, terms, and figures of speech as "natality," or Arendt's conception of the "world," or of the distinction between the "public," the "private," and the "social"? We would like to consider together: what happens when one puts Arendt's thought in contact with the study of culture in its widest sense (and not exclusively within the discipline of political theory)? What may be the implications of Arendt's reliance on literature and culture, at key moments in her analysis of political and social reality, to our understanding of their possible significance to contemporary society and politics? The workshop aims to examine the relevance of Arendt's work for the humanities in the broadest sense, and to examine Arendt's work in light of some recent advances in critical thinking in turn.

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Ulrich Baer Professor of German and Comparative Literature, New York University; Vice Provost for Global Programs and Multiculturalism Speaker
Sonja Boos Visiting Assistant Professor of German, Oberlin College & Conservatory Speaker
Stephan Braese Professor of European Jewish Literature and Cultural History, RWTH Aachen University Speaker
Nir Evron Ph.D. Candidate in Comparative Literature, Stanford University Speaker

Amir Eshel

Dept of German Studies
Building 260, Room 204
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2030

(650) 723-0413 (650) 725-8421
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Edward Clark Crossett Professor of Humanistic Studies
Professor of Comparative Literature
Professor of German Studies
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Amir Eshel is Edward Clark Crossett Professor of Humanistic Studies. He is Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature and as of 2019 Director of Comparative Literature and its graduate program. His Stanford affiliations include The Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Modern Thought & Literature, and The Europe Center at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also the faculty director of Stanford’s research group on The Contemporary and of the Poetic Media Lab at Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA). His research focuses on contemporary literature and the arts as they touch on philosophy, specifically on memory, history, political thought, and ethics.

Amir Eshel is the author of Poetic Thinking Today (Stanford University Press, 2019); German translation at Suhrkamp Verlag, 2020). Previous books include Futurity: Contemporary Literature and the Quest for the Past (The University of Chicago Press in 2013). The German version of the book, Zukünftigkeit: Die zeitgenössische Literatur und die Vergangenheit, appeared in 2012 with Suhrkamp Verlag. Together with Rachel Seelig, he co-edited The German-Hebrew Dialogue: Studies of Encounter and Exchange (2018). In 2014, he co-edited with Ulrich Baer a book of essays on Hannah Arendt, Hannah Arendt: zwischen den Disziplinen; and also co-edited a book of essays on Barbara Honigmann with Yfaat Weiss, Kurz hinter der Wahrheit und dicht neben der Lüge (2013).

Earlier scholarship includes the books Zeit der Zäsur: Jüdische Lyriker im Angesicht der Shoah (1999), and Das Ungesagte Schreiben: Israelische Prosa und das Problem der Palästinensischen Flucht und Vertreibung (2006). Amir Eshel has also published essays on Franz Kafka, Hannah Arendt, Paul Celan, Dani Karavan, Gerhard Richter, W.G. Sebald, Günter Grass, Alexander Kluge, Barbara Honigmann, Durs Grünbein, Dan Pagis, S. Yizhar, and Yoram Kaniyuk.

Amir Eshel’s poetry includes a 2018 book with the artist Gerhard Richter, Zeichnungen/רישומים, a work which brings together 25 drawings by Richter from the clycle 40 Tage and Eshel’s bi-lingual poetry in Hebrew and German. In 2020, Mossad Bialik brings his Hebrew poetry collection בין מדבר למדבר, Between Deserts.

Amir Eshel is a recipient of fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt and the Friedrich Ebert foundations and received the Award for Distinguished Teaching from the School of Humanities and Sciences.

Affiliated faculty of The Europe Center
Affiliated faculty of The Taube Center for Jewish Studies
Faculty Director of The Contemporary Research Group
Faculty Director of the Poetic Media Lab
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Amir Eshel Charles Michael Chair in Jewish History and Culture; Director, Forum on Contemporary Europe, Stanford University Speaker
Barbara Hahn Distinguished Professor of German, Vanderbilt University Speaker

Robert Harrison

121 Pigott Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-4204
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Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Rosina Pierotti Professor of Italian Literature
Professor of French and Italian
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Professor Harrison received his doctorate in Romance Studies from Cornell University in 1984, with a dissertation on Dante's Vita Nuova. In 1985 he accepted a visiting assistant professorship in the Department of French and Italian at Stanford. In 1986 he joined the faculty as an assistant professor. He was granted tenure in 1992 and was promoted to full professor in 1995. In 1997 Stanford offered him the Rosina Pierotti Chair. In 2002, he was named chair of the Department of French and Italian. In 2014 he was knighted "Chevalier" by the French Republic.  He is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and lead guitarist for the cerebral rock band Glass Wave.

Professor Harrison's first book, The Body of Beatrice, was published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 1988. It deals with medieval Italian lyric poetry, with special emphasis on Dante's early work La Vita Nuova. The Body of Beatrice was translated into Japanese in 1994. Over the next few years Professor Harrison worked on his next book, Forests: The Shadow of Civilization, which appeared in 1992 with University of Chicago Press. This book deals with the ways in which the Western imagination has symbolized, represented, and conceived of forests, primarily in literature, religion, and mythology. It offers a select history that begins in antiquity and ends in our own time. Forests appeared simultaneously in English, French, Italian, and German. It subsequently appeared in Japanese and Korean as well. In 1994 his book Rome, la Pluie: A Quoi Bon Littérature? appeared in France, Italy, and Germany. This book is written in the form of dialogues between two characters and deals with topics such as art restoration, the vocation of literature, and the place of the dead in contemporary society.

Professor Harrison's next book, The Dominion of the Dead, published in 2003 by University of Chicago Press, examines the relations the living maintain with the dead in diverse secular realms. This book was translated into German, French and Italian. Professor Harrison's book Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition appeared in 2008 with the University of Chicago Press, in French with Le Pommier, and in Italian with Fazi Editori , and in German with Hanser Verlag (it subsequently appeared in Chinese translation). His most recent book Juvenescence: A Cultural History of Our Age came out in 2014 with Chicago University Press.  In 2005 Harrison started a literary talk show on KZSU radio called "Entitled Opinions."  The show features hour long conversations with a variety of scholars, writers, and scientists.  Robert Harrison is also the Director of Another Look, a Stanford-based book club.

Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
Robert Harrison Rosina Pierotti Professor of Italian Literature, Stanford University Speaker
Christine Ivanovic Visiting Professor, Department of German Language and Literature, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, The University of Tokyo Speaker
Martin Klebes Assistant Professor of German, University of Oregon Speaker
Eyal Peretz Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Indiana University Speaker
Liliane Weissberg Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor in the School of Arts and Sciences; Professor of German and Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania Speaker
Thomas Wild Berlin Speaker
Workshops

Duncan Clark

BDA China Ltd
#2908 North Tower, Kerry Centre
1 Guanghua Road
Beijing 100020, China

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Senior Advisor for China 2.0 Project
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Duncan Clark is Chairman of BDA China, a consultancy he founded in Beijing in 1994 after four years as an investment banker with Morgan Stanley in London and Hong Kong. Over the past 19 years, Duncan has guided BDA to become the leading investment advisory firm in China specialized in China's technology, internet and e-commerce sectors.

An angel investor in mobile game app developer Happy Latte and digital content metrics company App Annie Duncan has also served on the Advisory Board of Chinese internet company Netease.com (Nasdaq: NTES) and serves on the Advisory Board of the Digital Communication Fund of Geneva-based bank Pictet & Cie.

A UK citizen, Duncan was raised in England, the United States and France. A graduate of the London School of Economics & Political Science, Duncan is a Senior Advisor to the ‘China 2.0' initiative at the Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Stanford Program on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, where he was invited as a Visiting Scholar in 2010 and 2011.

Duncan is partner in a Beijing-based film production company CIB Productions, and Executive Producer of two China-themed television documentaries including ‘My Beijing Birthday’.

Duncan was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2013 New Year Honours for services to British commercial interests in China.

Telling Cases: Epistemological and Aesthetic Aspects of Case Narratives in 18th and 19th Century Science and Literature

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Case studies have a long history in both medicine and law. They contributed to the development of the new sciences humaines in the 18th century as well as of Freud's psychoanalysis, and they are still used in current social sciences as well as popular media formats. As a genuinely interdisciplinary genre, case studies are also influenced by the narrative structure of literature. At they same time, they served as a reference for the new striving for realism and individuality in enlightenment aesthetics. Therefore, in late 18th and early 19th century literature, the logic of induction that structures case studies is transferred into fictional narratives that not only claim to provide knowledge on the biological genre of humans, but also contribute to a new definition of the concept of literary genre. Exemplary readings of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Carl Philipp Moritz, Georg Buechner, and E.A. Poe will suggest a reading of case studies as a narrative form bridging the divide between the 'two cultures' of literature and science.

Nico Pethes received a Ph.D. in German Literature from University Cologne in 1998, and was a postdoc at University Siegen, 1998-2001. He was a Visiting Scholar and Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Comparative Literature and German at Stanford from 2001-2003; Director of a Research Group on the "Cultural History of Human Experimentation" at University Bonn 2003-2005, Habilitation in 2005; Professor of European Literature and Media History at University Hagen 2005-2009; and, since 2009, professor of Modern German Literature at University Bochum. His publications include "Zuglinge der Natur. Der literarische Menschenversuch des 18. Jahrhunderts" (Goettingen: Wallstein 2007), "Das Beispiel. Epistemologie des Exemplarischen" (coeditor; Berlin: Kadmos 2007); "'Victor, l'enfant de la foret': Experiments on Heredity in Savage Children" (in: Heredity Produced: At the Crossroads of Biology, Politics, and Culture, 1500-1870, eds. Staffan Mueller-Wille/Hans-Jorg Rheinberger, Cambridge MA/London: The MIT Press 2007, pp. 399-418); "Terminal Men. Biotechnical Experimentation and the Reshaping of 'the Human' in Medical Thrillers" (in: /New Literary History/ 36, 2005, pp. 161-185)

Encina Ground Floor Conference Room

Nicolas Pethes Professor of Modern German Literature at University Bochum; Visiting Scholar, Department of German Studies, Stanford University (Spring 2010) Speaker
Seminars

FCE Announces Book Release: "Ethnic Europe: Mobility, Identity, and Conflict in a Globalized World"

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The Forum on Contemporary Europe is pleased to announce the release of "Ethnic Europe: Mobility, Identity, and Conflict in a Globalized World" (Stanford University Press, 2010) edited by FCE Associate Director Roland Hsu.

Ethnic Europe offers accessible, comprehensive, and influential thinking on immigration, and the challenge of how we are to defend minority identity and encourage social solidarity in our world of global migration.  Focused on Europe as a destination for global immigration, eleven of the most influential social science and humanities authors address the increasingly complex challenges facing the expanding European Union—including labor migration, strains on welfare economies, local traditions, globalized cultures, Islamic diasporas, separatist movements, and threats of terrorism.  The authors confront the struggle shared in Europe and the U.S. to balance minority rights and social cohesion.  For the first time in one volume, these writers give startling insight into Europe’s fast-growing communities, taking the reader from global views to local detail.  From questions of high politics (If Europe includes Turkey, where does Europe end?) to local culture wars (How does McDonalds appeal to Catalans?), this collection engages theory, history, and generalized views of diasporas, including the details of neighborhoods, borderlands, and the popular literature and new media and films spawned by the creative mixing of ethnic cultures.

Roland Hsu, Associate Director of Stanford University’s Forum on Contemporary Europe at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, edited, and wrote the opening essay to make “Ethnic Europe” a foundation text and approachable guide to the experience of ethnic politics, migrant life, and movements for integration and exclusion.  With his experience at the Forum bringing scholarship, policy, and public comment to bear of our most pressing issues, Hsu offers this book on “Ethnic Europe” as an approachable guide to the general and specific of ethnic politics, migrant life, and movements for integration and exclusion. 

Roland Hsu earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, and before coming to Stanford was Assistant Professor of European History at the University of Idaho.  Hsu currently teaches, in addition to his research and work at the Forum, in the Humanities at Stanford University.

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Global Venture Capital--Cleantech & Green Investing

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About the talk:
Cleantech/Greentech investing has helped the venture capital (VC industry to contract further during the financial crisis. Over the last few years, it has become a significant part of VC investments around the world. In addition, solutions for large local or even global problems ranging from power generation to power efficiency, as well as water and air pollution, new materials, transportation, waste management, etc. are taking center stage even at every government level in most countries around the world. The seminar will focus on the following areas:

  1. Global cleantech/energy investments by asset class
  2. International VC benchmarks of cleantech investments
  3. Deals IRRs & funds IRRs in the United States/Europe   

Dr. Haemmig was part of a World Economic Forum team that produced a report on "Green Investing 2010," downloadable below.

About the speaker:
Dr. Martin Haemmig's venture capital research covers 13 countries in Asia, Europe, Israel, and USA. He lectures and/or performs research at numerous universities across the U.S., Europe, China and India. He has authored books on the globalization of venture capital. He is Senior Advisor on Venture Capital at SPRIE and advises on venture capital for China's Zhongguancun Science Park. Martin Haemmig earned his electronics degree in Switzerland and his MBA and doctorate in California, and worked for almost 20 years in global high-tech companies in Asia, Europe and the U.S. before returning to his academic career. He became Swiss national champion in marketing in 1994.

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Philippines Conference Room

Martin Haemmig Speaker
Seminars

Stressed by Strife: ASEAN from Pattaya to Preah Vihear

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The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is Asia’s most resilient regional organization.  Its ambitious new charter aims to foster, in a dynamic but disparate region, a triply integrated region comprising a Political and Security Community, an Economic Community, and a Socio-Cultural Community.  The charter’s debut under Thailand’s 2008-09 chairmanship of the Association was badly marred, however, by political strife among Thai factions, clashes on the Thai-Cambodian border, and border-crossing risks of a non-military kind.  How have these developments affected ASEAN’s regional performance and aspirations?  Are its recent troubles transitional or endemic?  Do they imply a need for the Association to reconsider its modus operandi, lest it lose its role as the chief architect of East Asian regionalism?

Dr Thitinan Pongsudhirak is director of the Institute of Security and International Studies and an associate professor of international political economy at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.  He is a prolific author, having written many op eds, articles, chapters, and books on Thailand’s politics, political economy, foreign policy, and media, and on ASEAN and East Asian security and economic cooperation.  He has worked for The Nation newspaper (Bangkok), The Economist Intelligence Unit, and Independent Economic Analysis (London).  His degrees are from the London School of Economics (PhD), Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (MA), and the University of California (BA).  His doctoral study of the 1997 Thai economic crisis won the United Kingdom’s Lord Bryce Prize for Best Dissertation in Comparative and International Politics—currently the only work by an Asian scholar to have been so honored. 

Daniel and Nancy Okimoto Conference Room

Thitinan Pongsudhirak

Stanford Humanities Center
424 Santa Teresa St.
Stanford, CA 94305

(650) 723-3052
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FSI-Stanford Humanities Center International Visiting Scholar

Thitinan Pongsudhirak is a high-profile expert on contemporary political, economic, and foreign-policy issues in Thailand today  He is also a prolific author; witness his op ed, "Moving beyond Thaksin," in the 25 February 2010 Wall Street Journal.

Pongsudhirak is not senior in years, but he is in stature.  His career path has been meteoric since he earned his BA in political science with distinction at UC-Santa Barbara not long ago. In 2001 he received the United Kingdom's Best Dissertation Prize for his doctoral thesis at the London School of Economics on the political economy of Thailand's 1997 economic crisis.

Since 2006 he has held an associate professorship in international relations at Thailand's premier institution of higher education, Chulalongkorn University, while simultaneously heading the Institute of Security and International Studies, the country's leading think tank on foreign affairs.

His many publications include: "After the Red Uprising," Far East Economic Review, May 2009; "Why Thais Are Angry," The New York Times, 18 April 2009; "Thailand Since the Coup," Journal of Democracy, October-December 2008; and "Thaksin: Competitive Authoritarian and Flawed Dissident," in Dissident Democrats: The Challenge of Democratic Leadership in Asia, ed. John Kane et al. (2008).  He has written on bilateral free-trade areas in Asia, co-authored a book on Thailand's trade policy, and is admired by Southeast Asianist historians for having insightfully revisited, in a 2007 essay, the sensitive matter of Thailand's role during World War II.

He was a Salzburg Global Seminar Faculty Member in June 2009, Japan Foundation's Cultural Leader in 2008, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (Singapore) in 2005.  For ten years, in tandem with his academic career, he worked as an analyst for The Economist's Intelligence Unit.

Thitinan Pongsudhirak 2010 FSI-Humanities Center International Visitor, Stanford University Speaker
Seminars

Visit by Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer

Jan Fischer was born in Prague in 1951 to a family of mathematical statisticians and actuarial mathematicians. His father was a scientific employee of the Mathematics Institute of the Czech Academy of Science and devoted himself to statistical applications in genetics, breeding and medicine.

Fischer finished his studies at the national economics faculty of the University of Economics, Prague with a degree in statistics and econometrics in 1974. He joined the statistical office after university, where he worked until the beginning of the 1980s as a research employee of the Research Institute of Socioeconomic Information (then a part of the statistics office). In 1985, he finished his post-graduate studies at the Prague School of Economics and gained the title of Candidate of Science in the field of economic statistics. He served in various functions at the Federal Statistical Office until 1990, when he became deputy chairman of the office. After the creation of an independent Czech Republic in 1993, he became the deputy chairman of the Czech Statistical Office.

From the beginning of the 1990s he led teams processing the results of parliamentary and municipal elections. He was also in charge of contacts with the European Union's Eurostat statistical office. In the spring of 2001, he worked on a mission of the International Monetary Fund which examined the possibility of building statistical services in East Timor.

From September 2000 he worked as the director of the production department for the Taylor Nelson Sofres Factum company, and from March 2002 until his naming as chairman of the Czech Statistical Office, he was the head of the research facilities of the Faculty of Informatics and Statistics of the Prague School of Economics.

He was named chairman of the Czech Statistical Office by the President of the Czech Republic on 24 April 2003.

He was named Prime Minister by the President of the Czech Republic on 9 April 2009.

He is a member of a number of prestigious institutions, including the Czech Statistics Society, the International Statistics Institute, the Science Council, the Board of Trustees of the University of Economics, Prague, as well as the Science Council of the University of J.E. Purkyně in Ústí nad Labem.

Jan Fischer is married for the second time and is the father of three children.

Jan Fischer Prime Minister, Czech Republic; Chairman, Czech Statistical Office Speaker
Panel Discussions

Ideas of Secularization in Trans-Atlantic Perspectives

This workshop will address different ideas of secularization, the ways they have been historically narrated, and now function discursively, and how these insights may help us address the subject’s present day politicization. Workshop sessions will especially focus on the different approaches to secularization in the US and Europe.

In cultural, sociological, and geopolitical realms, religion and religiosity have become central issues in the contemporary world. This centrality raises questions about associating modernity with the secular, and also about what we mean by ‘secularism’ or ‘secularization.’ These concepts have been used variously to designate the progressive disappearance of religion and also its transformation into modern institutions, and connoting both emancipation and a nostalgia for lost origins. Today, this ambiguity is less an obstacle than a promise for future theory, since it encourages a promising debate about the modern and its relation towards religion.

Concepts of secularization appear to follow distinct perspectives: While an American debate focuses on the political issue of secularism and on sociological approaches, in Europe the concept is rather related to philosophy and cultural history. Both perspectives should be understood as interrelated and each responds to different historical and contemporary roles of religion in Europe and America, and raises important political questions. The 'neutrality' of the state toward religion, for example, as seen from a juridical or a historical perspective, has different meanings in the U.S. and Europe. No less important are the relations of Europe and the U.S. towards Islam in particular.

The present workshop aims to develop understandings of secularization that will be productive for cultural, political, and legal applications. Beyond a unified theory, secularization may be understood as a discursive construct, and as a series of figurative ideas: including metaphors such as the ‘death of God’ or modern ‘disenchantment,’ topoi such as Mysticism, Nihilism or the Vera Icon, and narratives such as the Weber-Thesis or the afterlife of antiquity. This workshop is intended to facilitate analysis of historical and contemporary issues including: Can ideas of secularization contribute to a fruitful analysis of the relation between religion and modernity? In what ways are secularism and faith integral to modern and postmodern thought? How can we put into productive debate American and the European approaches towards secularization? Does the idea of secularization necessarily cast theological communities as anti-modern?

WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

June 3

9:30am: Breakfast

10:00am:  Welcome and Workshop Introduction, Daniel Weidner

I. (Secularization in Question) 10:15am – 11:45am 

  • Adrian Pabst, "The Paradox of Faith – Religion beyond secularization and de-secularization"
  • Jean Claude Monod, "Has the concept of 'Secularization' lost any relevance?"

Lunch break 12:00pm-1:00pm

II (Rhetorics and Politics of Secularization) 1:00pm-2:30pm

  • Daniel Weidner, " ‘Secularization’ as Metaphor, Myth, and Allegory"
  • Christopher Soper, "Clothing the Naked Public Square:  Religion, Secularism, and the Future of Politics"

Break: 2:30pm-3:00pm

III (Case studies) 3:00pm-4:30pm

  • David Myers,  "Reflections on the 'Deprivatization' of Religion: Lessons Learned from Kiryas Joel, New York"
  • Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, "Disestablishment, American Style"

Day 1 summary remarks 4:30pm-5:00pm

Dinner

June 4

8:30am Breakfast, with day 2 opening remarks by Daniel Weidner

IV (Secularization in between) 9:00am-10:30am

  • John McCole, "Between disenchantment and the post-secular: Georg Simmel on religion"
  • Brian Britt, "Secular Reading, Religious Writing: Benjamin and Freud on Schreber"

Break 10:30-10:45am

V (Secularization and Literature) 10:45am-12:15pm

  • Christian Sieg , "Between the Religious and the Secular. Heinrich Böll’s Early Oeuvre in the Context of the Secularization Debate"
  • Russell Berman, "Konrad Weiss and the 'Christian Epimetheus' -- Secularization and the Weimar Crisis"

Lunch break 12:15pm-1:30pm

VI (Temporalities sacred and secular) 1:30pm-3:00pm

  • Andrea Schatz, "Irresistible Secularism? Time, Language and the Jewish Enlightenment"
  • Nitzan Lebovic, "Hannah Arendt and Extraordinary Secularism"

Workshop concluding remarks (Weidner) with concluding discussion 3:00pm-4:00pm.

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Board Room
Stanford Humanities Center

Winnifred Fallers Sullivan Associate Professor of Law and Director of the Law and Religion Program Speaker University at Buffalo Law School, State University of New York
Daniel Weidner Associate Director Speaker Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin

Russell A. Berman

Department of Comparative Literature
Stanford University
Building 260, Room 201
Stanford, CA 94305-2030

(650) 723-1069 (650) 725-8421
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute, by courtesy
Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities
Professor of Comparative Literature
Professor of German Studies
Senior Fellow at The Hoover Institution
Faculty affiliate at The Europe Center
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Russell Berman is the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where he co-directs the Working Group on Islamism and the International Order. He holds a courtesy appointment at the Freeman Spogli Institute. He formerly served as Senior Advisor on the Policy Planning Staff of the United States Department of State and has been awarded a Mellon Faculty Fellowship at Harvard and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for research in Berlin; he has also been honored with the Bundesverdienstkreuz of the Federal Republic of Germany.

His books include The Rise of the Modern German Novel: Crisis and Charisma (1988) and Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture (1998), both of which won the Outstanding Book Award of the German Studies Association. Some of his other books include Anti-Americanism in Europe: A Cultural Problem (2004), Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007) and Freedom or Terror: Europe Faces Jihad (2010). In his books and many articles Berman has written widely on the cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, critical theory, and cultural dimensions of trans-Atlantic relations, as well as on topics between Europe and the Middle East. His commentary on current events has appeared in The New Republic, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times Internationale Politik, Telos, Daily Beast, the Los Angeles Review Books, die Welt, die Neue Zuercher Zeitung, die Weltwoche,  and American Greatness and elsewhere.

Faculty affiliate at The Europe Center
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Russell A. Berman Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities; Professor, Comparative Literature Speaker Stanford University
Andrea Schatz Lecturer, Jewish Studies Speaker King's College, London
Jean Claude Monod Researcher Speaker Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Adrian Pabst Lecturer, Politics Speaker Rutherford College, University of Kent
Brian Britt Professor, Director of Religious Studies Speaker Virginia Tech Virginia Tech
John McCole Associate Professor and Department Head, History Speaker University of Oregon
David N. Myers Professor, History Speaker UCLA
Christian Sieg Researcher, German Studies Institute Speaker WWU Muenster
Christopher Soper Professor, Political Science Speaker Pepperdine University
Nitzan Lebovic Lecturer, Mineva Insitute for German History, Tel-Aviv University Speaker
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CDDRL visiting scholar named Young Global Leader

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Each year, the World Economic Forum recognizes and acknowledges up to 200 outstanding young leaders from around the world for their professional accomplishments, commitment to society and potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world. For 2010, the Forum has selected 197 Young Global Leaders (YGLs) from 72 countries and all stakeholders of society (business, civil society, social entrepreneurs, politics and government, arts and culture, and opinion and media).

One honoree is Abebe Gellaw, CDDRL visiting scholar, who is recognized for his long standing work for freedom of expression, justice, democracy, and dignity in Ethiopia. He came to Stanford in 2009 as a Knight/Yahoo! International Fellow.

"I am not only thrilled but also humbled to be included in this year's YGL list of honorees," Gellaw remarked after the names of the honorees were announced, "I started mixing journalism and advocacy in 1993 as the government fired 42 respected professors from Addis Ababa University, where I was a student leader organizing protests against the misguided and destructive policies of the regime that has hijacked Ethiopia's hope for a democratic transition and decent future."

"The World Economic Forum is a true multistakeholder community of global decision-makers in which the Young Global Leaders represent the voice for the future and the hopes of the next generation. The diversity of the YGL community and its commitment to shaping a better future through action-oriented initiatives of public interest is even more important at a time when the world is in need of new energy to solve intractable challenges," said Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum.

The Young Global Leaders 2010 were chosen from a pool of almost 5,000 candidates by a selection committee, chaired by H.M. Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and comprised of eminent international media leaders including Steve Forbes, CEO of Forbes Media, James Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation (Europe and Asia), Arthur Sulzgerber, Chairman and Publisher of the New York Times, Tom Glocer, CEO of Thomson Reuters and Elizabeth Weymouth, Editor-at-Large and Special Diplomatic Correspondent of Newsweek.

The 2010 honourees will become part of the broader Forum of Young Global Leaders community that currently comprises 660 outstanding individuals. The YGLs convene at an annual summit - this year it will be in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 2-7 May 2010, the first time in Africa and the largest ever gathering of YGLs - as well as at Forum events and meetings throughout the year, according to a press release issued by the World Economic Forum.

 

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