Events 2016

This year the Forster Conference will take place within the biennial conference of the International Herder Society (October 28-30, 2016, University of Kassel). The Georg Forster Society will participate with 4-5 approximately 30-minute presentations scheduled for Saturday, October 29. As the Herder Conference is entitled Herder and the Arts , exposés are requested that focus on Forster's engagement with Johann Gottfried Herder's work or specifically his understanding of art in his engagement with Herder.

Sven Regener is this year's Grimm Guest Professor at the University of Kassel. With the professorship, the University of Kassel honors a versatile author and artist who inspires his audience with novels as well as screenplays and German-language song lyrics. Among other things, Regener (55) will give a public lecture at the end of May on the topic "Zwischen Depression und Witzelsucht: Humor in Literature."

"Why do we look at animals?" This is how John Berger opens his well-known essay, pointing out the paradox that we always already perceive animals within the framework of cultural settings that exclude the animal's perspective. His question can thus be modified: How do we look at animals, what directions and orientations of gaze determine our view of the animal? 

Against this background, the workshop turns to the multi-layered processes of perception that are associated with animal-human relationships in the literature of the Middle Ages. Animals and humans share spaces of action and imagination, are actors who together influence culture and are themselves culturally shaped. At the same time, the numerous projection phenomena, the transformation and fusion phantasms point to a reflective distance that is significant in relation to a demarcation from the animal that is constitutive for the human self-understanding. 

The conference will take place on March 3 and 4, 2016 at Kurt-Wolters-Straße 5, Room -1029 and is organized by LOEWE-Schwerpunkt" Tier-Mensch-Gesellschaft" and the Institute for German Studies at Kassel University, Medieval Studies and Kiel University, the Germanist Seminar and Medieval Studies.

Daily newspapers are already proclaiming the end of the television age. The growing streaming market is enticing viewers with moving images that can be called up individually. When will the TV consumer still tune in to the classic program? The fourth part of the lecture series "fernsehen 4.0: Die Bewegtbild-Offensive" (Television 4.0: The Moving Image Offensive) addresses the development of the usage behavior of television viewers in recent years, the influence of "second screen usage" on social action and examines which new behaviors are developing among viewers.

The fourth part of the lecture series Life in the Media World will take place Tuesday, January 19, 2016 at 6 p.m. c.t. in the Gießhaus of the University of Kassel. The event is aimed at students and the interested public. You are cordially invited! 

Digitization is revolutionizing the TV landscape not only in terms of technology, but also in terms of content: PayTV offerings, media libraries, and video platforms offer a huge range of moving image offerings. What can traditional TV stations use in the future to interest the various viewer groups in their content? What content do they expect? Two experts from the field point out the opportunities and risks of the growing streaming market and explain what possibilities there are to bind viewers to their own programming.

The third part of the lecture series Life in the media world will take place Tuesday, January 12 2016 at 6 p.m. c.t. at Gießhaus of the University of Kassel. The event is aimed at students and the interested public. You are cordially invited!