Events 2016

This year, the Forster Conference will take place as part of the biennial conference of the International Herder Society (October 28-30, 2016, University of Kassel). The Georg Forster Society is participating with 4-5 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 this professorship, the University of Kassel is honoring 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" at the end of May.

"Why do we look at animals?" This is how John Berger opens his well-known essay, pointing out the paradox that we always perceive animals within the framework of cultural assumptions that exclude the animal's perspective. His question can thus be modified: How do we look at animals, which directions and ways of looking 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 medieval literature. Animals and humans share spaces of action and imagination, are actors who jointly influence culture and are themselves culturally shaped. At the same time, the numerous phenomena of projection, the phantasms of transformation and fusion point to a reflective distance that is significant in terms of a distinction from the animal that is constitutive of the human self-image.

The conference will take place on 3 and 4 March 2016 in Kurt-Wolters-Straße 5, room -1029 and is organized by the LOEWE focus "Animal-Human Society" and the Institute for German Studies at the University of Kassel, Medieval Studies and the University of Kiel, the German Studies Seminar and Medieval Studies.

Daily newspapers are already proclaiming the end of the television age. The growing streaming market is enticing viewers with individually retrievable moving images. When will television consumers still tune into traditional programs? The fourth part of the lecture series "TV 4.0: The Moving Image Offensive" focuses on the development of television viewers' usage behavior in recent years, the influence of "second screen use" on social behavior and examines which new behaviors are developing among viewers.

The fourth part of the lecture series Life in the Media World will take place on 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 television landscape not only technically, but also in terms of content: PayTV offerings, media libraries and video platforms provide a huge range of moving image offerings. How can traditional TV broadcasters interest different viewer groups in their content in the future? What content do they expect? Two experts from the field will highlight the opportunities and risks of the growing streaming market and explain what possibilities there are to bind viewers to their own programs.

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