We observe a significant escalation in both the volume and proportion of antisemitic tropes in conversations about Jews on Twitter during this time. But the picture is complex. Many users also posted messages that oppose and call out antisemitism, and it is unclear whether Twitter’s policy changes during this period had any direct impact on the increase in antisemitic messages. It seems that the problem is much bigger and has deeper roots in our society. One of the main drivers was Ye’s (Kanye West) antisemitic comments, which had a mainstreaming effect on the spread of antisemitic tropes. While white nationalist fringe groups capitalized on this sentiment in an online and offline campaign promoting the phrase “Kanye is right about the Jews,” many Twitter users believed that Ye had a point in calling out alleged Jewish power, as evidenced by popular retweets.

I plan a field trip and a scavenger hunt each semester. We just returned from a “short” field trip to the Prebys Amphitheater, where we recited Lieder texts OUTDOORS emphasizing nature.  We have a (small) river near the amphitheater, certainly beautiful trees, chirping birds, beautiful gardens, and open grassy areas. There is no mountain, but I pointed to the large Ballantine Hall to serve as one! The students enjoyed hearing the spoken texts by Halm, Rückert, Müller, von Gilm, Heine, Goethe and John Henry McKay.

Our next field trip is to our “opera house,”  - the MAC - as we practice introducing our audition arias as if we were in a German Opera House. Many of our graduate students dream of professional careers and the mock auditions here serve as a step towards those aspirations.

I will report on our scavenger hunt in the next edition.

In addition to my own research, I organized two major conferences: “Diffractive World-Making: Theatre & Science Beyond the Capitalocene” at Indiana University in Bloomington (together with Berlin-based playwright and director Kevin Rittberger) and “Milo Rau – Political Theater of the Future?” at the University of Cincinnati (together with Tanja Nusser and Anna Senuysal). While both conferences brought together leading theatre scholars from North America and Europe (e.g. Rebecca Schneider, Claudia Breger, Tavia Nyong’o, Inge Arteel, Ulf Otto) and evolving young scholars in the field (our own Katherine Pollock and Nina Morais, for example), “Diffractive World-Making” went beyond as it had a decidedly interdisciplinary scope and pushed the boundaries between theory and practice. As such, the conference brought together and inspired a dialogue between quantum physicist and feminist theorist Karen Barad and Berlin-based playwright Kevin Rittberger. It included talks by media theorist McKenzie Wark, political and queer theorist Bini Adamczak, and by cultural theorist Karin Harrasser next to a world-premiere of the dance-piece Prometheus. Beginnings (directed by Tzveta Kassabova and based on Rittberger’s plays), a reading by the African-French playwright Penda Diouf, and a talk and performance by Brazilian artist Luiza Prado.

The conference was truly inspiring as it traced the various entanglements between the arts and the sciences with a particular focus on if and how the arts and the sciences might undo the violent regimes involved in racism, imperialism, nationalism, colonialism, and the exploitation of the planet.

Last but not least, I invited Austrian writer Marianne Jungmaier to our campus, who read for us from her novel Das Tortenprotokoll and I taught an undergraduate class dedicated to the creation of the website “Counter Archive Austria,” for which students conducted interviews with Austrian filmmakers and authors like Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek, Robert Schindel, and Markus Schleinzer. Moreover, I invited one of the students to present at the annual conference of the Austrian Studies Association Conference based on our class-project.

In short, it was a year full of exciting dialogues and encounters that was luckily followed by a summer in which I could enjoy some of the most interesting new performances I have seen in the past years; most and foremost I think here of Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger’s piece Ophelia’s got talent (Volksbühne Berlin). And with this, I end my little report and turn to a current project that I am preparing, Berlin-based director Jürgen Kuttner’s visit who will perform with our students his version of Brecht’s adaptation of Lenz’s The Tutor—but more about this in the next year’s newsletter…

All pictures are from the conference „Diffractive World-Making”: 

First, Media and Communications scholar from Malmö University, Tina Askanius, gave a poignant talk on the way a skewed image of “Sweden” is currently being recruited for far-right political agendas in the US, and how these insights could contribute towards the general understanding of the ideas that feed, as well as fuel, far-right mobilization.

A week later, Deputy Chief of Mission of the Swedish Embassy to the U.S., Ingrid Ask, was visiting IU in relation with the 2023 Midwest Model EU where she was the keynote speaker. She met additionally over breakfast with current and former students of Swedish, Norwegian and German and addressed their various questions on US-Sweden relations, NATO, and the European Union. At the moment of writing this newsletter entry, Fall semester is well underway with a fully enrolled first year class and a small but quite dedicated cohort of third semester students who are busy with advancing their proficiency in Norwegian and enjoying their acquaintance with Nordic culture.

Still active, though.  I’ve been doing German diction coaching for the Jacobs School of Music Opera Theatre for 15 years now, and I was delighted to help this year with Lehar’s Die lustige Witwe. Frothy and happy, it was a wonderful production and a perfect season opener.  Otherwise, I’m doing a bit of literary translation, enjoying more time with family and friends, and in general marveling at the ever-accelerating passage of time.

The other big development this year is that Tracy Hall and I will be hosting the Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference in April 2024. In addition to the usual two-day conference, we are organizing a pre-conference symposium on Germanic philology in memory of Kari Gade. We are hoping that many of her former students can contribute and/or attend to celebrate her life’s work. Details will be posted to glac2024.wordpress.com.

In the spring, I participated in the ACLA conference in Chicago with a paper entitled Kleist’s Catastrophes. I also published an article on the role of pain and anesthesia in Ernst Jünger and continue to work on my larger projects of affect and legitimization.

The Institute of German Studies has continued to fund a number of items ranging from the German Theater Project to travel fellowships for the study of language. With recent trends of applications to our graduate program, I have worked to attract international students and especially Brazil. Since July 2023, I serve as chair in the Department of Germanic Studies.