Looking Ahead to the Fall Semester

In the fall of 2024, we will welcome Dr. Steffen Siegel as our next Max Kade visiting professor. Dr. Siegel is a professor of the theory and history of photography at Folkwang University of the Arts, where he has taught since 2015, and the chair of the Center for Photography Essen.

Professor Siegel will teach a graduate seminar entitled “What Does Germany Look Like? Photographic Imagi/Nations in the Long 19th Century.” Through readings of primary sources, historiography, and theory, the course aims to observe how literary texts respond to visual media and photographic sources, especially those published in illustrated magazines and books, in order to articulate what Germany looks like.

The German Department will welcome Dr. Michael Jäckel (former President, Universität Trier) in October 2024 for a lecture on the development of the University of Trier and its future trajectory. Also in October, Professors Marianna Ryshina-Pankova and Anna De Fina (Italian) will organize a symposium on Digital Storytelling, supported by Georgetown’s Global Engagement Grant. This event will take place October 18-19, 2024.

Prof. Verena Kick is currently organizing a Digital Kafka symposium, which is set to take place at Georgetown on November 1-2, 2024. At the symposium, Prof. Verena Kick and her co-PI Prof. Carsten Strathausen (University of Missouri) will present a prototype of their collaborative digital project Adapting Kafka (supported by the University of Missouri and Georgetown’s DRI initiative). In light of the centenary of Franz Kafka’s death in 2024, the symposium aims to discuss current Digital Humanities-related research on Kafka. Specific emphasis will be placed on digital projects that present scholarship on Kafka’s oeuvre or provide online platforms that allow users to engage with Kafka’s works. Presentations include approaches to gamifying Kafka, digital analyses and databases of Kafka’s works, and contributions that study the intersection of analogue materials and digital editions of Kafka’s oeuvre. Prof. Kick and Strathausen will also present their digital project Adapting Kafka at the “Kafka Transformed” conference, taking place at the University of Oxford in September 2024. A detailed program will be available at the beginning of the fall semester!