University of Wisconsin–Madison
  • Apr 24
    German Play: “Die unwürdige Greisin” (“The Shameless Old Lady)

    Deluca Forum

    Berlin-based director Jürgen Kuttner, theater specialist Helga Angarano, and students in the German Theater class will present a performance of Bertolt Brecht’s subversively funny short story “Die unwürdige Greisin” (“The Shameless Old Lady”). The performance will take place in German with explanations/subtitles in English. The event is free and open to the public, and students, …

  • Apr 20
    Stadt, Land, Zukunft – 34th German Day

    Union South

    This annual outreach event invites Wisconsin middle school and high school German language students to campus to participate in competitions in German, including spelling, Pictionary, charades, poetry, music performance, and skits. The motto this year is “Stadt, Land, Zukunft” which translates as city, country, future.

  • Apr 11
    Virtual Workshop: “Learn to Read the Old German Script: Letters and Personal Documents”

    Mark L. Louden, Antje Petty

    This workshop is designed for scholars, family historians, students, and anyone curious about Kurrent. You will learn how to decipher individual characters, words, and simple texts, even if you do not speak German. We will also discuss common structures and phrases found in personal documents that can help you better understand their content.

  • Mar 10
    Virtual Lecture: An Unusual Moravian Diary

    Paul Peucker

    Join us and Dr. Peucker as he explores the history of the Moravians and examines the diary itself—who these men were, the topics they discussed in London, and why this source remains relevant today.

  • Mar 9
    “Fugitive Logistics: Unsettling the German Archive”

    Van Hise 1418

    Nathan Taylor's talk, "Fugitive Logistics: Unsettling the German Archive,” is drawn from his forthcoming book of the same name with Cornell University Press. It shifts from discourses of value to global value chains and draws on an emerging field of ‘infrastructural’ and critical logistics studies to rethink paradigms of exile and Atlantic migration in German Studies.

  • Feb 25
    Virtual Lecture: “German and American Protestant Pastors in Occupied Germany”

    Brandon Bloch

    This presentation examines the fraught interactions between German Lutheran pastors and their American Protestant counterparts, as well as U.S.-based faith organizations.

  • Feb 17
    Reading to Live: From Symbolic Act to the Activity of Form

    Dr. Jensen Suther

    Elevhjem Building L166

    Drawing on the account of a “bio-aesthetics,” I develop in my recent book, True Materialism, I will show that Jameson's provocative idea of the symbolic act fails to live up to its own promise: instead of grasping artistic and literary works as coded representations of class struggle, Marxist criticism must understand narrative not primarily as representation but as an essential dimension of the self-reproduction of animals like us.

  • Feb 12
    Virtual Lecture: “German Americans and the Founding of the United States”

    Emily Sneff

    This lecture will examine the roles of military leaders, early officeholders, and supporters on the home front, including members of the Muhlenberg family (Peter, Frederick, and Catherine); Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben; Michael Hillegas; Mary Ludwig Hays—better remembered as Molly Pitcher—and other men and women whose influence can still be felt today.

  • Feb 3
    Language and Place: Poetry in Yiddish and Pennsylvania Dutch

    Josh Brown (UW–Eau Claire), Matt Johnson (UW–Madison), Mark Louden (UW–Madison), Sunny Yudkoff (UW–Madison)

    UW–Madison Memorial Union, Old Madison Room, 800 Langdon Street

    This event will showcase poetic works in Yiddish and Pennsylvania Dutch that deal with the concept of place.

  • Dec 1
    Presentations, Exhibit, Reception: “Early Anabaptist Documents at the Max Kade Institute”

    University Club, 432 East Campus Mall, Room 313

    Join us at the Max Kade Institute to celebrate the recent acquisition of a collection of books, some of them quite rare, published by and about Anabaptists. Donated by J. Denny Weaver, these mostly German- and Dutch-language items were collected by Weaver and his late father-in-law, J. C. Wenger, a professor at Goshen College who …