Germans, Indians and the Wild West - Panel Discussion on February 4

Monday, February 4, 2008, 18.00-20.00, Reception begins at 17.30
Location: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Reichpietschufer 50, 10785 Berlin

SESSION
This session focuses on the many layers of symbolic meanings that Indians, the "WildWest", and the Winnetou novels of Karl May hold for so many generations ofGermans. The discussion focuses on the idealization of nature and the pre-modernlifestyle of the American Indians, race fascination, the tension between modernity andthe freedom of life at the frontier, escapism and the fascination of adventure,camaraderie, and lawlessness, and aspects of anti-Americanism.

CHAIR
Dr. Christoph Strupp, Forschungsstelle für Zeitgeschichte in Hamburg (FZH),University of Hamburg; he was a Research Fellow at the German Historical Institutein Washington, DC, from 2001-2006

SPEAKERS
Prof. H. Glenn Penny will speak on “Red Power: Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich and Indian ActivistNetworks in East and West Germany.”
Professor Penny is Associate Professor ofHistory at the University of Iowa. He is now working on a book tentatively titled TheGerman Love Affair with the American Indian.

Prof. Dr. K. Markus Kreis will speak on “Let's Play Cowboys and Indians! Buffalo Bill'sLegacy.”
Dr. Kreis has done extensive research and writing on Wild West shows inGermany and encounters between German missionaries and Lakota Indians. In 2004,Kreis won a Research Award from the University of Dortmund for the project,"Schools for the Sioux Indians."

Dr. Pamela Kort will speak on “The Search for Origins.”
Dr. Kort is an independent curator andart historian specializing in twentieth-century art in German-speaking Europe. Sheserved as curator of the exhibition, I Like America: Fictions of the Wild West, at theSchirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (2006-2007) and co-editor of the catalogue.

To register, please email ces-ber@fas.harvard.edu by Monday, Feb. 4, 2008

Karolina May-Chu
Harvard CES Berlin Dialogues
c/o Hertie School of Governance
Schlossplatz 1
10178 Berlin, Germany
Tel: +49-30-212312138
Fax: +49-30-212312999

ces-ber@fas.harvard.edu
www.ces-berlin.fas.harvard.edu

The CES Berlin Dialogues program was conceptualized originally as a series of public debates at which scholars, journalists, and decision-makers could discuss contemporary political, social, and cultural topics from both an American and a European perspective. More recently, our sessions have expanded to include problems faced by all modern societies.

In the past six years, the Dialogues have brought many fresh topics to Berlin, as well as speakers who in most cases are new to a European audience. Our themes are social/political: generational change, power, religion, class and society; and cultural: such as film, literature and gender. In summer 2006, the Harvard Berlin office relocated to the campus of the Hertie School of Governance Berlin. The Hertie School is Germany's first professional school for public policy, founded in fall 2005.

This release was published on openPR.