Center for German and European Studies

Events 2025-26

Most CGES Online and hybrid events are recorded. Explore upcoming Fall 2025 events listed below, or browse through the 2024 & Spring 2025 CGES Online Events. Get direct access to a list of all recorded webinars on CGES Online's Archive below. 

CGES Online Recordings: Complete List

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Fall 2025 Events

Orange cover photo for a series of poems
Trotzdem Sprechen "A Conversation with Lena Gorelik and Mirjam Zadoff"

October 6, 2025

CGES Online Event

Join authors Lena Gorelik and Mirjam Zadoff to discuss how German writers are coping with German "Staatsraeson" vis-a-vis Israel, the impact of the ongoing war crimes against the Palestinian people, and the reaction by local German authorities and institutions.

Head shot of Vladimir Balzer looking at the camera
German-American Relations in a new Era

October 9, 2025

CGES Hybrid Event

As two of the world’s leading democracies and economic powers, Germany and the United States have long been pillars of stability and cooperation in global affairs. Yet shifting geopolitical dynamics, evolving security challenges, and domestic political changes on both sides of the Atlantic are testing this partnership. Join us for an engaging talk with Vladimir Balzer as he explores how these forces are reshaping German-American relations and what they mean for the future of transatlantic cooperation.

Blue poster with yellow text and a picture of Irit Dekel smiling
Witnessing as Memory Activism: Perspectives from Two Berlin-Based Migrant Groups

October 20, 2025

CGES Co-Sponsored Event

2:30 - 3:50 pm ET (US)
Mandel Reading Room 303, Brandeis University Campus

This presentation explores how migrant memory activists at Berlin’s International Women* Space and Anu/Middle East Union (2020–24) foster solidarity through media, literature, publications, and events addressing racism and inequality. Speaker: Irit Dekel, Indiana University Bloomington.

Black and white head shot of Thomas Mann looking seriously at the camera
Mann's Magic Mountain: Afterlives and Alternatives

October 21, 2025

CGES Online Event

This talk will show how Thomas Mann's landmark German modernist novel "Der Zauberberg" ("The Magic Mountain", 1924) has developed something of a cult following among non-academic readers around the world over the course of the past century. Moving from interwar Germany and Soviet Russia to present-day Hollywood and Japan, it will analyse how and why various readers - from tuberculosis sufferers to prisoners of war and beyond - made Mann's book their own.

Sepia book cover for "Weimar under the Palms"
Weimar Under the Palms

October 28, 2025

CGES Hybrid Event

Join author Thomas Blubacher and scholars Cynthia Porter and Anjeana Hans for a discussion of the broader context of Blubacher's recently translated book "Weimar Under the Palms"
Turquise book cover with two birds flying and the title Austrian Again
Austrian Again - Reclaiming a Lost Legacy

October 30, 2025

CGES Hybrid Event

Anne Hand embarks on a deeply personal journey to uncover her family's hidden history during the Holocaust while pursuing Austrian citizenship. As Austria opens the door to reparation citizenship for descendants of those victimized by the Nazi and Austrofascist regimes, Anne digs through fragments of family stories and documents to trace her Austrian and Czechoslovakian roots. Through her search, she pieces together the story her ancestors withheld from their children after World War II, while reflecting on identity, migration, and heritage.
Sepia book cover of a ship on a quiet sea
On Shoreless Sea: The MS St. Louis Refugee Ship in History, Film, and Popular Memory

November 5, 2025

CGES Hybrid Event

In 1939, the ocean liner MS St. Louis undertook a dramatic voyage with over nine hundred Jewish refugees that caught the world's attention and has been remembered in numerous printed texts, films, and artifacts. On Shoreless Sea is the first work to comprehensively analyze the journey's unfolding, its historical context, and its key representations in various media. Author Roy Grundmann illuminates the voyage's historical significance and demonstrates its relevance to our present, in which prosperous nations once again stem mass migration.

Past Events

Black and white photo of Doris Metz looking at the camera
Conversation with German Filmmaker Doris Metz

September 19, 2025

CGES Online Event

CGES hosted Doris Metz, the filmmaker behind "Petra Kelly-Act Now" for a post-screening discussion.

Multicolor sepia poster with the faces of Petra Kelly
Film Screening: PETRA KELLY - ACT NOW!

September 16, 2025

CGES In-Person Event

Petra Kelly, co-founder of the German Green Party, was a pioneering advocate for peace, environmental protection, and human rights. Inspired by the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King’s concept of civil disobedience, she championed radical social change and solidarity worldwide. Her issues are today more topical than ever before.

text bubble made out of trees on the back drop of a desert
A Dangerous Convergence? Climate Obstructionism Across the Right-Wing Spectrum

September 10, 2025

CGES Online Event

Previous research has repeatedly shown that various populist far-right parties (PFRPs) engage in some form of resistance to climate action. To better understand their approach to climate related issues, this presentation examines how established PFRPs in Germany (AfD), Spain (Vox), and Austria (FPÖ) frame and interpret climate change in their political communication. Although PFRPs have achieved notable electoral success across Europe, mainstream parties continue to play a dominant role in shaping public discourse. Ultimately, the findings reveal that climate obstructionism is neither uniform nor confined to the political fringes, but a complex and transnational phenomenon rooted in a wider right-wing alliance.

Digital art image of a brain with color on one side and black and white on the other
Overcoming the Theory-Practice Gap: Designing formats that enable new forms of knowledge production

September 9, 2025

CGES Online Event

In this webinar, German philosopher Anna Katsman, Academic Director of the "New Institute" in Hamburg, introduced the work of the New Institute in overcoming the existing gaps between theory and practice, science and policy, technical and ethical progress. Katsman described why it is necessary to do so, why traditional universities are failing to do just that, and why people are turning away from universities and the private sector tries to fill this gap. She presented a plea for a new way of thinking, and a new academic culture that does not lead to burn-out and does not undermine academic creativity and practical relevance. Instead, it brings the humanities into policy debates, using literary analysis for policy papers for example. It overcomes the gap in good narratives, mobilizes connections, includes psychoanalytic accounts of the political present, takes fears, anxiety, and even the sinister enjoyment that people seem to take in the current administration's brutality into consideration.