Events 2022-23
Most CGES Online events were recorded. If available, you will find a link to the recording on the individual event's page, simply click on the event title you are interested in. Find a list of links to all recorded webinars on the CGES Recorded Webinar Page.
CGES Online events are being continued throughout the 2023-24 season.
Spring 2023 Events
May 2, 2023
CGES Online Event
April 27, 2023
CGES Online Event
April 25, 2023
CGES Hybrid Event
Alice Urbach had her own cooking school in Vienna, but in 1938 she was forced to flee to England, like so many others. Her younger son was imprisoned in Dachau, and her older son, having emigrated to the United States, became an intelligence officer in the struggle against the Nazis. Returning to the ruins of Vienna in the late 1940s, she discovers that her bestselling cookbook has been published under someone else's name. Eighty years later, the historian Karina Urbach - Alice's granddaughter - sets out to uncover the truth behind the stolen cookbook, and tells the story of a family torn apart by the Nazi regime, of a woman who, with her unwavering passion for cooking, survived the horror and losses of the Holocaust to begin a new life in America.
April 24, 2023
CGES Hybrid Event
Looking beyond solemn statements and well-meant monuments, Andrew I. Port's new book, Never Again, shows us how the Holocaust shaped German responses to the genocides in Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda—and thus became an argument in German foreign policy during and after the Cold War, humanitarian aid, immigration and asylum debates, and military interventions. At the same time, it explores how these foreign atrocities recast Germans’ understanding of their own horrific history. Making the lessons, limits, and liabilities of politics driven by memories of a troubled history harrowingly clear, Never Again will have deep resonance for any country confronting a dark past.
April 19, 2023
CGES Online Event
The German Greens have come a long way since starting as a manifestation of alternative politics in the 1980s. The ongoing war adds pressure to an already difficult coalition constellation, where the Liberals often feel as the odd-man out. How does the three party alliance work together, what signature policies did they enact to date and will the novel coalition last?
March 30, 2023
CGES In-Person Event
To kick off our 25th anniversary celebration, we are planning a conference in coordination with Brandeis' Year of Climate Action (YOCA) and the launch of our director Sabine von Mering’s English translation of Luisa Neubauer and Alex Repenning's book, Beginning to End the Climate Crisis: A History of Our Future. Join us to celebrate CGES and enjoy a stimulating conversation on German climate action, climate justice, and climate activism, and what must be done to protect a livable future.
Photo Credit: Barbara Dombrowski
March 27, 2023
CGES In-Person Event
Join photographer Barbara Dombrowski to go through her images from Quo Vadis, Europe? The Human-Nature Relationship Crisis in the Anthropoceneon exhibit in Goldfarb Library. Barbara will walk us through the 45 images hanging and then we will go to the Faculty Club for a lunch together to discuss further.
March 23, 2023
CGES Hybrid Event
A conversation with the author of a groundbreaking investigation of how the Nazis helped German tycoons make billions off the horrors of the Third Reich and World War II—and how the world allowed them to get away with it. [in person and on Zoom]
March 16, 2023
CGES Online Event
March 13, 2023
CGES Online Event
Join us for a celebration of women’s history month with two German authors who have done a lot to bring attention to women’s history. How does one change the narrative about the past so it becomes inclusive of many different experiences? What lessons does women’s history teach us about women’s struggles, resilience, and achievements? How does a deeper look at women’s history change our understanding of history altogether?
March 9, 2023
CGES Online Event
March 8, 2023
CGES Hybrid Event
In this awareness building lecture, hear how Humanitarian Storytelling at Migrants of the Mediterranean gives voice to people in the migrant community, originally in Italy, and now all across Europe, including Germany. Humanitarian Storytelling is about creating change through compassion, about understanding the immigration narrative through the texture of human faces, lives and voices.
February 28, 2023
CGES Online Event
February 16, 2023
CGES Hybrid Event
A few years ago Kinstler discovered that a man fifty years dead – a former Nazi who belonged to the same killing unit as her grandfather – was the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation in Latvia. The proceedings threatened to pardon his crimes. They put on the line hard-won facts about the Holocaust at the precise moment that the last living survivors – the last legal witnesses – were dying.
Across the world, Second World War-era cases are winding their way through the courts. Survivors have been telling their stories for the better part of a century, and still judges ask for proof. Where do these stories end? What responsibilities attend their transmission, so many generations on? How many ghosts need to be put on trial for us to consider the crime scene of history closed?
Sudanese defendants at the ICC listen to interpretation in their native Zaghawa.
February 15, 2023
CGES Co-Sponsored Event
This webinar will explore the vital role of language interpretation in diverse settings where the stakes for achieving successful communication are high. Whether the circumstances involve a public health emergency, displacement due to conflict, or a medical or legal proceeding, individuals should be entitled to the services of a competent, and ideally professionally certified, interpreter. Yet too often a “monolingual mindset” leads institutions to overlook, underpay and misunderstand the complex positionality of these important actors, thereby endangering speakers with unmet communication needs. The webinar will also consider the potential of artificial intelligence to fill communication gaps in the absence of qualified persons to do the work. The aim of this event is to raise awareness of the need for high-quality interpretation to ensure full communication, especially in contexts where the fundamental wellbeing of speakers may be at risk.
February 14, 2023
CGES Online Event
First there was the economic miracle, and later the "Swinging Sixties" – but stories like those of Luise F. Pusch did not get told in postwar Germany. Not until the Corona lockdown acted as a trigger did Germany’s most prominent feminist linguist recall and narrate the details of her oppressive lesbian childhood and youth.
January 26, 2023
CGES Online Event
On September 15th, 2022, the German government commemorated 70 years of compensation law for victims of WWII and the Holocaust. It began in December 1951, when then German Federal Chancellor Konrad Adenauer made a now-famous speech about the moral obligation of the young republic towards crime committed in the name of the German People. This declaration in parliament paved the way for complicated negotiations between the Federal Republic of Germany, the State of Israel, and the Jewish Claims Conference. These negotiations led to the Luxembourg Agreement of December 10th 1952, and the German Federal Compensation Law (BEG). The legislation would be the first of many initiatives taken over the course of the following years. The reunification of Germany in 1990, and the fall of the Soviet Empire brought with it the need to address unresolved compensation issues both with Jewish Holocaust Victims and other groups. The creation of the Remembrance, Past and Future Fund for victims of forced labor, and the enactment of the amendment to the Federal Social Security law (ZRBG) - the so-called Ghetto pension law, are among more recent steps in the history of German Compensation. Join legal expert Avi Weber for an overview of these developments, a reflection on what has been done, but also a critical look towards the German government’s continuing and future obligations.
January 12, 2023
CGES Online Event
As prices are rising everywhere, join economists Raphael Schoenle (Brandeis) and Isabella Weber (UMass Amherst) for a conversation about the current crisis of inflation, its causes, its consequences, and the lessons it teaches us. Can we predict inflation? Can we foresee its end? Who has the power to influence inflation? Is Germany doing anything differently?
December 1, 2022
CGES Online Event
A T-shirt for $3, the flight from East to West coast for $50, a banana for $1? Current prices do not reflect the true costs of products. Such low prices can only be sustained by outsourcing the actual costs, i.e. externalizing them. Be it at the expense of exploitation, the environment, or future generations. The non-profit organization True Cost Economy e.V. - the association founded by Johanna Kriegel and friends - wants to inform the public about this issue, to raise awareness and to change the political framework that currently promotes the externalization of costs.
December 1, 2022
CGES In-Person Event
In the digital era, photos of precarious vulnerability can circulate immediately on a global level. They can easily be reproduced and recontextualized without the knowledge or consent of the portrayed individuals and might even lead to legal repercussions or persecution. In her talk, Heidi Denzel de Tirado will present different forms of photojournalism and comics journalism and discuss their role in the debate about the ethics of presentation and representation of migrant bodies.
November 16, 2022
CGES Online Event
Greta Thunberg recently reiterated in an interview in Germany that climate change is a cultural transition. Dirk Baumanns has been aware since the beginning of his artistic engagement with climate change 15 years ago that humanity is facing a change that it last experienced comparable to the era of the Enlightenment. He has long seen himself at the forefront of this change with art.
November 14, 2022
CGES Hybrid Event
IN PERSON AND ON ZOOM: this lecture and discussion will offer a critical reading of Frantz Fanon's "Black Skin, White Masks" (1952) as a conceptual framework to analyze recurrent dynamics of structural racism in contemporary U.S. and Western Europe.
November 10, 2022
CGES Online Event
As part of its International Bridge-Building initiative, Widen the Circle brought eight American activists, scholars, and organizers, along with three German Obermayer Award winners, for an immersive week of learning and sharing to Germany in June 2022.
November 9, 2022
In-Person Event
Stop by to paint a rock for a memorial rock circle and light a candle in remembrance at the Fellows Garden on Wednesday, November 9, from 10 am - 1 pm.
November 1, 2022
CGES In-Person Event
Autor Tomer Gardi AUF DEUTSCH: Kommen Sie am 1. November um 14:20 Uhr zu Shiffman Humanities Center, Raum 121 und sprechen Sie mit Autor Tomer Gardi über sein Buch Broken German.
October 18, 2022
CGES Online Event
The scientific facts about the climate and ecological crisis have been known for a long time, and yet societies have not been able to take action at the necessary scale. In this lecture Lea Dohm presents the psychological mechanisms beneath the insufficient action, and possible strategies to respond in a healthy way. She also shows how people in Germany are organizing in order to move towards a societal transformation towards a more just and sustainable future, and what everyone, but especially those in the health professions can contribute.
October 13, 2022
CGES Online Event
Join us for a conversation with Professor Annette Kehnel, author of "Wir Konnten auch Anders" (We Did Do Things Differently Once): Communities that functioned based on sharing on the Monte Subiaco in Italy, sustainable fishing at Lake Constance, the economy of transient grazing among Alpine shepherds in the south of France, banks providing microcredit in Bologna (Monti di Pietà), crowdfunding for the famous bridge in Avignon; second-hand markets in Paris, “Cities of ladies” in the middle of medieval Antwerp or Bruges, where women built and shared urban space, planted self-sufficient gardens: Pre-modern history is full of inspiring and amazing examples that are ripe for rediscovery. And we urgently need them as today’s challenges – finite resources, the twilight of consumerism, growing inequality – are pressing.
October 12, 2022
CGES Co-Sponsored Online Event
The goal of this webinar was to explore ways in which linguistic bias, standard language ideologies and monolingual assumptions affect various aspects of higher education. One of the challenges with pursuing linguistic justice at the university level is to balance multilingual ideologies and a linguistically additive approach with the pragmatic and very real linguistic needs of multilingual students from diverse language backgrounds, be they international or domestic students who seek to master the language of the academy.
October 7, 2022
CGES Online Event
Drawing on a wealth of previously unknown documents, Michael Brenner will talk about how Hitler and his followers terrorized Munich’s Jews and were aided by politicians, judges, police, and ordinary residents. He shows how the city’s Jews responded to the antisemitic backlash in many different ways—by declaring their loyalty to the state, by avoiding public life, or by abandoning the city altogether.
September 29, 2022
CGES In-Person Event
Using a unique source, a newsletter compiled by Jewish refugees about their hometown in south Germany, this talk poses new questions about memory and memory politics immediately after the Holocaust.
September 22, 2022
CGES Online EventThis webinar will discuss how the war in Ukraine and the energy and climate crises are connected. We will explore the main causes, the actions taken, and those to be taken in the future. In May 2022, the European Commission adopted the RePowerEU plan to reduce dependency on Russian fossil fuels. We will discuss how effective this plan will be for helping to stop the war and solve the energy crisis, and what risks and opportunities it carries for the clean energy transition in Europe and globally.
September 20, 2022
CGES Online EventJoin us for our first Authors in Conversation this academic year, co-hosted by the Goethe Institut Boston. Mithu Sanyal is the author of Identitti - and Alta L.Price's English translation of the book was just published. The two will discuss the book, a darkly comedic tour de force that showcases the outsized power of social media in the current debates about identity politics and the power of claiming your own voice.
Photo Credit: Natyada Tawonsri
September 19, 2022
CGES Online Event
The facilitators of the workshop series “Getting to know each other – despite everything!” which was held at the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial (Hamburg, Germany) between 2016 and 2018 will present their unique approach to leading dialogue sessions about family history, explore possibilities and limitations of such encounters and how their findings could be applied in other dialogue groups.
September 13, 2022
CGES Online EventThe Russian invasion of Ukraine and the energy crisis that followed have underlined Europe’s fatal dependence on fossil energy imports, whether oil and gas from Russia or LNG from Qatar. Europe can only get out of this quandary by accelerating the transition towards 100 percent renewables.
September 7, 2022
CGES Online EventJoin us for a presentation from Dr. Cihan Sinanoğlu, who leads the National Discrimination- and Racism Monitor (NaDiRa) at DeZIM-Institut in Berlin, Germany.
Event Recommendations (not hosted by CGES)
May 19, 2022
At a virtual World Jewish Congress event titled “Antisemitism on Social Media: Challenges for Academics and Policy-makers,” academics, representatives from social media companies, the United Nations, UNESCO and the European Commission came together to explore the complex phenomenon.The event coincided with the recently published book Antisemitism on Social Media (Routledge, 2022), edited by Monika Hübscher, a doctoral candidate at the University of Haifa, Israel, and research associate at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, and Sabine von Mering, professor of German and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and director of the Center for German and European Studies, at Brandeis University.
Both of them spoke at the online forum, which addressed possible solutions to this threat.
July 28, 2022
The interdisciplinary volume addresses how social media with its technology and business model has revolutionised the dissemination of antisemitism and how this impacts not only victims of antisemitic hate speech but also society at large. The book gives insight into case studies on different platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Telegram. It also demonstrates how social media is weaponized through the dissemination of antisemitic content by political actors from the right, the left, and the extreme fringe, and critically assesses existing counter-strategies.