Events

Dr. Toni Hildebrandt (Advanced Postdoc, Institute of Art History, University of Bern)

The classical concept that defined the arts in the Western canon from Plato to Goethe, but also in most ancient cultures was the beautiful. In the aesthetics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, an equally potent pendant was, to some extent, set against it: the concept of the sublime—recurring since 1945 as the “nuclear sublime” (think of photographs of mushroom clouds) or most recently as the “Anthropocene sublime”. While we continue to ascribe to works of art, often by means of everyday language, that they seem “beautiful” or that they create a sensation of the sublime (representing crises, catastrophes or critical future scenarios), the course will test a set of marginal concepts that go beyond this hegemonical dichotomy. 

We will discuss alterations of the beautiful or deconstructions of the sublime such as “shipwreck with spectator” (Hans Blumenberg), “compulsive beauty” (Hal Foster), “the aporetic” (Jacques Derrida/Sarah Kofman), the “non-expectant” (Simone White), “apotropaic magic” (Michael Taussig), “the bizarre” (Lisa Robertson), among others. Asking beyond the beautiful and the sublime, the seminar will discuss a broad field of Aesthetics in Flux: in the arts, in literature, in music, theatre and film, but also in religious practices, in anthropological fieldwork, in the social construction of an aesthetics of the everyday, and the body politics of gender studies.

Possible Readings:

Hans Blumenberg, Shipwreck with Spectator: Paradigm of a Metaphor for Existence, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1996.

Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty, Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1995.

Winfried Menninghaus, “Walter Benjamin’s Variations of Imagelessness”, in: Critical Horizons 14, 3 (2013), pp. 403–428.

Lisa Robertson, The Baudelaire Fractal, Toronto: Coach House Press, 2020. 

Michael Taussig, Beauty and the Beast, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012. 

Simone White, Dark Angel of Death, Brooklyn, NY: Ugly  Duckling Press, 2018.

Dates/time: 9 & 23 March 2026, 2.15 p.m. -6.00 p.m., Room Mittelstrasse: tba 

Language: English

ECTS: 2 (Pflicht- oder Wahlpflichtbereich ICS / Wahlpflichtbereich GS, SLS, SINTA)  

Registration: From now on until 31 January via KSL und E-Mail to michael.toggweiler@unibe.ch

Prof. Dr. Viktoria Tkaczyk (Media and Knowledge Technologies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

Public lecture:
tba soon

Colloquium:
For PhD students, advanced Master students of the University of Bern, as well as interested parties
Part 1 of the colloquium is dedicated to the discussion of the lecture and the texts suggested by the guest. In Part 2, a core group present their PhDor postdoctoral projects, speaking for about 20 minutes (English) on how the concept of "Materiality" or "Mediality" and related concepts/problems connect to their research questions and which aspects of the texts are of particular relevance to their own work. The presenters raise questions for the discussion with their peers, which should contribute to the development of their thesis. Finally, in Part 3, the conversation will open up again so that the other PhD or advanced MA-students have an opportunity to address issues related to their projects.

Moderation: Prof. Dr. Lena van der Hoven (Musicology, Universität Bern)

Public lecture: 5 Mai 2025, 06.15 p.m. – 7.45 p.m., Unitobler, room: tba

Colloquium: 6 Mai 2025, 10.15 a.m. – 5.00 p.m., Unitobler, room: tba

ECTS: 1.5 (Pflicht- oder Wahlpflichtbereich ICS und GS / Wahlpflichtbereich SLS, SINTA, open to (post)doctoral students, advanced MA students at the University of Bern and further interested parties.

Language: English/Deutsch

Registration: from now on via KSL und E-Mail to michael.toggweiler@unibe.ch

Prof. Dr. Sianne Ngai (English Language and Literature, Division of the Arts & Humanities, University of Chicago)

For PhD students, advanced Master students of the University of Bern, as well as interested parties.

Public Lecture

This talk uses a pop song by Wham! and a reading of Marx’s Capital to explore the stakes of recreating and lingering in wrong ways of thinking. To linger in error is to run the risk of affectively deepening error, expanding the reach of its domain. This is especially the case in a world where truths are hidden by the social forms in which they are expressed, making error an unavoidable part of everyday perception. Yet when contradiction is a part of the world (as Hegel saw it) and not a tendency in reason (as Kant saw it), error must be phenomenologically inhabited in order to be fully understood.

Colloquium

Part 1 of the colloquium is dedicated to the discussion of the lecture and the texts suggested by the guest. In Part 2, a core group present their PhD or postdoctoral projects, speaking for about 20 minutes (English) on how the concept of "Aesthetics" and related concepts/problems connect to their research questions and which aspects of the texts are of particular relevance to their own work. The presenters raise questions for the discussion with their peers, which should contribute to the development of their thesis. Finally, in Part 3, the conversation will open up again so that the other PhD or advanced MA-students have an opportunity to address issues related to their projects.

Moderation: Prof. Dr. Nicolas Detering (German Literature, Universität Bern) 

Public lecture: 28 Mai 2026, 4.15 p.m. – 5.45 p.m (TIME HAS CHANGED) Unitobler, Lerchenweg 36, room F 005

Colloquium: 29 Mai 2026, 10.15 a.m. – 5.00 p.m., Unitobler, Lerchenweg 36, room F -112

ECTS: 1.5 (Pflicht- oder Wahlpflichtbereich ICS und SINTA / Wahlpflichtbereich SLS, GS, open to (post)doctoral students, advanced MA students at the University of Bern and further interested parties.

Language: English

Registration: from now on via KSL und E-Mail to michael.toggweiler@unibe.ch