Public Lectures

Recent and Upcoming Lectures / Videos

• “Can Twentieth-Century German Theory Help Us to Understand Today’s Political Myths?” Workshop: Religions in Global Encounters, Universität Tübingen, 23-24 March 2023

• “Franz Boas, Thomas Frederick Crane and the Journal of American Folklore: The Forgotten Early History of Comparative Literature in the United States,” Comparing Cultures and Communities: Ethnographisches Wissen und moderne Reiseliteratur im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, University of Bielefeld, 6-7 February 2023

• “Comparative Literature: The History of an Activist Discipline,” Aktivismus und Wissenschaft I: Zur Theorie, Geschichte und Aktualität einer Provokation, Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung (ZfL) Berlin, 27-29 October 2022

• “Prefiguration and the Historical Imagination During the Covid-19 Pandemic,” L’Imaginaire au pouvoir. Cas pratiques historico-philosophiques sur les possibilités de l’imaginaire, University of Lausanne, 5-6 October 2022

• “Theories of Stadial Change in the German Geisteswissenschaften around 1870-1900: Bastian, Dilthey, Scherer and Boas,” Comparing and Change: Orders, Models, Perceptions, University of Bielefeld, 16-18 June 2022

• “Aesthetics and Anthropology in the Early Years of Comparative Literature: The Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum,” Vossius Centre for the History of the Humanities and Sciences, University of Amsterdam, 30 November 2021

• (with Fabienne Schopf), “Diplomacy, Competition and Crisis: The English Goethe Society 1886-1914,” The First Sixty Years of the EGS: A 135th-Anniversary Symposium, Senate House, University of London, 26 February 2021, lecture online here

• “The Comparative Method in Oxford Around 1870: Max Müller, Edward Augustus Freeman, Edward Burnett Tylor”, Weltentdeckung und Weltwissen: Komparatistik in praexologischer Perspektive, University of Cologne, 24 November 2020 (online)

• Two Lectures for Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung: “Goethe and Auerbach on World Literature”, 3 November 2020; “Pramoedya’s Short Stories of the 1950s and Their Relation to World Literature”, 10 November 2020 (online)

• (with Felix Heidenreich), “The Original Context and Contemporary Relevance of Hans Blumenberg’s Präfiguration,”Oxford Hans Blumenberg Seminars, 2 November 2020 (online)

• “World Religions as World Literature: On Friedrich Max Müller’s Sacred Books of the East Project”, part of a panel on Eastern Texts and Western Audiences at the American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, 19-22 March 2020 (event cancelled due to Covid-19)

• “On the English Translation and Reception of Meltzl’s Vorläufige Aufgaben”, Hugo von Meltzl and The Present Tasks of Comparative Literature. Hungarian Academy of the Sciences, Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest, 7 February 2020

• “Blumenberg and Cassirer on Political Myth”, Hans Blumenberg. Neue Zugänge zum Werk. Internationales Symposion des Leibniz-Zentrums für Literatur- und Kulturforschung. Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 10-12 October 2019

• “Interdisciplinarity Before the Disciplines: Biology, Philology and Anthropology in the Early History of Comparative Literature”, Der Geist der Universität, International Conference,  Universität Bielefeld, 9-10 October 2019

• “Cassirer’s Theories of Myth and Their Critics: Heidegger, Voegelin, Blumenberg. An Argument in Six Theses”, Politics, Truth, Myth: Hans Blumenberg and Beyond, University of Leuven, 19-20 September 2019

• “Friedrich Max Müller and the Question of Scientific Comparison in the Humanities”, Portuguese Orientalism(s), International Conference, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa, 22-24 November 2018

• Keynote: “Two Models of British-German Colonial Discourse Around 1900: The Case of Aboriginal Australia”, The Discourse of British and German Colonialism: Convergence and Competition, Queen Mary University of London, 22-23 September 2018

• “German Anthropological Discourses Concerning Aboriginal Australians Around 1900: The Case of Hermann Klaatsch”, 2018 Beijing Humboldt Forum, University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, 15-16 September 2018

• “Hans Blumenberg’s and Ernst Cassirer’s Theories of Political Myth in Relation to Contemporary Political Events”, Philosophisches Kolloquium, Universität Oldenburg, 16 April 2018

• Workshop: Hans Blumenberg and the Theory of Political Myth, Institute of Modern Languages Research, London, 17 March 2018

• “Theories of Political Myth in Relation to Contemporary Political Discourses.” Humboldt Colloquium. Moving Forward: The UK-German Research Network in a Changing World, Oxford University, 16 March 2018

• “‘Scientific’ Literary Studies During the Late Nineteenth Century and Today: A Critical Overview.” Onderzoekschool Literatuurwetenschap (Dutch National Research Network for Literary Theory) and Vossius Centre for the History of Humanities, University of Amsterdam, 20 December 2017

• “The ‘Science’ of Literary Studies in Late Nineteenth-Century Britain and Germany.” Colloquium Geschiedenis van de Filosofie (Colloquium for the History of Philosophy) Universiteit Utrecht, 25 October 2017

• (with Fabienne Schopf) “Zivilisierte Konkurrenz: Die Entstehung der English Goethe Society und ihr Verhältnis zur Goethe-Gesellschaft Weimar.” Zwischen Konsens und Konkurrenz. Zum literarisch-kulturellen Vereinswesen im 19. Jahrhundert, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, 28-30 September 2017

• “Applied Blumenberg: Prefiguration and the Case of Brexit.” Blumenberg Posthum. Vermächtnis und Forschungsprogramme. Universität Leipzig, 20-22 April 2017

• “The Reception of Goethean Morphology in Nineteenth-Century Britain”. Reception Group for German, Austrian and Swiss Literature, Institute of Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Study, London, 19 January 2017

• Two keynote lectures: “Hans Blumenberg as a Political Philosopher,” “Hans Blumenberg’s Theory of Political Myth.” Political Myth, Propaganda and the Politics of the Imagination (Antwerp Summer School in Philosophy and Society), University of Antwerp, 22-30 August 2016

• “Stoicism and the Development of the Human Sciences: Wilhelm Dilthey’s Reception of Stoicism.” Stoicism and German Philosophy from Dilthey to Sloterdijk, University of Miami, 18-20 August 2016

• “The Fate of ‘Goethe’ in the Human Sciences.” Usages de Goethe (lettres, sciences humaines), Transferts culturels / Séminaire 2015-2016, Pays Germaniques, École normale supérieure, Paris, 8 April 2016

• “Is the Unconscious a Concept or a Metaphor?” part of a lecture series on Neuroscience and Literature: On Unconscious Memory, TORCH (The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities), Oxford University, 26 October 2015, lecture online here

• “Hans Blumenberg as a Political Philosopher.” Hans Blumenberg in Jerusalem: Philosophical and Literary Perspectives, Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem, 6 May 2015, lecture online here

• Chairing of a panel discussion on German Literature from Goethe to the Grimms, to accompany the British Museum Exhibition, Germany: Memories of a Nation, 16 Jan 2015

• “Oxford is Beautiful but one Longs for German Professors: F. Max Müller’s Encounters with British Culture and Thought.” Part of the series Germans in Britain, St. John’s College, Oxford, 28 Nov 2014