"Who owns Thomas Mann?" – Seventh Thomas Mann Lecture
Save the date: The next Thomas Mann Lecture is going to explore Thomas Mann's work from a perspective that has so far received little attention: his mother's Brazilian origins and her connection to slavery and colonialism.
Seventh Thomas Mann Lecture: Who owns Thomas Mann?
Dr Veronika Fuechtner, Dartmouth (USA)
Wednesday, 22 November 2023, 18.00–19.00
ETH Zurich, ETH main building, Rämistrasse 101, 8092 Zurich
Audi Max, HG F 30
Please external pageregister here.
Like no other writer of the 20th century, Thomas Mann represents German cultural heritage. However, there are parts of his story that have been left out: the Brazilian origin of Julia Mann, his mother, her connection to colonial economy and slavery, and the fundamental influence of her literary production. Thomas Mann's literary processing of migration and foreignness reflects rejection and identification, shame and fascination in a complex way.
The event offers a discussion about Mann's identity as well as his belonging to different cultures. A must for all those interested in literature and culture who want to take a new look at Thomas Mann.
Dr Veronika Fuechtner is Chair of Comparative Literature and Associate Professor of German Studies at Dartmouth (USA). She also teaches in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Jewish Studies as well as at the Geisel School of Medicine.
Her research interests include the cultural history of psychoanalysis and sexology, the global relationship of German-language modernism and the film history. Veronika Fuechter is the author of "Berlin Psychoanalytic" (2011) and the co-editor of "Imagining Germany Imagining Asia" (2013) and "A Global History of Sexual Science, 1880–1960" (2017)
Her next book looks at the Manns' Brazilian family history, the literature of Julia Mann (née da Silva-Bruhns) and her significance for the construction of the Manns as a German family of writers.
Dr Fuechtner studied at the Philipps-Universität Marburg, at the FU Berlin and at Washington University in St. Louis and received her PhD from the University of Chicago. Among others, she has received research grants from the German Schiller Association, the American Council of Learned Societies and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Veronika Fuechtner has been a Fellow of the American Academy in Berlin, the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, the Wellesley Newhouse Center for the Humanities, and more.
The Thomas Mann Lectures at ETH Zurich
The Thomas Mann Lectures see internationally renowned literary scholars invited to lecture at ETH Zurich every year. The series of lectures is organised by the Thomas Mann Archive in collaboration with the Professorship of Literary and Cultural Studies at ETH Zurich. The lectures address fundamental and topical issues inherent in Thomas Mann’s oeuvre and are aimed both at the interested general public as well as an academic audience.