On Wednesday, October 22nd, the Graduate Research Colloquium will meet from 12:30 to 2:00 pm in the CCGES Meeting Room (230R York Lanes) for a session on study & research opportunities in Germany and Europe.

Representatives of both York International and the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) will be on hand to present the programs available to York students interested in spending time at a university in Germany or German-speaking Europe. (CONTINUE READING)

CCGES is pleased to present the highly-acclaimed, Oscar-winning film ’The Lives of Others’ (’Das Leben der Anderen’) as the next screening in the Centre’s film series.

Both a political thriller and human drama, ’The Lives of Others’ is set in the East Berlin of 1984, five years before Glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall, and ultimately takes us to 1991, in what is now the reunited Germany. The story traces the personal development of Captain Gerd Wiesler, a highly skilled officer in the Stasi, the state’s all-powerful secret police, and a “true believer” in the righteousness of the socialist cause. When he’s tasked with spying on a celebrated writer and actress couple accused, incorrectly he discovers, of disloyalty to the communist state, Wiesler suddenly finds himself confronted with thoughts and emotions which bring into question all he has believed. (CONTINUE READING)

The next session of the Graduate Research Colloquium will take place on Wednesday, October 8th from 12:30 to 2:00 pm in the CCGES Meeting Room (230R York Lanes).

This meeting of the group will look at the question “What are German and European Studies?” from a variety of perspectives. To help frame the discussion, the Graduate Diploma coordinator, Prof. Burkard Eberlein, will be joined by his colleagues Prof. Marcus Funck (DAAD Visiting Prof. History) and Prof. Mark Webber (Languages, Literatures and Linguistics). (CONTINUE READING)

Prof. Willem Maas, the Jean Monnet Chair in European Integration at York, is pleased to present a talk by Ms. Selen Guerin, Head of the Trade Policy Unit at the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels. Ms Guerin will speak on “Possibilities for an EU-Canada Free Trade Agreement” (CONTINUE READING)

The fourth annual CCGES Graduate Student Conference is taking place this year under the title “The Inhuman – Investigating Continental Thought in the Humanities “.

This conference will explore the influence of German Continental philosophy on the Humanities disciplines, using the concept of the “inhuman” to examine new avenues for the investigation of purported oppositions between the human and the animal, the ecological, and the spiritual. (CONTINUE READING)