The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies is pleased to present two lectures by Thomas Buerk (Critical Geography Berlin and HU Berlin), as a part of the CCGES-DAAD Visiting Lecture Series.

Lecture One: “Help, the Tourists are Coming!”: the symbolic struggle for and against tourists and tourism in Berlin/Germany

Date: Tuesday, November 27th
Time: 10:00am-TBD
Location: Curtis Lecture Hall, H

Lecture Two: ‘Urban Cultures against Right-Wing Activism: Challenging the spatial hegemony of racism in East-German small towns
This lecture is also co-sponsored by the CITY Institute at York University. 

Date: Friday, November 30th
Time: 12:30pm-TBD
Location: York Research Tower, Room 749

(please click here for Interactive YorkU map, to each lecture location) 

Thomas Buerk holds a PhD in European Anthropology from Humboldt University Berlin, where he also currently teaches as a sessional lecturer. He has worked on the spatial conflicts around right-wing extremism in Brandenburg, on tourism and gentrification in Berlin and Spain, and has been involved in North-South activism and other social movements since the 1980s. Recent publications include articles on the production of “spaces of fear” in Germany, the symbolic politics of right-wing manifestations at World War II Memorial sites as well as critical contributions to the debates about “distinctiveness” and an “intrinsic logic” of cities.

The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies was pleased to present our guest, Dr. John Kannankulam (Marburg) and his lecture, “Conjunctures of the Euro crisis and Germany’s role from a critical IPE-Perspective”.

John Kannankulam (PhD Frankfurt) teaches political science with a focus on the political economy of European integration in Marburg. He has worked on Marxist state theories, particularly Poulantzas, and is currently involved in a project on the EU as a state-project, looking at migration policies in Spain, the UK and Germany. His visit at York is supported by funding from DAAD.

Date: Tuesday, November 20th, 2012
Time: 3:00pm-TBD
Location: Stedman Lecture Hall, C
(please click on link and type in “Stedman” to search for directions to this lecture)

Together with the CITY Institute at York, the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies hosted a talk by Dietmar Schirmer (DAAD visiting professor at the University of Florida Department of Political Science), focusing on the topics of Berlin and London. This talk took place on Friday, November 9th from 12:30 to 2:30 pm in room 280A York Lanes. (click here for a link to an interactive York University Map of the Keele Campus, and here for a York Lanes’ link)

Dietmar Schirmer, Ph.D. in Political Science from Free University Berlin, 1990, is a DAAD visiting professor at the University of Florida Department of Political Science. He has taught at Free University Berlin, University of Vienna (2004), at Cornell (1998-2003), and the University of British Columbia. Dietmar Schirmer was a Fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C., from 1992-1995.

His research interests include: Comparative Politics and Historical Sociology, regional specialization in Europe. Current research agenda in state-formation, nationalism, and European integration and in the aesthetics of the state. Some of his more recent publications are:

• The Beautiful State: Architecture and Political Authority in Europe Since the Renaissance (under review at Cornell University Press)
• “State, Volk, and Monumental Architecture in Nazi-Era Berlin,” in: Andreas Daum and Christoph Mauch, eds.
• Berlin – Washington, 1800 – 2000: Capital Cities, Cultural Representation, and National Identities, Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005, 127-153
• “Closing the Nation: Nationalism and Statism in 19th and 20th Century Germany,” in: Sima Godfrey and Frank Unger, eds.
• The Shifting Foundations of Modern Nation States, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004, 35-58
• Identity and Intolerance: Nationalism, Racism, and Xenophobia in Germany and the United States, Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press 1998 and 2002 (ed. with Norbert Finzsch)

Date: Friday November 9, 2012
Time: 12:30-2:30 pm
Location: Room 280A, York lanes, York University

As part of the 32nd Holocaust Education Week, the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies was pleased to present a lecture by Michaela Melián. Memory Loops is an audio artwork based on material from victims of National Socialism from which Melián has created collages of voices and music, thematically linked to the topography of Munich. The website Memory Loops forms the central element of the artwork and the public can follow customizable, individual Memory Loops through the city. The artist will talk about creating the memorial and address questions about her own work.

Artist and musician Michaela Melián lives in Munich and Hamburg. She is Professor for Time-Based Media at the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts (HfbK) and co-founder of the band F.S.K. (Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle, i.e., Voluntary Self-Control). In 2010, she received the Culture Prize of the City of Munich.

Date:  Tuesday, November 6th, 2012
Time: 12:30-2:00pm
Location: York Research Tower, Room 749