Following its US premiere in New York City, the independent theatre group “Theater ASOU” from Graz, Austria, is coming to Toronto for the Canadian premiere of its striking multi-media performance The 33rd Year: Playing Life by Robert Riedl. Based on the collection The Thirtieth Year (Das dreißigste Jahr) by the well-known and influential Austrian author Ingeborg Bachmann (1923-1973), the play is a parable about our daily self-dramatizations. In the text of the play, the borders between reality and appearance break down, reality and theatre intertwine, and the actor changes roles with the audience. (CONTINUE READING)

Together with the Joint Initiative in German and European Studies at the University of Toronto, CCGES is pleased to present this talk by Mr. Karsten Voigt, the Coordinator of German-North American Cooperation at the German Federal Foreign Office. (CONTINUE READING)

Together with the Waterloo Centre for German Studies, CCGES is pleased to be able to co-present this conference which will take place at the University of Waterloo.

The conference will feature three full-days of presentations on a variety of topics. In addition keynote addresses will be made by Barbara Pichler, Artistic Director designate of the Diagonale, The Festival of Austrian Film in Graz and Paul Cooke of the University of Leeds. The complete conference program is available by clicking here . (CONTINUE READING)

Tereza Barta, York Film professor, presents her 30-minute documentary Through Her/ Their/ Your Eyes (in German with English subtitles) about her experiences as a refugee in Austria. The screening will be followed by a roundtable discussion led by Iris Mendel, a visiting doctoral fellow of the IFK (Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften) in Vienna. (CONTINUE READING)

CCGES and the CITY Institute are pleased to welcome Prof. Patrick Le Gales, a Research Director at the Centre for Political Research at Sciences Po (CEVIPOF) in Paris, to York for a talk. Prof. le Gales is the prize winning author of European Cities, Social Conflicts and Governance, published by OUP in 2002, and former editor of the international Journal of Urban and Regional Research.

Prof. Le Gales will speak about his current research analyzing the attitudes of urban upper-middle classes (defined as people with executive responsibilities in either private corporations or public administrations, as well as intermediate technical personnel, e.g. engineers) in relation to the redistributive mechanisms embedded in the social protection schemes that characterise the Welfare State. (CONTINUE READING)