15 February 2012, 7pm at the Austrian Cultural Forum London

Prof Konstanze Fliedl (University of Vienna)

Zeitgeist and Testimony: Arthur Schnitzler

‘The complexity of my condition: an Austrian, a Jew’. This diary entry by Arthur Schnitzler in 1913 serves as epigraph of our lecture series Jews, Politics and Austria organised jointly with the Austrian Cultural Forum London. The series introduces Jewish intellectuals, artists and scientists who, in the early years of the twentieth century, lived and worked in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in the Republic of Austria.

The first lecture in this series will focus on the work of the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler (1862 – 1931) and his acute analysis of the discontinuity of his time. Schnitzler has typically been regarded as either a voice of the Fin de siècle or a chronicler of the post WWI period. In this lecture however, Konstanze Fliedl will examine how Schnitzler’s texts, in contrast to typical assessments of his work, manifest his profound understanding of the mechanism employed by authoritarian structures. She argues that Schnitzler’s texts can also be understood as disturbing prophesies of the approaching catastrophes of the 20^th century.

Konstanze Fliedl is Professor of modern German Literature at the Institute of German Studies at the University of Vienna. Her work focuses on Fin de siècle Literature. She has written and edited numerous studies on Arthur Schnitzler and is currently publishing a work on Schnitzler’s early writings.

Entry is free but seating is limited. Please book online www.acflondon.org (email: office@acflondon.org, telephone: 020 7225 7300). This lecture will be held at the Austrian Cultural Forum London (28 Rutland Gate, SW7 1PQ).

2 February

Prof. Susan James (Birkbeck College, London)

Spinoza on Learning to Live Justly

The European Leo Baeck Lecture Series is organised by the Leo Baeck Institute London, the Jewish Museum and the Fritz Bauer Institut, Frankfurt am Main, in cooperation with the German Historical Institute London.

You can download the leaflet here.

Drawing on the work of his contemporary, Thomas Hobbes, Spinoza argues that law and the norms of justice around which it is organised are an entirely human creation.  Communities make laws, and in doing so make justice.  But how do they develop understandings of justice that do more than reflect the interests of the powerful, and provide standards for assessing and criticizing social arrangements?  This lecture explores Spinoza’s account of the philosophical, theological and political processes through which communities learn to live justly.

Susan James is Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck College London. Her most recent book is Spinoza on Philosophy, Religion and Politics: The Theologico-Political Treatise is published by Oxford University Press in January 2012. Among her other works are Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (1997) and The Political Writings of Margaret Cavendish (2003).

Lectures are held at the German Historical Institute London, 17 Bloomsbury Square, London WC1A 2NJ.

Underground: Holborn, Russell Square; Bus: 1, 7, 8, 19, 25, 38, 55, 59, 68, 91, 98, 134, 168, 171, 188, 242, 243, 521, X68

Lectures will begin promptly at 6.30pm. Admission is free but places are strictly limited and must be reserved in advance by contacting the Leo Baeck Institute, London (email info@leobaeck.co.uk or phone 020 7882 5690).

Prof Sue Harper (University of Portsmouth)

The Lion’s Mane: Sexual and Racial Politics in Samson and Delilah (1949)

The FilmTalk series 2011/2012 will open with Sue Harper’s lecture on Samson and Delilah (1949).

This lecture series is organised by the LBI London in cooperation with the Wiener Library.

Samson and Delilah presents us with fascinating contradictions. It is a film made at the height of the Hollywood studio system, which celebrates the heroic underdog and racial minorities: it both reviles and celebrates the
female body: and it combines a lush visual texture with a stern moralism.
Besides trying to reconcile these contradictions, Sue Harper will analyse the symbolism of hair (not just Samson’s) and will examine the function of Edith Head’s costume designs, particularly the peacock cloak. She will assess the input of the Zionist thinker Vladimir Jabotinsky to the film’s script, and will compare the film’s treatment of Jewish/Arab relation with others in the same period.

Sue Harper is Emeritus Professor of Film History at the University of Portsmouth. She has written numerous books and articles on British cinema, and has made many radio and television appearances.

Lectures are held at the Wiener Library, 29 Russell Square, London WC1B5DP Underground: Russell Square, Bus: 188, 168, X68, 7, 59, 68

Lectures will begin promptly at 6.30pm. Latecomers may not be admitted. Admission is free but places must be reserved in advance with the Library. email: info@wienerlibrary.co.uk tel: 020 7636 7247

Click here for the entire programme of the FilmTalk series 2011/2012.

You can download the leaflet here.

You can download the leaflet here.

A lecture series organised by the Leo Baeck Institute London and The Wiener Library.

In this season we examine ‘forbidden relationships’ across the Middle East divide, especially between Jews and Arabs. Spanning the period from the 1940s to the present day, the films explore the changing representations of Arab masculinities and Jewish women, including where these representations stand in present day Britain. In these films love, desire and politics blur the borderline between personal loyalty and the perceived demands of patriotism and national identity.
FilmTalk stresses film as much as talk. The lectures are 20-25 minutes long and are followed or intercut with excerpts from the films under review.

Lectures are held at the Wiener Library, 29 Russell Square, London WC1B5DP Underground: Russell Square, Bus: 188, 168, X68, 7, 59, 68

Lectures will begin promptly at 6.30pm. Latecomers may not be admitted. Admission is free but places must be reserved in advance with the Library. email: info@wienerlibrary.co.uk tel: 020 7636 7247

Programme

8 December 2011

Prof Sue Harper (University of Portsmouth)

The Lion’s Mane: Sexual and Racial Politics in Samson and Delilah (1949)

Samson and Delilah presents us with fascinating contradictions. It is a film made at the height of the Hollywood studio system, which celebrates the heroic underdog and racial minorities: it both reviles and celebrates the
female body: and it combines a lush visual texture with a stern moralism.
Besides trying to reconcile these contradictions, Sue Harper will analyse the symbolism of hair (not just Samson’s) and will examine the function of Edith Head’s costume designs, particularly the peacock cloak. She will assess the input of the Zionist thinker Vladimir Jabotinsky to the film’s script, and will compare the film’s treatment of Jewish/Arab relation with others in the same period.

Sue Harper is Emeritus Professor of Film History at the University of Portsmouth. She has written numerous books and articles on British cinema, and has made many radio and television appearances.

1 March 2012

Prof Yosefa Loshitzky (University of East London)

Forbidden Love in the Holy Land: Daniel Wachsmann’s Hamsin (1982)

In her film talk Yosefa Loshitzky will discuss the fears of “forbidden love” between Israeli Jews and Palestinians as they are expressed and transgressed in the iconic film Hamsin. Perhaps more than any other Israeli film, Hamsin touches upon the core of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Not only does it deal with a politically taboo topic (the ongoing confiscation of Arab land by Israel inside the green line, Israel’s border prior to the 1967 war) but it also deals with the ultimate taboo of love between Jews and Arabs. Hamsin demonstrates that there are some borders that cannot be crossed
even by ostensibly liberal Israelis.

Yosefa Loshitzky is the author of The Radical Faces of Godard and Bertolucci, Identity Politics on the Israeli Screen, Screening Strangers: Migration and Diaspora in Contemporary European Cinema, and the editor of Spielberg’s Holocaust: Critical Perspectives on Schindler’s List.

10 May 2012

Prof Carrie Tarr (Kingston University, London)

Secularism, difference and the family in Roschdy Zem’s Mauvaise foi/Bad Faith (2006)

France has the largest population in Europe of both Jews and Arabs and actor Roschdy Zem’s first film as director tackles the topic of Jewish- Arab relationships against the background of Jewish-Arab hostilities in the Middle East and their repercussions in contemporary France. Mauvaise foi is a comedy that revolves around the consequences of the secular Jewish heroine’s discovery that she is pregnant, and the increasingly problematic decision she and her equally secular Arab-Muslim boyfriend take to keep the baby and tell their not-so-secular families.

Carrie Tarr is Emerita Professor of Film at Kingston University, UK. Her books include Cinema and the Second Sex: Women’s Filmmaking in France in the 1980s and 1990s (2001, with B. Rollet) and Reframing Difference: Beur and banlieue filmmaking in France (2005). She is currently working on the representation of Jews and Arabs in French and Maghrebi cinema(s).

31 May 2012

Dr Nir Cohen (SOAS, London)

Love and Surveillance: Politicised Romance in Peter Kosminsky’s The Promise (UK, 2011)

While attempts at forming romantic relationships are abundant in Peter
Kosminsky’s epic TV serial The Promise (2011), expressions of true love and affection seem to be missing. Instead, romance is yet another tool in a system whose role is to monitor, control, and conquer; lovers are often enemies; and relationships are motivated by political ambitions and emotions. This talk explores Kosminsky’s vision of Israel/Palestine both in the 1940s and today – one in which the concept of love is often marred by violence and undermined by a national cause.

Nir Cohen holds a PhD in Film Studies from University College London. He
currently teaches at SOAS, London. His research focuses on Israeli cinema and he is the author of Soldiers, Rebels, and Drifters: Gay Representation in
Israeli Cinema (2012).

24 November 2011, Reception 6.15pm, Lecture  6.45pm, UCL, Gustave Tuck Lecture theatre

The Hulk, Superman, the Terminator; they are all modern popular culture echoes of the golem, that mystical, artificial man of legend, a sort of friendly Jewish version of Frankenstein’s monster. By focusing on the golem in key literary texts and films, The Golem Returns explores the role that popular culture has played in the formation of modern Jewish culture. Widely seen as an icon of authentically Jewish lore, the golem has inspired a broad range of writers across ethnic, cultural, and national affiliations in Europe, the United States, and Israel. Previous scholarly accounts of the golem have sought to distinguish between a supposedly authentic Jewish folktale tradition on the golem and its modern literary rewriting. In contrast, The Golem Returns contends that the popular culture theme of the golem as it is known today is the product of the complex cultural interaction between Jews and non-Jews since the early modern period, a process subverting stable and ethnically fixed notions of Jewish culture.

Tracing the popular culture constructions of the golem by non-Jewish and Jewish writers since the early 1800s, Cathy S. Gelbin argues that golem representations have come full circle and that popular culture, despite its subversion of clearly demarcated ethnic origins, has played an important role in the construction of modern Jewish culture. The Golem Returns will be of interest to scholars of German and Jewish Studies, as well as readers examining popular culture, film, and the illustrated novel.

Cathy Gelbin (PhD, MA in German Studies, Cornell University) is Senior Lecturer in Archive of Memory at the Moses Mendelssohn Centre for European-Jewish Studies at the University of Potsdam (1995-1998) in collaboration with Yale’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Among other functions, she is co-editor of the Leo Baeck Institute Year Book and serves on the Board of Directors and Trustees of the Leo Baeck Institute London. Recent publications include the monograph The Golem Returns: From German Romantic Literature to Global Jewish Culture (2011) and Jewish Culture in the Age of Globalization (2011, co-ed. with Sander Gilman). She is currently working on a new joint study with Sander Gilman on the image and participation of Jews in modern German-speaking cosmopolitanist thought.

This book launch is organised by the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies of the University College of London. It is held at Gustave Tuck Lecture theatre and will begin at 6.45pm. The reception opens at 6.15pm. Admission is free.