The Enlightenment between Europe and the United States: Twentieth-Century Tensions

International Workshop, 27 and 28 May 2011
Center for Advanced Studies, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München,
Seestraße 13, 80802 Munich
Registration: info@cas.lmu.de, Tel. +49-89-2180 72080

Friday, May 27

9:15 Opening Remarks
Christof Mauch (LMU) and Michael Kimmage (Catholic University)

9:30 - 13:00 Panel 1: Continuities
Chair: Michael Hochgeschwender (LMU)

Jennifer Burns (University of Virginia)
The Death and Rebirth of the Autonomous Self

10:30 - 11:00 Coffee break

Lisa Szefel (Pacific University)
Reconstructing Reason: Values, Virtues, and the Moral Imagination in Postwar America

Darrin McMahon (Florida State University)
The First Philosophy of the Enlightenment: The Case of John Grier Hibben

14:00 - 17:30 Panel 2: The Émigré Enlightenment
Chair: Jason Stevens (Harvard University)

Kristina Hinneburg (Jena University)
“Shall We Be Tolerant of Intolerance?” The Reception of Lessing’s Nathan the Wise in American Exile

John C. Laursen (University of California, Riverside)
Thomas Mann on Enlightenment, Irony, and Politics in Europe, America, and Russia

16:00 - 16:30 Coffee break

Robert Thomas (Columbia University)
Jacques Maritain’s American Project

17:30 - 19:00 Reception

19:00 Keynote Address

Mark Lilla (Columbia University)
The Age of Ignorance: Enlightenment Echoes

Saturday, May 28

9:30 - 15:00 Panel 3: Critiques and Dialectics
Chair: Celia Applegate (University of Rochester)

Volker Depkat (Regensburg University)
Europe, America and the Dialectic of the Enlightenment

Borislava Marinova (Regensburg University)
The Dialectic of the American Enlightenment at Work: The Women’s Suffrage Debate in the Early Twentieth Century

11:30 - 12:00 Coffee break

David Greenberg (Rutgers University)
The Press Agents’ War: World War I, Transatlantic Propaganda, and the Crisis of Enlightenment Values

13:00 - 14:00 Lunch

James Schmidt (Boston University)
“The New Failure of Nerve,” the Eclipse of Reason, and the Critique of Enlightenment in New York and Los Angeles, 1943-1949

15:00 - 16:00 Panel 4: Drawing conclusions

Christof Mauch (LMU)
Sonja Asal (LMU)
Celia Applegate (University of Rochester)
Michael Hochgeschwender (LMU)
Jason Stevens (Harvard University)
Michael Kimmage (Catholic University)

16:00 End of conference