THURSDAY, June 6, 2019
1:30-2:00 pm WELCOME & INTRODUCTION
2:00-4:30 pm I. TRUTH, FACTS AND POPULISM
Chair: Elisabeth Engel (GHI)
Jens Wietschorke (University of Vienna / LMU Munich), Rethinking Cultural Cleavage: History of Knowledge and the Idea of the "Common People"
Martin Beddeleem (Aarhus University), A History of Neoliberalism: From the Economics of Ignorance to Post-Truth Politics
Jamie Cohen-Cole (George Washington University), An Alternative History of “Alternative Facts”: Postmodernism and Center-Right Knowledge Ecology
Coffee Break
Discussion
Comments by:
Monika Wulz (Center “History of Knowledge,” Zurich)
Julia Adeney Thomas (University of Notre Dame)
6:00 pm KEYNOTE EVENT
KNOWLEDGE / POWER / POLITICAL CULTURE – A TRANSATLANTIC CONVERSATION
With Suzanne Marchand (Louisiana State University) / Jakob Tanner (Zurich University), moderated by Anna von der Goltz (Georgetown University)
Knowledge is omnipresent, yet its value is increasingly being called into question, in particular in the political sphere. Amid the flood of information disseminated by social media, amid talk of “fake news” and “alternative facts,” expertise and thus knowledge are subject to challenges from many directions. The intellectual historian Suzanne Marchand (Louisiana State University) and the political historian Jakob Tanner (Zurich University) will discuss the interdependencies between political culture, knowledge and power in history and thus join the conversation about the potential and limits of knowledge as a category of historical research.
Open to the public, refreshments will be served between 6:00 and 6:30pm.
Please register by June 3 by email (events@ghi-dc.org), Tel. 202.387.3355 or via https://www.eventbrite.com/e/knowledge-power-political-culture-a-transatlantic-conversation-tickets-60322372841?aff=ebdshpsearchautocomplete
FRIDAY, June 7, 2019
9:00-12:00 am II. EXPERT KNOWLEDGE & EDUCATING THE CITIZEN
Chair: Simone Lässig (GHI)
Benno Nietzel (Bielefeld University), Knowing the Enemy: Propaganda Experts, Intelligence and Total War 1941-1945
Bregje F. van Eekelen (Technical University Delft), Knowing Otherwise: The Midcentury Travel of Creative Thinking Expertise
Coffee Break
Bryan McAllister-Grande (Northeastern University), Education for a Free Society? Ancient Knowledge, Universities, and the Neoliberal Disorder
Fei-Hsien Wang (Indiana University Bloomington), “Affordable” Civilization: Education Reform, Textbook Piracy, and the Question of “New Knowledge” in Modern China
Coffee Break
Discussion
Comments by:
Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer (The University of Chicago)
Johan Östling (Lund University)
12:00-2:00pm Lunch Break
2:00-4:30pm III. THEORY AND PRACTICE
Chair: Sarah Beringer (GHI)
Malcolm Maclaren (University of Zurich), Projecting ‘World Government’: The Creation of the League of Nations as a Case Study in International Policy-Making
Zoé Kergomard (German Historical Institute Paris), Knowledge on a Democratic Silence: Political Science and the Rise of Electoral Abstention in Post-War Switzerland (1945-1989)
Fabian Grütter (ETH Zurich), Practopia, est. 1973: Science in the Wasteland of Materialism
Coffee Break
Discussion
Comments by:
George Steinmetz (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)
Kijan Espahangizi (Center “History of Knowledge,” Zurich)
SATURDAY, June 8, 2019
9:30-12:00 am IV. GOVERNING KNOWLEDGE
Chair: Nils Güttler (Center “History of Knowledge”, Zurich)
Gregory Afinogenov (Georgetown University), Ideology and Knowledge: Rethinking China in the Russian Empire, 1790-1820
Anna Ross (University of Warwick), Knowledge of the State after 1848
Felix Römer (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), The Politics of Measurement: Knowledge about Economic Inequality in the United Kingdom since the Post-War Era
Coffee Break
Discussion
Comments by:
Kerstin von der Krone (GHI)
Anne Kwaschik (University of Konstanz)
12:00-1:00pm Lunch Break
1:00-3:30pm V. KNOWLEDGE, SOCIETY AND SOCIAL ACTIVISM
Chair: Claudia Roesch (GHI)
Ian P. Beacock (University of British Columbia), Searching for Queer Ancestors: Gay Activism & Historical Knowledge in Germany, c. 1890–1930
Oxana Kosenko (University of Ulm), Hygiene Propaganda and Theatrical Biopolitics in the Soviet Union in the 1920’s-40’s: The Moscow Theatre of the Sanitary Culture as a Factory of the New Man
Danielle Taschereau Mamers (University of Toronto), Identifying “Indians”: Racial Taxonomy and Identity Documentation as a Settler Colonial Politics of Knowledge
Coffee Break
Discussion
Comments by:
Richard Wetzell (GHI)
Peter Wien (University of Maryland, College Park)
3:30–4:00pm Coffee Break
4:00-5:00pm CONCLUDING DISCUSSION
Chair: Axel Jansen (GHI)