METHODS AND MOODS IN LITERARY STUDIES AFTER 1967

IN HONOR OF HANS ULRICH GUMBRECHT FEBRUARY 9-10, 2018 AT THE STANFORD HUMANITIES CENTER

2017 marked the fiftieth year of Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s career. To commemorate his retirement from the faculty at Stanford University, his colleagues, former students, and friends will consider how literary study has developed over the past fifty years. The contributions to this conference will address discrete episodes as well as broad trends in the languages and cultures Gumbrecht’s work has addressed over these five decades.

The Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages Stanford University PROGRAM

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9

8:30 a.m. Opening Remarks

Richard Saller, Vernon R. and Lysbeth Warren Anderson Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University Dan Edelstein, Chair of the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Stanford University David Shaw, Bradford M. Freeman Director of Football, Stanford University

9:00 a.m. Keynote Lecture

Chair: John Bender, Stanford University

Karen Feldman, University of California, Berkeley "Afterlives of Structure: Begriffsgeschichte, Deconstruction, Reception"

10:15 a.m. Break

10:30 a.m. Literary Studies in 1967—and After

Chair: Niklaus Largier, University of California, Berkeley

William Egginton, The Johns Hopkins University "The Recuperation of Presence"

Marci Shore, Yale University "What Is Heroic Thinking?"

Rüdiger Campe, Yale University "Questions of Evidence: Gumbrecht's Contribution to Dramatic Theory"

Horst Bredekamp, Humboldt University "Literary Studies and Art History: The Presence of A. Warburg"

12 noon Lunch

1:00 p.m. Literary Studies After 1967—Intersections

Chair: David Palumbo-Liu, Stanford University

Marisa Galvez, Stanford University "The Production of Medieval Life Forms in the Work of Gumbrecht"

2 PROGRAM

Lorenz Jäger, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung "On Writing About Heidegger's Life"

Peter Gilgen, Cornell University "The Presence of Ugliness"

Claus Pias, Leuphana University of Lüneburg "The Media Arcane"

Noam Pines, University at Buffalo, State University of New York "Allegory and Political Theology: A Revaluation of Humanity in the Post-Secular Age"

2:30 p.m. Break

3:00 p.m. The Persistence of Presence

Chair: Denise Gigante, Stanford University

Ligia Diniz, University of Brasília "Saudade as Presence: On Gumbrecht's Nostalgia"

Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, Aarhus University "Presence Effects for Posthumans"

Otavio Leonidio Ribeiro, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro "Presence and Presentness after 1967"

5:00 p.m. Reception Stanford Faculty Club

3 PROGRAM

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10

10:00 a.m. Keynote Lecture

Chair: Vincent Barletta, Stanford University

Miguel Tamen, University of Lisbon "Intellectuals, Public and Private"

11:15 a.m. Break

11:30 a.m. Symptoms of the Humanities

Chair: Charlotte Fonrobert, Stanford University

Jan Georg Söffner, Zeppelin University "Being Intellectual Against All the (Digital) Odds"

Thomas Hare, Princeton University "Gumbrecht's Velázquez"

Luiz Costa Lima, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro "Humanities Running in Parallel"

Kevin Platt, University of Pennsylvania "In a Systems Mood: Stanford, 1989"

1:00 p.m. Lunch

2:00 p.m. Theorizing Everyday Life

Chair: Matthew Tiews, Stanford University

Christian Benne, University of Copenhagen "Containment vs. Celebration: The Bifurcation of Contingency"

Andrei Markovits, University of Michigan "Gumbrecht's Engagement with Sports and America"

4 PROGRAM

Sasha Spoun, Leuphana University of Lüneberg "Risky Questions"

Sanja Perovic, King's College London "Performing the Broad Present"

João Cezar de Castro Rocha, State University of Rio de Janeiro "Can Body Go On Without a Thought? Gelassenheit as Gedankenexperiment"

3:30 p.m. Break

3:45 p.m. Receptions and Revisions of Gumbrecht

Chair: David Marno, University of California, Berkeley

Guilherme Foscolo, Federal University of Southern Bahia "Reverberations of Gumbrecht's Work"

Florian Klinger, University of Chicago "The Art of Unlearning"

Heather Webb, University of Cambridge "The Medieval Beginnings of Italian Poetry Today"

Marcelo de Mello Rangel, Federal University of Ouro Preto "Can One Be Happy Today?"

Tone Roald, University of Copenhagen "Atmosphere and Academic Climate Change"

5:15 p.m. Closing Remarks

Chair: Andrea Nightingale, Stanford University

Robert Harrison, Stanford University "Pondus Amoris"

5 SPEAKERS

Vincent Barletta is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Iberian and Latin American Cultures at Stanford. He is the author, most recently, of Death in Babylon: Alexander the Great and Iberian Empire in the Muslim Orient (2010) and the organizer of Dreams of Waking: An Anthology of Iberian Lyric Poetry (1400-1700) (with Cici Malik and Mark L. Bajus, 2013). He met Sepp when he came to Stanford in 2007.

John Bender is Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Stanford and was formerly director of the Stanford Humanities Center. His most recent books are The Culture of Diagram (with Michael Marrinan, 2010) and Ends of Enlightenment (2012). He met Sepp when they became colleagues in 1989.

Christian Benne is Professor of European Literature and Intellectual History at the University of Copenhagen and the Deputy Director of the Friedrich Nietzsche Foundation. He is the author of Die Erfindung des Manuskripts: Zur Theorie und Geschichte literarischer Gegenständlichkeit (2015). He has been friends with Sepp since 2005.

Horst Bredekamp is Professor of Art History at the Humboldt University. He is the author, most recently, of Theorie des Bildakts (2010) and Leibniz und die Revolution der Gartenkunst: Herrenhausen, Versailles und die Philosophie der Blätter (2012). He and Sepp met through Friedrich Kittler in Berlin in the 1990s.

Rüdiger Campe is the Alfred C. and Martha F. Mohr Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University. He is the author of The Game of Probability: Literature and Calculation from Pascal to Kleist (2012) and the editor of Baumgarten-Studien: Zur Genealogie der Ästhetik (2014). He was a doctoral student when he met Sepp in a colloquium in Dubrovnik.

João Cezar de Castro Rocha is Professor of Comparative Literature at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. He is the author, most recently, of Machado de Assis: Por uma Poética da Emulação (2013) and Culturas Shakespearianas (2017). He encountered Sepp, who had recently begun at Stanford, in a seminar taught by Luiz Costa Lima in Rio.

Luiz Costa Lima is Professor Emeritus at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. He is the author, most recently, of Frestras: A Teorização em um País Periférico (2013) and Melancolia (2017). He has been friends with Sepp for over three decades.

6 SPEAKERS

Ligia G. Diniz holds a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Brasília (2016). She is currently revising her dissertation, "Towards an Impossible Phenomenology of Affects: Imagination and Presence in Literary Experience," for publication. She spent fifteen months as a visiting researcher at Stanford under Sepp's supervision in 2014-15.

Dan Edelstein, a scholar of eighteenth-century France with interests in both history and literature, is the William H. Bonsall Professor of French and Chair of the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages at Stanford. His most recent monograph is The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (2010). His current research concerns the development of the idea of revolution from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. Dan has worked with Sepp since he began teaching at Stanford in 2004.

William Egginton is the Decker Professor in the Humanities and Director of the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World (2017). He studied with Sepp from 1994 to 1999, when he received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature here.

Karen Feldman is Associate Professor of German at the University of California, Berkeley. She is author of Binding Words: Conscience and Rhetoric in Hobbes, Hegel and Heidegger (2006). She is completing a book entitled Arts of Connection: Poetry, History, Epochality. A regular member of the Philosophical Reading Group, she has known Sepp since 2001.

Guilherme Foscolo is Assistant Professor of Humanities at the Federal University of Southern Bahia in Brazil. His research interests include philosophy of art, art theory and criticism, and media theory. He and Sepp met for the first time in 2012.

Marisa Galvez is Associate Professor of French and, by courtesy, of German Studies at Stanford. The author of Songbook: How Lyrics Became Poetry in Medieval Europe (2012), she is working on a book titled The Subject of Crusade: Penitential Poetics in Vernacular Lyric and Romance. She met Sepp in 2001 when she came here for doctoral study; shortly he became her dissertation adviser.

Denise Gigante is Professor of English at Stanford. She is currently working on The Book Madness: A Story of Book Collectors in America and most recently published The Keats Brothers: The Life of John and George (2013). She met Sepp and Ricky in 2002 at the Village Pub in Woodside at a dinner for Lynn Hunt, and has been friends with them since then.

7 SPEAKERS

Peter Gilgen is Associate Professor of German Studies and a Member of the Graduate Field of Comparative Literature at Cornell University. His most recent publications include the essays "Translating the Signs of History: Benjamin and Kant" and "Intimations of the Posthuman: Kant's Natural Beauty," both forthcoming in 2018. He first met Sepp in 1990 in the seminar "The Epistemological Moment of the 1890s."

Tom Hare is William Sauter LaPorte '28 Professor in Regional Studies and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. His most recent publication is a translation of the classic Middle Egyptian story of Sinuhe. He first made Sepp's acquaintance in the early 1990s through the "Materialities" conference at Stanford.

Robert Pogue Harrison is the Rosina Pierotti Professor in Italian Literature at Stanford. He is the author, most recently, of Gardens: An Essay on Human Condition (2008) and of Juvenescence: A Cultural History of Our Age (2014). He has been friends with Sepp for over two decades and together they run the Philosophical Reading Group.

Lorenz Jäger is a sociologist and journalist. He is editor emeritus of the section "Geisteswissenschaften" in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. A recent book is Signaturen des Schicksals (2012). He and Sepp met in the office of the FAZ in the mid-1980s.

Florian Klinger is Associate Professor in Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago. He works in philosophy and literature. Publications include Urteilen (2011) and Theorie der Form (2013); a revised English translation of the latter is forthcoming with the University of Chicago Press. He was a visiting researcher at Stanford when he met Sepp; he then undertook his Ph.D. here.

Niklaus Largier is the Sidney and Margaret Ancker Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author, most recently, of Die Kunst des Begehrens. Dekadenz, Sinnlichkeit und Askese (2007) and of Zeit der Möglichkeit. Robert Musil, Georg Lukács und die Kunst des Essays (2015).

Andrei Markovits is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Comparative Politics and German Studies at the University of Michigan. His publications on German (and European) trade unions, social democracy, new social movements, anti- Americanism and anti-Semitism; and many aspects of sports have appeared in fifteen languages. Andy first met Sepp in 2008 when he was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

8 SPEAKERS

David Marno is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. His first book is Death Be Not Proud: The Art of Holy Attention (2016). He obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford's Department of Comparative Literature, where he worked with Sepp.

Andrea Nightingale is Professor of Classics at Stanford. She is the author, most recently, of Once out of Nature: Augustine on Time and the Body (2011). She is also the editor, with David Sedley, of Ancient Models of Mind: Studies in Human and Divine Rationality (2010). She has been an active member of the Philosophical Reading Group. She and Sepp began their appointments to the faculty here in 1989.

David Palumbo-Liu is the Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of Comparative Literature and, by courtesy, Professor of English at Stanford. His most recent books are The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global Age (2012) and the collection Immanuel Wallerstein and the Problem of the World: System, Scale, Culture (edited with Bruce Robbins and Nirvana Tanoukhi, 2011). He has worked with Sepp since he joined the faculty here in 1990.

Sanja Perovic is Senior Lecturer in French at King's College London. She is the author of The Calendar in Revolutionary France: Perceptions of Time in Literature, Culture and Politics (2012). She first met Sepp in 1998, when she began her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Stanford.

Claus Pias is Professor for the History and Epistemology of Media at the Institute for Culture and Aesthetics of Digital Media and Director of the Institute for Advanced Study "Media Cultures of Computer Simulation," the Centre for Digital Cultures, and the Digital Cultures Research Lab at Leuphana University in Lüneburg. His most recent publications in English are Computer Game Worlds (2017) and Social Media—New Masses (edited with I. Baxmann and T. Beyes, 2016). While Claus knows Sepp from a round of reviews for an Excellence Initiative that took place in 2005, their friendship emerged out of an evening at the house of their mutual friend Anne Hamilton in 2014.

9 SPEAKERS

Noam Pines is Assistant Professor in the Department of Jewish Thought at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. His first book, The Infrahuman: Animality in Modern Jewish Literature, is forthcoming with SUNY Press. He is working on a second book that explores the relations between Jews and melancholia, entitled Children of Saturn: Jews in the Constellation of Melancholia. Noam began his Ph.D. here ten years ago and met Sepp then.

Kevin Platt is the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths (2011) and History in a Grotesque Key: Russian Literature and the Idea of Revolution (1997, Russian edition 2006), and the editor with David Brandenberger of Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda (2006). Kevin was a student in Sepp's second seminar at Stanford in 1990.

Marcelo de Mello Rangel is Professor of History and Philosophy at the Federal University of Ouro Preto. He received his doctorate in Brazilian history from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro with a dissertation on Brazilian Romanticism, and another doctorate in contemporary philosophy from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro with a dissertation on modernity, temporality, and history in the thought of Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida. Marcelo has been a visiting scholar at Stanford in 2014, 2017 and 2018, working closely with Sepp.

Otavio Ribeiro is Associate Professor in the Department of Architecture and Urbanism at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. His most recent publication is Risky Space (2017), a collection of essays on contemporary art and architecture. Sepp has known him for about twenty years.

Tone Roald is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Copenhagen. Recent publications are the article "Atmospheric Infancy" in the journal Qualitative Psychology (in press) and her book The Subject of Aesthetics (2015). She first met Sepp in 2010 when he spoke at a conference she organized in Copenhagen.

Richard Saller, a scholar of ancient Roman social and economic history, is the Kleinheinz Family Professor of European Studies and the Vernon R. and Lysbeth Warren Anderson Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford. His most recent book is the revised edition of The Roman Empire: Economy, Society, and Culture (with P.D.A. Garnsey, 2015). His acquaintance with Sepp began with his deanship here in 2007.

10 SPEAKERS

David Shaw, the Bradford M. Freeman Director of Football, has been Stanford's head coach since 2011. His teams have won the Pacific-12 title three times and the Rose Bowl twice. His career record through last season is 64-17 (.790). The graduation rate of his players for the last three seasons is 99 percent. A Stanford graduate, he has known Sepp since he returned to campus as an assistant coach in 2007.

Marci Shore is Associate Professor of History at Yale University. She first met Sepp in 1998, when she began to think about the topic of her dissertation, which eventually became the book Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918-1968 (2009). She is also the author, most recently, of The Ukrainian Night: An Intimate History of Revolution (2018).

Jan Söffner is Professor of Cultural Theory and Cultural Analysis at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen. His first acquaintance with Sepp was in 2006, not counting the fact of having met him as a child in 1987 or so.

Sascha Spoun is the President of Leuphana University in Lüneburg. He dedicates his work to developing an internationalized research culture at Leuphana University and to structuring these measures into a model for higher education that takes into account liberal education and the humanities at large. He and Sepp are recently acquainted.

Miguel Tamen in Professor of Literary Theory at the University of Lisbon. His latest book in English is What Art Is Like (2012). He first met Sepp in 1996.

Mads Rosendahl Thomsen is Professor with Special Responsibilities of Comparative Literature at Aarhus University. He is the author of Mapping World Literature: International Canonization and Transnational Literature (2008) and The New Human in Literature: Posthuman Visions of Changes in Body, Mind and Society (2015). Sepp has known Mads since the latter was a graduate student at Aarhus in the 1990s.

Matthew Tiews is Associate Vice President for the Arts at Stanford. He has worked to implement the university-wide Arts Initiative since 2010. He obtained his Ph.D. here in Comparative Literature, where he worked with Sepp.

Heather Webb is Reader in Medieval Italian Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge. She is the author of two monographs, The Medieval Heart (2010) and Dante’s Persons: An Ethics of the Transhuman (2016). Heather first met Sepp while doing her Ph.D. here, which she began in 1999. 11 Photos by Linda A. Cicero / Stanford News Service, Laura Teresa Gumbrecht, and syikinrosli / flicker

This event was made possible thanks to the generous support from the School of Humanities and Sciences Dean’s Office, The Europe Center, The Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, The Department of Comparative Literature, The Department of French and Italian, and The Department of Iberian and Latin American Cultures.

STANFORD UNIVERSITY Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages www.stanford.edu