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THE BERLIN JOURNAL A Magazine from the American Academy in Berlin Number Thirty-Two Fall 2018 celebRating tWentY YeaRs of felloWshiPs Revitalizing Public DiscouRse by Michael Sandel Death anD the MineR by Rosalind C. Morris aRtist PoRtfolio Lucy Raven becoMing a White Man by P. Carl afRofutuRisM by Priscilla Layne the Young Man Who sells antiques Fiction by Jesse Ball We are deeply grateful to STEFAN VON HOLTZBRINCK for his generous support of this issue of the Berlin Journal. CONTENTS focus features notebook 4 34 82 6 Death anD the MineR 36 TrucKstoPs on the infoRMation 84 CelebRating tWentY YeaRs of by Rosalind C. Morris suPeRhighWaY felloWshiPs by Tung-Hui Hu 12 Beat KnoWleDge 94 West coast initiative by Ronald Radano 40 The Young Man Who sells 95 AluMni seMinaRs antiques 16 BiggeR PRofits, sloWeR gRoWth by Jesse Ball 95 The 2018 KissingeR PRize by Herman Mark Schwartz 44 BecoMing a White Man 96 WelcoMing neW tRustees 20 UnexcePtional Politics in the theateR by Emily Apter 97 The anDReW W. Mellon by P. Carl felloWshiP in the huManities 24 Revitalizing Public DiscouRse 46 ARTIST PoRTFOLIO by Michael Sandel 97 A higheR loYaltY Lucy Raven; 98 PRofiles in scholaRshiP 30 Out of this WoRlD text by Pavel S. Pyś by Priscilla Layne 100 BooK RevieWs 54 The Origins MYth by John Rockwell and by Fred M. Donner Christina Schwenkel 57 The absent ePic 104 AluMni booKs by Haun Saussy 105 SuPPoRteRs anD DonoRs 60 WoRlD liteRatuRe by Martin Puchner 64 Mobilizing feaR by Carina L. Johnson 68 The laWs of WaR by Peter Holquist 72 PeRM-36 by Joshua Yaffa 76 SeculaR sacReD gRoves by Jared Farmer 78 the holbRooKe FORuM Digital Diplomacy by Corneliu Bjola CONTRIBUTORS Rosalind C. Morris is a professor Priscilla Layne is an assistant Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Near Fall 2018 Bosch Fellow in Public of anthropology at Columbia professor of German at the Eastern History at the University Policy Joshua Yaffa is the Moscow University, and the Andrew W. University of North Carolina at of Chicago, and the Nina Maria correspondent for the New Yorker. Mellon Fellow in the Humanities Chapel Hill, and the fall 2018 Gorrissen Fellow in History in Jared Farmer, the spring 2019 at the Academy in fall 2018. Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow. Fall spring 2019. Fall 2018 John P. Anna- Maria Kellen Fellow, is a Ronald Radano is a professor of 2018 Dirk Ippen Fellow Tung-Hui Birkelund Fellow Haun Saussy is professor of history at Stony Brook African cultural studies and music Hu is an associate professor of University Professor of compara- University. Corneliu Bjola is an at the University of Wisconsin- English at the University of Michi- tive literature, the Committee on associate professor in diplomatic Madison. He is the spring 2019 gan. Jesse Ball, the spring 2019 Social Thought, and East Asian studies at the University of Oxford, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in the Mary Ellen von der Heyden Fellow languages and civilizations at the and chair of the Oxford Digital Humanities. Herman Mark in Fiction, is a professor of creative University of Chicago. Martin Diplomacy Research Group. John Schwartz is a professor of politics writing at the School of the Art Puchner, the spring 2019 John P. Rockwell is a longtime arts critic, at the University of Virginia, and a Institute of Chicago. Fall 2018 Birkelund Fellow, is a professor reporter, and editor at the New spring 2019 Bosch Fellow in Public Holtzbrinck Fellow P. Carl is a of English and comparative litera- York Times, and founding director Policy. Emily Apter, a spring 2019 writer and Distinguished Art- ture at Harvard University. of the Lincoln Center Festival. He Daimler Fellow, is Silver Professor ist-in-Residence at Emerson Col- Carina L. Johnson is a professor of was a Distinguished Visitor at the of French and Comparative Litera- lege. Lucy Raven, an assistant history at Pitzer College, and the Academy in 2008. Christina ture at New York University. professor of art at The Cooper fall 2018 Nina Maria Gorrissen Schwenkel is an associate profes- Michael Sandel is the Anne T. and Union School of Art, is the spring Fellow in History. Peter Holquist, sor of anthropology and South- Robert M. Bass Professor of Gov- 2019 Ellen Maria Gorrissen Fel- the spring 2019 Axel Springer Fel- east Asian studies at the Uni - ernment at Harvard University. low. Pavel S. Pyś is Curator of low, is Ronald S. Lauder Endowed versity of California, Riverside. He was the Academy’s spring 2018 Visual Arts at the Walker Art Term Associate Professor of History She was a fall 2015 Bosch Fellow Airbus Distinguished Visitor. Center. Fred M. Donner is the at the University of Pennsylvania. in Public Policy. the beRlin jouRnal the aMeRican acaDeMY Mathias Döpfner, Marina Kellen suPPoRt in beRlin French, Hans-Michael Giesen, Number Thirty-Two, C. Boyden Gray, Vartan Gregorian, The Academy is entirely funded by Fall 2018 PResiDent Andrew S. Gundlach, Florian private, tax-deductible donations. Terry McCarthy Henckel von Donners marck, Contributions may be made: PublisheR Terry McCarthy chief oPeRating officeR Wolfgang A. Herrmann, Stefan in geRManY eDitoR R. Jay Magill, Jr. Christian U. Diehl von Holtzbrinck, Dirk Ippen, by bank transfer to: Managing eDitoR Sophie Maaß Wolfgang Ischinger, Josef Joffe, American Academy in Berlin aDveRtising Berit Ebert Am Sandwerder 17–19 Michael M. Kellen, Michael S. Berliner Sparkasse Design Susanna Dulkinys, 14109 Berlin Klein, John C. Kornblum, Regine BLZ 100 500 00 Julia Sysmäläinen Tel. +49 (30) 80 48 3-0 Leibinger, Pascal Levensohn, Account: 660 000 9908 Fax +49 (30) 80 48 3-111 Wolfgang Malchow, Nina von IBAN: Copyright © 2018 americanacademy.de Maltzahn, Kati Marton, Julie DE07 1005 0000 6600 0099 08 American Academy in Berlin Mehretu, Nader A. Mousavizadeh, BIC: BELADEBEXXX ISSN 1610-6490 14 East 60th Street, Suite 604 Michael Müller (ex officio), Sandra New York, NY 10022 E. Peterson, Volker Schlöndorff, in the uniteD states coveR iMage Kim Keever, Abstract Tel. +1 (212) 588-1755 Peter Y. Solmssen, Anthony Vidler, by check payable to: 10550, 2014. Courtesy of Winston Fax +1 (212) 588-1758 Christine I. 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Goeltz, SWIFT CODE: CHASUS 33 Wolfgang Mayrhuber, tRustees Norman Pearlstine The American Academy in Berlin’s latest Klaus Biesenbach, Manfred financial report may be obtained by Bischoff, Leon Botstein, Martin executive DiRectoR eMeRitus writing to The American Academy in Berlin, 14 East 60th Street, Suite 604, New York, Brand, Stephen B. Burbank, Gahl Gary Smith NY 10022, or to the Charities Bureau, 120 Hodges Burt, Gerhard Casper, Broadway, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10271. PRESIDENT’S NOTE Looking About in Foreign Nations “i aM MoRe and more convinced that poetry is the universal And so, in this issue of the Berlin Journal, Fred Donner possession of mankind,” Goethe said, in 1827. “I therefore questions the historicity of the accepted narrative of like to look about me in foreign nations, and advise every- Islam’s foundation, and writes about the search for ev- one to do the same.” This quote, as recorded by his secretary idence in inscriptions, papyrus texts, and coins of what Johann Peter Eckermann, signals the beginning of Weltlit- really happened in those crucial years in the seventh cen- eratur, according to Martin Puchner, the Academy’s spring tury, when a world religion came into being. Haun Saussy 2019 John P. Birkelund Fellow. In the later years of his life, looks at how China, which famously lacks a foundational Goethe was reading books from countries as far apart as epic like the Iliad or the Mahābhārata, has recently sought China, Persia, and Serbia. “The era of world literature is at to claim for itself the Tibetan epic of King Gesar, “generally hand,” he said. accepted [as] the longest single piece of literature current- It would be more than a century later before the Norton ly in the world canon, encompassing some 120 volumes Anthology of World Literature was first published, in the and about 20 million words.” Cultural appropriation—or United States, after World War II. Since then, millions of stu- a newfound appreciation in Han Chinese thinking for dents in the US have read its selections of writers from “for- Weltliteratur? And who knew, apart from Peter Holquist, eign nations,” and have followed Goethe’s advice to “look that it was the Russians, currently the bêtes noires of the about” themselves. Puchner, the current editor of the Norton West for their invasion of Ukraine, who were the prime Anthology of World Literature, now in its fourth edition, writes movers in establishing the codified rules of war at the end in this issue of the Berlin Journal that “no other country I of the nineteenth century that we still use today, banning know has embraced world literature, and instituted it in exploding bullets and coining the notion “crimes against higher education, as fully as the United States.” He contin- humanity”? ues his studies of Weltliteratur at the American Academy in And yet . Joshua Yaffa visits a former Soviet prison Berlin, just 139 miles (223 km) from Goethe’s Weimar.