Please join us for a research workshop in the Department of German, in association with the Centre for Modern Literature and Culture at King’s College London, Monday 27 April, 18.00 – 20.00.

 

Workshop

Visualizing Fascisms

 

Professor Geoff Eley, University of Michigan

Professor Julia Adeney Thomas, University of Notre Dame

 

This workshop addresses the cultural and political complexities of visualizing fascism in Japan, Germany, and elsewhere during the 1930s and 1940s. One central question concerns how best to relate a political formation to its aesthetic representations. Is there a single fascist aesthetic or are there many? How do we understand its distinctive features? Does the aesthetic change over time under a fascist regime? Do different fascist states produce differing aesthetics? Is it possible, or even fruitful, to decenter Europe in discussions of fascism? On the one hand, attention must be paid to the strategies adopted and deployed by fascist states themselves to propagate their politics, including especially expansionism and war, and to make them meaningful. On the other hand, state representations can always be received differently and even "subverted" when seen by the "wrong" people, the unintended viewer, or those with differing perspectives, politically, culturally, or from a different time. The workshop will explore the contingent relationship between any particular political or ethical stance and any particular aesthetic style.

 

Monday April 27

King’s College, London, Strand Campus

Room K0.16

18.00 - 20.00

 

ALL WELCOME