Keynote

Richard Sennett

Richard Sennett is the Centennial Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and University Professor of the Humanities at New York University. A former alumnus of the University of Chicago, he holds a Ph.D from Harvard University. Sennett is the founding director of the New York Institute for the Humanities and has been a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as the Royal Society of Literature. A substantial part of his work has revolved around the ways in which individuals and groups make sense of material facts, especially in urban environments. His publications have spanned the fields of ethnography, history, and social theory, and his work has been rewarded with numerous prizes and awards, among them the Spinoza Prize (2010), the Gerda Henkel Prize (2008) and the Hegel Prize (2006). He is the author of several important and much-discussed books, among them The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism (1998), The New Capitalism (2006), and, most recently, Together: The Rituls, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation (2012). 

Prof. Dr. Ansgar Nünning

Prof. Dr. Ansgar Nünning has been Chair in English and American literature and cultural studies at the University of Giessen since 1997. He studied English, history, philosophy, and pedagogy at the University of Cologne where he also received his PhD in English Literature in 1989 and his Habilitation in 1995. His research and teaching foci lie on literary and cultural theory and methods, narratology, metaphor theory, genre theory, and cultural memory theory, among other fields. Prof. Nünning is the founding director of the Giessen Graduate School for the Humanities and of the International Graduate Center for the Study of Culture (GCSC), the academic director of the International PhD Program (IPP) “Literary and Cultural Studies,” as well as a member of the Collaborative Research Center “Memory Cultures.” Recent books and publications include Medialisierung des Erzählens im englischsprachigen Roman der Gegenwart (2011), Cultural Ways of Worldmaking (2010), A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies (2010), An Introduction to the Study of Narrative Fiction (2008), and Literature and Values: Literature as a Medium for Representing, Disseminating and Constructing Norms and Values (2009).

 

Closing Remarks

Donald E. Pease

Donald E. Pease is professor of English and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College, where he chairs the M.A. Liberal Studies Program. He holds an M.A. degree (1969) from the University of Missouri and a Ph.D. (1973) from the University of Chicago. He specializes in 19th and 20th century American literature and literary theory. Pease is editor of the interdisciplinary New Americanists series, which focuses on sociopolitical issues and minority perspectives through the lenses of race, class, ethnicity, gender, and nationality. He is author of over one hundred articles on British and American literature and of the following books: Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writings in Cultural Context (1987), The New American Exceptionalism (2009), Theodor Seuss Geisel (2010).