[Anthropgrad] Key Thinkers Seminar - Kader Konuk on Erich Auerbach

[Sharon Komidar]

The Research School of Humanities presents,
A Key Thinkers Seminar 

5 - 6.30 pm, Tuesday 14 July, Hedley Bull Centre - Theatre HB2

Kader Konuk on Erich Auerbach

Kader Konuk follows the plight of the German-Jewish humanist Erich
Auerbach (1892-1957) who escaped Nazi persecution by seeking exile in a
Muslim-dominated society. While in exile, Auerbach produced the
groundbreaking Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western
Literature, completed in May 1945. 

Edward Said saw Auerbach's feeling of dislocation and alienation in
Turkey as the enabling condition for the writing of Mimesis - a notion
that was central to his practice and vision of critical consciousness.
In this seminar, elaborating the Turkish context for Auerbach's work,
Kader Konuk will argue that Auerbach found humanism at home in Istanbul
at the very moment it was banished from Europe. Konuk will challenge the
notion of exile as synonymous with intellectual isolation and shows the
reciprocal effects of German émigrés on Turkey's humanist reform
movement.

Kader Konuk is an Assistant professor of German Studies and Comparative
Literature at the University of Michigan. Her research is situated at
the disciplinary nexus between literary criticism, cultural studies, and
cultural history. Specifically, she investigates the intersections
between the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim worlds, beginning with the
Ottoman Westernization reforms of the early eighteenth century and
continuing on to current debates over Turkey's application to join the
European Union. She has recently completed a new book East West Mimesis:
German-Jewish Exile and Secular Humanism in Turkey which will appear
with Stanford University Press, Spring 2010.

Convenor: Ned Curthoys

For general enquiries please contact: 
Phone: 6125 2434
Email: administration.rsh at anu.edu.au 
Web: http://rsh.anu.edu.au/
All Welcome