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25.06.2025
14:15 Uhr - 15:45 Uhr
Vortrag

A Writer of Cultural Pluralism: Max Czollek
Dr. Courtney Hodrick, Stanford University

There may not be a German-Jewish writer alive who is more controversial than Max Czollek. A poet and the author of the 2018 polemic Desintegriert euch!, Max Czollek is a millennial advocating for a ...
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A Special Guest in the Department of Anglophone Studies June 23 to July 3, 2025: Dr. Courtney Hodrick, Jewish Studies, Stanford University

Dr. Courtney Hodrick teaches in the program in Civic, Liberal, and Global Education at Stanford University, where she previously held a postdoctoral fellowship in Jewish Studies and completed her PhD in German Studies in 2023. Her research focuses on 20 Century German Jewish thought, and she is working on revising her dissertation, on hope in Arendt, for publication. She has also written articles and book chapters on Arendt’s response to the nuclear bomb and her concept of forgiveness, as well as on Carl Schmitt and modern right-wing extremism.
We would like to cordially invite you the Compromise in Modern Literature Lecture of Barbara Buchenau on June 25, 2-4, R11T00D05, where Courtney will lecture on Max Czollek from 3 to 4 pm (following a lecture by Barbara Buchenau on literary compromises). Additionally, we invite you to participate in the Anglophone literatures and cultures research colloquium on July 1, 6:15 pm R12 R04 B02. For this colloquium Dr. Courtney Hodrick will be submitting a paper entitled “Tradition Without Continuity in Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution,” for discussion (will be sent on Wednesday, June 25).

Paper Summary: In “Tradition Without Continuity in Hannah Arendt’s On Revolution,” I analyze the role that the concept of the “break in tradition” plays in this book. I argue that, whereas Arendt often treats the break in tradition as a specific historical event, and generally presents the lost tradition in elegiac tones, On Revolution offers a different vision of the break in tradition that treats it as an almost metaphysical aspect of the human condition and highlights the generative possibilities for new political forms that are enabled by leaving old traditions behind. I discuss her understanding of the American founders’ use of tradition, including the stories of Moses and Aeneas, as a patchwork of freely chosen appropriations rather than an organic, continuous whole and I argue that this model of relating to tradition allows for a national identity that is free from ethnonationalist conceptions of belonging. I also discuss the possible critiques of this approach to history, particularly their reliance on a settler-colonial conception of America as “empty.” Finally, I explore whether Arendt’s understanding of the role of history in the American founding and the role of tradition in American national self-conception can shed light on Arendt’s understanding of and criticisms of the State of Israel.

Prof. William Collins Donahue

The Department of Anglophone Studies welcomes Prof. William Collins Donahue, who will be a Senior Fellow at the College for Social Sciences and Humanities of the Research Alliance Ruhr and will be collaborating with Prof. Jens Martin Gurr as his tandem partner.

https://www.college-uaruhr.de/fellowship/senior-fellows