The Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures presents its Graduate Student / Faculty Colloquium Series

The talks will be:

“The Colors of Lola”

Prof. Simon Richter, University of Pennsylvania

The “Lola film”—any of more than 20 films made in conscious reference to the “Ur-Lola,” Sternberg and Dietrich’s The Blue Angel—has attracted more than its share of brilliant cinematic colorists. Starting with Max Ophuls’ Lola Montez (1954), I analyze the symbolic use of color in several important Lola films: Dymtryk’s 1959 remake of The Blue Angel with legendary cinematographer Leon Shamroy; Fassbinder’s 1981 Lola; Tykwer’s 1998 Run Lola Run; Hong Li’s 2005 Curse of Lola; and Seidler and Siler’s 2009 lesbian remake of Tykwer’s film, And Then Came Lola. No film clips, but plenty of stills!

and

“Authoring World Literature”

Kristen Sincavage, University of Pennsylvania

 In an interview shortly after 9/11 author Christian Kracht pronounces that he wants his own radical Bildverbot.  More than merely incendiary, Kracht’s praise for the ban of images addresses issues of identity in an age of globalization. Both on and off the page, Kracht embraces distortion and blurs the boundaries between genres and cultures. Kracht’s own Bildverbot would allow for his escape from a world of fixed identities and symbols. This escape opens up a space in which both instability and possibility abound. In this paper I look to the genre-bending, self-fashioning figure of Christian Kracht to investigate further what it means to author world literature.  Whether it be Damrosch’s elliptical refraction or Moretti’s system of variations, notions of a global literary field constantly grapple with issues of instability.  Processes of circulating and receiving texts within the vast networks and systems of world literature always involve the breakdown of clear borders between genres and cultures.  Negotiated cultural exchange and slippery identities often mark the production of the global text itself.  Kracht serves as a compelling figure in thinking about the origin or author of world literature in Damrosch’s and Moretti’s systems.