As up-and-coming young musician Leila Arad is singing, it currently feels like the youth of the world is moving to Berlin: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yrgnkd-Lsl8&feature=kp, and NYU Berlin’s academic and cultural life is thriving in the process.
The Spring 2014 semester began for NYU Berlin with a comprehensive assessment by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education that involved an evaluation of all NYU Berlin’s courses and faculty, as well as a site visit by a Middle States representative, interviews with staff and students, and auditing of classes – the outcome was extremely positive.
Further highlights of the Spring 2014 semester were:
NYU Berlin and Theater:
NYU Berlin Student Logan Verdoorn won the President’s Service Award for his work creating a collaborative theater project between NYU Berlin Students and a theater class from a local Berlin high school, offering students an excellent opportunity to engage in community outreach while strengthening their language skills. During the semester he created the Theater Project – which is now an ongoing offering each semester at NYU Berlin – Logan also worked closely with a German Brecht scholar from the Free University Berlin to complete his independent study on Brechtian Theory and interned with the English Theatre Berlin.
NYU Berlin and the Arts:
NYU Berlin acquired an exciting new art studio, St. Agnes, a former church built in the brutalist style. St. Agnes also houses the world-renowned art gallery Johann König, and NYUBerlin is looking forward to a fruitful coexistence.
The Spring term saw two successful exhibitions by NYU Berlin students: one at the Deutsches Haus in New York and our regular end of term show.
NYU Berlin and Film:
As every year, all students in NYU Berlin’s German Cinema course with Professor Sabine Müller were accredited at the Berlinale, the Berlin International Film Festival, one of the world’s leading film festivals. During NYU Ally Week, one of the Berlinale entries, the social-realist drama Jack by Edward Berger, was screened exclusively for NYU Berlin students and alumni followed by a discussion with the director led by NYU Berlin students.
NYU Berlin and Literature:
As part of NYU Berlin’s lunchtime seminar series, which is open to all students and an increasing number of alumni that have moved to Berlin, two renowned authors and modern-day literary chroniclers of Berlin gave readings: David Wagner, winner of the 2013 Leipziger Book Prize, and Peter Wortsman, American Academy Fellow. Other lunchtime seminars were an international panel of historians and authors on the First World War, debating its relevance to today’s world, one hundred years after its outbreak. NYU Professor Janet Neipris gave a seminar on playwriting and screenwriting.
New NYU Berlin Faculty:
NYU Berlin welcomed new faculty for the Spring term:
Dr. Sasha Disko is a social and cultural historian and NYU alumni who sees the role of economics as central to understanding modern societies. Her first monograph, The Devil’s Wheels (Berghahn Books, forthcoming), is an economic, social and cultural history that explores shifts in the construction of gender through the practice of motorcycling during the Weimar Republic. She is also currently working for Volkswagen as a researcher on a project on the 100-year history of the assembly line in the automobile industry.
Dr. Jan-Henrik Meyer studied history, political science and sociology at Humboldt-University Berlin, the LSE and Duke University. His current research explores the origins of European environmental policy in a transnational network perspective. He has been a Marie-Curie Fellow (Portsmouth) and a Rachel Carson Fellow (Munich). His recent publications are Global Protest against Nuclear Power, edited by Astrid M. Kirchhof and Jan-Henrik Meyer (Historical Social Research 39, 2014, 1); and Societal Actors in European Integration: Polity-Building and Policy-Making 1958-1992, edited by W. Kaiser and J.-H. Meyer (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2013).
Jana Hulbert teaches German at NYU and Humboldt-University Berlin, where she is involved in several research projects. She graduated with a Master’s in German as a Foreign Language from Humboldt University. She also studied Cultural Studies, Linguistics and Literature in Frankfurt/Oder and Valencia, Spain. Jana was born in Berlin, but lived and taught in many other places all over the world. Jana’s scholarly interests are sociolinguistics, literature and Arts. Besides that she cares about environment and animal treatment.
NYU Berlin’s German Language Program:
The German language Department organized several co-curricular activities and cultural events on different levels. The second time we had David Wagner (Leipziger Buchpreis 2013) for a book discussion at NYU Berlin. His current Berlin-related texts were read in many language classes and questions were prepared. Students loved the atmosphere of having a discussion about contemporary German (Berlin) literature with a well-known and very charismatically author.
Furthermore, the German Department arranged many tandem relationships. Our tandem program is one of our most popular offerings to the students. It enables students to get to know German students from the local universities and make progress in their language skills.