In times of growing inequality, exclusion, and polarization, how might film, literature, and theory help us imagine new forms of collectivity? We are delighted to welcome Claudia Breger (Columbia University) for two events hosted by TP05 Affective Contemporaneity.

The twenty-first century has witnessed a resurgence of economic inequality, racial exclusion, and political hatred, causing questions of collective identity and belonging to assume new urgency. In her book "Making Worlds: Affect and Collectivity in Contemporary European Cinema" (2020), Claudia Breger has argued that contemporary European cinema provides ways of thinking about and feeling collectivity that can challenge these political trends and developed a new model of cinematic world making. In her current book project, tentatively titled "Imaginative Assemblies: Political Aesthetics in Transatlantic Dialogue", she further builds on this analysis and sets out to recasts political aesthetics for our contemporary moment by way of a multiway dialogue between the tradition of political aesthetics that German (émigré) critical theorists developed in response to historical fascism and twenty-first century work in new materialism, radical Black thought, neo-Marxism, affect, and queer studies. 

June 12, 2025 – 16:00-18.00
In an afternoon session, Claudia Breger will present her current book project "Imaginative Assemblies: Political Aesthetics in Transatlantic Dialogue", which explores political aesthetics through a transatlantic lens, bridging critical theory, affect studies, and radical thought. The presentation will be in English; discussion in English and German.
Location: Habelschwerdter Allee 45, JK 31/122 (German Department)

June 13, 2025 – 10:00–14:00
In a workshop format, Breger will discuss her concept of affective world making, with responses from CRC members and time for joint discussion. While English participation is welcome, the session will be held predominantly in German.
Location: Habelschwerdter Allee 45, JK 33/121 (Friedrich-Schlegel-School)

Claudia Breger is the Villard Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, New York. She is one of German Studies‘ leading scholars of affect theory, with her research focussing on twentieth- and twenty-first century culture. Studying literature, film and theater, she has written on the intersections of gender, sexuality and race as well as on the relationship between queer studies and affect theory, for instance in her Hirschfeld-Lectures Nach dem Sex?(2014). She has visited the CRC in past, contributing to the centre‘s annual conference on Public Spheres of Resonance in 2017.