Thomas Mann House Events Archive
December 2021
Beyond the Virgin Land
Thomas Mann House (1550 N San Remo Drive Pacific Palisades, CA 90272)
Information
In her latest novel, Something New Under the Sun, New York-based author Alexandra Kleeman tells the story of a novelist who discovers the dark side of Hollywood. She describes a California scarred by droughts and forest fires, where only the rich can afford to survive.
In conversation with Heike Paul, American Studies Scholar and 2021 Thomas Mann House Fellow, Kleeman will reflect on old and new myths of the American West. What role does Hollywood play in those mythical hopes and longings, but also in their disenchantment? What makes Hollywood such a special place to reflect on the state of the country and the world? And what can literature contribute to rewriting cultural imaginaries that make a sustainable future imaginable - and realizable?
By invitation only.
Participants
Alexandra Kleeman is the author of the novels Something New Under the Sun (2021) and You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine (2016), which was named an Editor's Choice by The New York Times. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Zoetrope, Conjunctions, and Guernica, among others. Other works have appeared in Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Tin House, n+1, and The Guardian. She is a winner of the Berlin Prize and the Bard Fiction Prize and was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome. Kleeman lives in Staten Island and teaches at The New School.
Heike Paul is Professor of American Studies, with a focus on North American literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. Her research interests in the field of a culturally hermeneutically oriented American Studies deal, among other things, with cultural patterns of community formation in the United States. She was awarded the Leibniz Prize in 2018 and the Order of Maximilian for Science and Art in 2021. Her publications include: American Citizenship Sentimentalism (2021), The Myths That Made America (2014), and Cultural Contact and Racial Presences: African Americans and German American Literature, 1815-1914 (2005).
The Regime of the Charlatan
Thomas Mann House (1550 N San Remo Drive Pacific Palisades, CA 90272)
Information
Political scientist Claus Leggewie and literary scholar Veronika Fuechtner get into a conversation about the fascinating power of charlatans, their techniques and the people who surrender to them. The figure of the charlatan, who feigns abilities and deceives others, runs through the history of literature as well as politics. What makes it so difficult to unmask and fight charlatans to this day?
The background foil for the conversation is Thomas Mann's novella Mario and the Magician, which Mann wrote after a trip to fascist Italy. Years later, it prompted author Grete De Francesco to write her comprehensive study The Power of the Charlatan, which has recently received renewed attention. The conversation will be moderated by Alexandra Lieben.
By invitation only.
Participants
Veronika Fuechtner is Chair of Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of German Studies at Dartmouth. She is the author of Berlin Psychoanalytic (2011) and the co-editor of Imagining Germany, Imagining Asia (with Mary Rhiel, 2013) and A Global History of Sexual Science 1880-1960 (with Douglas E. Haynes and Ryan Jones, 2017). She is completing a monograph on Thomas Mann's Brazilian mother and Mann's construction of race and "Germanness." In spring 2020 she was a Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.
Claus Leggewie is a political scientist and Ludwig-Börne-Professor at the University of Gießen. He directed the Cultural Studies Institute in Essen for ten years and was a visiting professor at the University of Paris-Nanterre and the New York University (Max Weber Chair). His books include Breivik, Dugin, al-Suri & Co (2016), co-authored with Patricia Nanz, The Consultative: More Democracy through Citizen Participation (2018), and most recently, co-authored with Federic Hanusch and Erik Meyer, Thinking Planetary (2021). He is a 2021 Honorary Fellow at the Thomas Mann House.
Alexandra Lieben is the Deputy Director of the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations – and lecturer at the Luskin School of Public Affairs. She has served as faculty advisory on several social impact projects at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and teaches crisis de-escalation, conflict resolution, and cultural competency to UCLA students and professionals in the public and the private sector. She is a member of the Thomas Mann House Advisory Board.