"The Migrations of the Mann Family" by Prof. Veronika Fuechtner (Dartmouth) - Max Kade Distinguished Lecture & Opening Celebration of the Traveling Exhibition "Thomas Mann: Democracy Will Win!"

We are delighted to invite you to this year's

Max Kade Distinguished Lecture in German Studies
by Prof. Veronika Fuechtner (Dartmouth)
Thursday, September 5, 5:30–7:00 PM, Oechsle Hall 224 Auditorium
Followed by a reception in the lobby of Oechsle Hall

Prof. Fuechtner's lecture will open the traveling exhibition "Thomas Mann: Democracy Will Win!" that will be on display at the Williams Center for the Arts from August 28 until October 25th. 

The Migrations of the Mann Family

Thomas Mann’s vision of democracy was shaped by his own history of migration, but also by the many persecutions and migrations in his family.  He grew up with the stories of his mother’s homeland, Brazil.  And eventually in his exile in California, he came to call it his “motherland.”  His brother, his parents in-law, and his children all fled Germany and built new lives in other countries. Mann’s personal experience of racism and anti-Semitism that was directed at him and his family fueled his anti-fascist activism.  And the people who worked for him, also brought their own experiences of migration with them to his house in Pacific Palisades.  This talk puts Thomas Mann’s political vision in conversation with the people closest to him.  

Veronika Fuechtner is Chair of Comparative Literature and Associate Professor of German Studies at Dartmouth College. She also teaches in Jewish Studies, and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is the author of Berlin Psychoanalytic (University of California Press, 2011) and the co-editor of Imagining Germany, Imagining Asia (with Mary Rhiel, Camden House, 2013) and A Global History of Sexual Science 1880-1960 (with Douglas E. Haynes and Ryan Jones, University of California Press, 2017). She is completing a monograph on Thomas and Heinrich Mann's Brazilian mother, Julia Mann, and the Mann family construction of race and "Germanness." Her research interests include the history of psychoanalysis and sexology, the relationship between science and culture, discourses on race and ethnicity, German-language modernism, contemporary culture, German-language film, and global cultural and scientific histories. 

The lecture will be followed by a reception in the lobby of Oechsle Hall. 

We look forward to welcoming you to the event!