Thursday, March 20 | 2 - 3  p.m. AZ time | ASU Tempe, COOR 4403

In person and on Zoom.

Led by Saskia Fischer, zurzeit Max Kade Visiting Professor, Michigan State University and Research Professor, Leibniz University Hannover (Germany)

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About the lecture: The novel by contemporary German Jewish author Maxim Biller, Der falsche Gruß (The False Salute), published in 2021, tells the story of Erck Dessauer, a modern antisemite who is not a violent tyrant but rather an intellectual and a storyteller.  To what extent is German society and, in particular, its cultural scene antisemitic? And what role do the arts play in all this? Do they reveal or conceal antisemitism? Moreover, following Biller’s observations in his novel, aren’t antisemites first and foremost artists and storytellers themselves? These are the troubling issues that Biller’s book illuminates and discusses. Antisemitism and the arts are not mutually exclusive. The consequences resulting from this — not just for modern democratic societies and their relationship to antisemitism, but also for art itself as a presumed medium of tolerance and humanitarianism.

About Saskia Fischer: Saskia Fischer has been a research associate at Leibniz University Hannover (Germany) since 2020. She studied Literary Studies, History, Philosophy, and Art History in Leipzig and Bielefeld and received her Ph.D. from the University of Bielefeld in 2016. Currently, she is the distinguished Max Kade Visiting Professor at Michigan State University. She coordinated the research group “Felix Culpa? Guilt as a Culturally Productive Force” at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZiF), Bielefeld. She is the recipient of several fellowships, among others from the DAAD (German Academic  Exchange Service), the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, the Holocaust Educational Foundation at Northwestern University, and the Klassik Stiftung Weimar. Furthermore, she is a Young-ZiF Fellow at the Center for interdisciplinary Research, Bielefeld, a member of the WAG Postdoc Network for Jewish Studies of the Leo Baeck Institute Berlin and part of a research project on representations of right-wing extremism and violence in literature, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).