Hannah Arendt Right Now

The weekend of December 1-3, 2006
Current Working Schedule
(Subject to revision: Revisions to be posted here.)

Saturday, December 2, 2006

10:00am Introduction: Lawrence Weschler
10:05-11:15am Jonathan Schell, respondent Elisabeth Young-Bruehl
11:30am-12:45pm Kanan Makiya, respondent Jonathan Schell

{BREAK}

2:15pm-3:45pm Azar Nafisi, respondent Ladan Boroumand
4:00pm-5:30pm Samantha Power, respondent Azar Nafisi

{BREAK}

7:30pm-9:30pm With Eichmann Back in Jerusalem
- Anthony Grafton introduces
- Passages shown from Rony Brauman and Eyal SivanÕs Arendt-inflected documentary on the trial (The Specialist), introduced by Rony Brauman
- A conversation with Margarethe von Trotta (by video from Paris), along with her collaborating screenwriter Pamela Katz (both discussing the fictional film they're currently developing around Arendt's presence at the trial, and the ensuing controversy). Robert Sklar and Susan Neiman, discussants

Sunday, December 3, 2006

10:00amIntroduction: Elisabeth Young-Bruehl
10:15-11:30am Rony Brauman, respondent Samantha Power
11:45am-1:00pm Walter Mosley, introduced by Siva Vaidhyanathan, respondent Steve Wasserman

{LUNCH}

7:30pm Reading of Vivian Gornick's "Between Friends,"
drawn from the Hannah Arendt/Mary McCarthy letters. to be performed at the Center for Jewish History on 15 W. 16th St.,Tickets and information available at: cjh.org

The year 2006, the centenary of the birth of the incomparable German-Jewish émigré political theorist Hannah Arendt, is being observed throughout the world with seminars, conferences and celebrations. There have already been academic events in Slovenia, Oslo, Berlin, and at Yale. Immediately upcoming are symposia in Paris, Washington D.C., and at Bard College, where both Arendt and her husband Heinrich Bluecher (who taught there) are buried. Most of these have been focusing on Arendt's work in its historic and biographical context (for example. surveying questions surrounding the philosopher's relationships with her Jewish origins, the Germanic philosophic tradition, the upsurge of totalitarianism, and the general condition of exile).

This season of commemoration will be culminating this December here in New York, the city she made her final home and to whose cultural/political life she offered such crucial contributions. On Thursday, November 30 and Friday December 1, the New School for Social Research, Arendt's last teaching post, will convene a symposium featuring contributions from young academics currently seized by her work. And then, on the Saturday and Sunday that follow, December 2 and 3, the New York Institute for the Humanities at NYU proposes to mount a more public ally oriented commemoration, entitled "Hannah Arendt Right Now," specifically exploring the continuing and indeed urgent relevance of so much of Arendt's thinking to the political and ethical challenges facing the world today.

Among those (all of whom have found Arendt to be a profound influence on their work and political outlook) who will be participating are:

Samantha Power, Carr Center at Harvard, and author of A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.

Azar Nafisi, John Hopkins University, Iranian exile professor of literature and author of Reading Lolita in Tehran.

Rony Brauman, cofounder of Medicins sans Frontiers and screenwriter of the documentary, The Specialist, on the Eichmann Trial.

Jonathan Schell, of The Nation and, before that, the New Yorker, and author most recently of The Unconquerable World.

Kanan Makiya, Brandeis University, Iraqi dissident activist, author of Republic of Fear and Cruelty and Silence.

Margarethe von Trotta, the legendary German filmmaker, currently working up a feature film around Arendt's involvement in the Eichmann trial.

Susan Neiman, the Einstein Forum in Potsdam, whose Evil in Modern Thought: an Alternative History of Philosophy, culminates in a consideration of Arendt.

Walter Mosley, the celebrated creator of the Easy Rawlins mysteries and other sagas of the American black experience, who (who knew?) turns out to be an avid Arendt fan.

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, student of Arendt's at the New School and author of her biography, For Love of the World, and now Why Arendt Matters.

Vivian Gornick, whose play, "Between Friends," based on the letters of Arendt and Mary McCarthy, will receive a reading.And others as well, including Anthony Grafton of Princeton University and Steve Wasserman, former editor of the LA Times Book Review.

The preponderance of the events will take place at: Cantor Film Center, 38 East 8th Street, New York, NY 10003 (between University Place and Broadway).

For further information, contact: Molly Sullivan at ms1386@nyu.edu or 212-998-2100.