On March 27, I’m invited to speak at the opening of a new exhibition in the Reichstag-building in Berlin. The exhibition addresses one of the major achievements of the 1848/49 revolution: the Imperial Constitution adopted by the National Assembly on 27 March 1849. It’s center piece is the original constitution document itself (one of three originals, actually, but the only parchment version), signed by 405 Members of Germany’s first national parliament.
More information on the exhibition, planned by Klaus Seidl and Hilmar Sack of the parliament’s scientific service, an be found here.
A catalogue is in the making and will be available soon through this link.
In the coming months, the University of Passau organizes a series of 10-minute lunchtime lectures on silence. Most contributions come from law and sociology, but other disciplines are also represented.
My own contribution on 30 November addresses Niklas Luhmann’s theoretical exploration of silence from the perspective of systems theory and its implications for sociological (and historical) research.
All lectures (in German) can be attended on zoom as well as offline.
[Edit (Feb. 22, 2023): the lectures are now available online on this website.]
On August 18, 6 pm, I’m presenting my research on the first German national parliament and its role in the revolution of 1848/49 at the Cemetry of the March Revolution in Berlin.
Please note that due to expected weather conditions the venue has changed. More information can be found here.
On January 13 and 14, I am attending the conference
Languages, Discourses and Practices beyond the Vote: New Perspectives on Politicization in the Nineteenth Century
which was originally planned in Madrid, but is now held online. The organizers, Oriol Luján and Diego Palacios Cerezales (Madrid), seek to build on recent debates on nineteenth-century processes of politicization, collective mobilization, citizenship-buidling, electoral practices and petitioning.
In my own contribution, titled
Plebiscites on the Streets: The Politics of Public Acclamation in Early Nineteenth-Century Europe
I will discuss the politics of applause, cheering and other modes of vocal support and disapprobation.
Theo Jung (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), Plebiscites on the Streets: The Politics of Public Acclamation in Early Nineteenth-Century Europe
Emmanuel Fureix (Université Paris-Est Créteil), Visual History and Popular Politicization in the 19th Century: Approaches and Proposals (France, 1814-1871)
11.00 Coffee break
11.15 Second Session– Mass Politics? Associations and campaigns
Maartje Janse (Leiden University), Voluntary associations and political participation
Diego Palacios Cerezales (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Comparative cultures of mobilisation. Transnational Catholic campaigns in the 19th century
12.35 Lunchbreak
15.00 Third Session – Representation and citizenship
Henry Miller (Durham University), Petitioning and representation
Florencia Peyrou (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Women, politics and politicization in Spain (1808-1874)
Volker Köhler (TU Darmstadt), A Republican Intermezzo? Changing Perceptions of State and Citizenship in the city of Mainz, 1793-1814
17.00 End of the day
Thursday 14 January 2021
9.30 Fourth Session – Popular mobilisation
Álvaro París Martín (Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès), Popular Royalism in the Marketplace: Women, Work and Everyday Politics in Marseille and Madrid (1814-1830)
Jordi Roca Vernet (Universitat de Barcelona), Popular mobilization through the National Militia. Cities and liberal revolution
10.50 Coffee break
11.00 Fifth Session – Participation in elections beyond vote
Malcolm Crook (Keele University), Hoarse throats and sore heads: popular participation in elections before democracy
Oriol Luján (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Political citizens, thanks to or despite the law? The empowered voice of subjects in electoral claims
A few months ago, I discussed my ongoing book project on the politics of silence in nineteenth century Europe with Philipp Janssen, the host of the wonderful Anno … podcast. The result has just been published and can be downloaded on the website (here) or through any major podcast provider.
We discussed various case studies as well as the project’s general structure.
If you are looking for a (German language) history podcast that adresses a wide range of topics and builds bridges between academic research and a wider audience interested in history, this is the place to start.
To get into it, I can recommend the episodes with my colleagues Sonja Levsen (on postwar education in France and Germany) and Claudia Gatzka (on postwar democratic cultur in Germany and Italy), or perhaps my former Bielefeld colleagues Silke Schwandt (on legal practices in Medieval Britain), Daniel Siemens (on the SA), Axel Hüntelmann (on medical scientist Paul Ehrlich), Levke Harders (on migration in nineteenth century Germany) or Hedwig Richter (on voting cultures in nineteenth century Prussia and the US). In all, there are now over 60 episodes of about one hour each.
Many thanks to Philipp Janssen for his interest in my research and for a very pleasant and lively discussion.
Today, I had a chat about my ongoing research project on political silences in 19th-century Europe with Philipp Janssen for his marvellous podcast Anno PunktPunktPunkt. It will probably take a while until our discussion is published in its feed (available on all the major podcast providers), but until then, I can highly recommend listening to the 50+ episodes currently online.
Some information on the podcast project itself can be found here.
Next week, 24 and 25 September, I’ll be participating in a workshop held in Marburg, titled:
Aristokratismus. Historische und literarische Semantik von ‘Adel’ zwischen Kulturkritik der Jahrhundertwende und Nationalsozialismus (1890-1945).
Aristocratism. Historical and Literary Semantics of ‘Aristocracy’ between Cultural Criticism of the Turn of the Century and National Socialism (1890-1945)
The workshop is part of a DFG-funded research project on the same theme and is organized by Prof. Dr. Eckart Conze, PD Dr. Jochen Strobel, Daniel Thiel und Jan de Vries.
My paper pursues a diachronic comparison of German discourses of cultural criticism around 1800 and around 1900, focussing on the differences in the use of semantics of aristocracy in these contexts. Thus, the paper offers an empirical case study using a model distinguishing between four dimensions of change in the history of cultural criticism I formulated last year on a conference in Heidelberg (soon to be published in its proceedings).
The Call for Papers for the Marburg workshop may be found here.
Next week, I will be presenting a paper at an academic workshop organized by Juri Auderset, Andreas Behr, Philipp Müller and Aline Steinbrecher at the University of Fribourg (CH). The workshop’s topic is “Zeiterfahrung. Untersuchungen über Beschleunigung und Entschleunigung von Geschichte” (Temporal Experience: Studies on Acceleration and Deceleration in History). It’s ultimate goal is to prepare a special issue of the journal Traverse: Zeitschrift für Geschichte in 2016.
The topic of my paper is the variety of discourses of acceleration in nineteenth century germany. Considering the influential views of accelleration formulated by Hartmut Rosa and Reinhart Koselleck in terms of attempts at a general temporal theory of modernization, the paper points to the method of Historical Semantics as a way to more fruitfully consider the plurality of experiences and discourses of temporality in this period. Instead of searching for a single, specific temporality of the modern era, the paper argues for a differentiated view of the pluriform ways in which contemporaries experienced the temporal nature of their own present.
See here for the call for fapers and here for the workshop’s program.
Theo Jung 