#germanic studies

[otakunoculture]

On Elves in Pop Culture & Uvic's Beck Lecture Series Celebrating 30 Years

On #Elves in #PopCulture & @Uvic's Beck Lecture Series Celebrating 30 Years #folklore #opendistancelearning

By Ed Sum (The Vintage Tempest)

The Beck Lecture series at the University of Victoria (located in British Columbia, Canada) celebrated 30 years and concluded this year’s offerings with a look into the Icelandic occult world by Dr. Guðrún Björk Guðsteinsdóttir. She gave the curious a look at elves, ghosts, and trolls from a cultural and literary perspective. Of the former, I sometimes feel like…

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[sullythecrimsoncavalier]

And in just 500 words, I have lost the respect of all those in academia.

I mean, I wrote it a week ago, but I didn’t submit it til today.

I didn’t know I cared this much about what’s left of my dignity til now.

[atthevoidsedge]

Belief in the existence in every man of a spirit capable of leaving the body to take on a non-human shape gave rise among the Teutons, as among many other peoples, to the conviction that certain men could change themselves into animals. All Teutons have believed in the existence of the werewolf; that is of a man who has the power to turn himself into a wolf, in order either to attack other men or to ravish their flocks. It was also admitted that in certain cases the metamorphosis was involuntary and resulted from a spell cast by an enemy skilled in the practice of sorcery.

-- New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology

[atthevoidsedge]

The distinction which the Germans made between soul and body did not altogether correspond to the Christian conception of these two elements in human nature. While, for Christians, the soul was entirely immaterial and impalpable, the second 'ego' which the Germans believed all men to possess could exercise bodily functions, speak, move, act, even appear in the form of a human being or animal. The Scandinavians called this half-material 'ego,' the fylgja, which means roughly 'the follower,' 'the second.' [...] Little by little the Teutons came to consider the fylgja as an independent being, as a demon that had no connection with any specific individual. Ultimately it was supposed to be able to incarnate the soul of ancestors or even the soul of a religion. In appearance it was an armed woman, a sort of goddess riding through the air. Though originally protective spirits, the fylgjur (plural of fylgja) began, with the introduction of Christianity, to be feared as noxious demons.

-- New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology

[amstdgsiub]

On Campus: Moving Images (CAHI)

Moving Scenes: Affect, Drama, Film, Performance

A Workshop

Location: CAHI, 1211 E. Atwater Avenue

Saturday, September 21st

Welcome: Claudia Breger (10:00 a.m.)

Panel I: Theoretical Prolegomena (10:15 a.m.-11:45 a.m.) Moderator: Claudia Breger

Johannes v. Moltke (University of Michigan): Post-Critical Affect: What's Left Behind the Affective Turn

Shane Vogel (IUB): Between Affect and Performativity: The Curious Divorce of Letitia Ernestine Brown

Coffee break

Panel II: Concepts and Bodies (12 p.m-12:45p.m.) Moderator: Marc Weiner

Michel Chaouli (IUB): Thinking With Disgust

Lunch break

Panel III: Historical Perspectives (2:30p.m.-4pm) Moderator: Benjamin Robinson

Johannes Türk (IUB): Theatricality and Affect in Diderot

Anita Lukic (IUB): Feelings, Desires, Interests: Mapping Affect in 18th-Century German Drama

Coffee break

Keynote (4:30pm) Moderator: Bill Rasch

Ethel Matala de Mazza (Humboldt University, Berlin/Bloomington): The Melodrama of Not Being High Art: Renunciation in Franz Lehár's Lyrical Operetta "Friederike"

dinner (For Speakers)

Sunday, September 22

Panel IV: Film and Genre, Part one (9:30a.m.-11a.m) Moderator: Milo Rhodes

Claudia Breger (IUB): Mixed Feelings: Melodrama and Realism in Maïwenn<http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0494069/?ref_=tt_ov_dr>'s Polisse Eric Zobel (IUB): "These Foolish Things..." The Farce of Power in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salò Coffee break

Film and Genre, Part two (11:15a.m.-12:45pm) Moderator: Claudia Breger

James Hook (IUB): Taste Politics in the Face of Flesh and Blood: Affect, Distanciation, and the Critical Reception of Marina de Van's In My Skin

Joan Hawkins (IUB): Affect and Excess in the Horror Films of Ken Russell

This event is being generously funded by a CAHI Conference Grant and the Department of Germanic Studies.