The Baltic Sea Region is an area where changes mostly occur within a set of intertwining transregional parameters. By focusing on the aftereffects of transformations, this joint lecture series inquires about processes that lack the chance of a turn-around: from a single event to a concatenation of circumstances leading to an unforeseeable outcome. It can be difficult to draw a line between the permanent and the transient, but there are, certainly, damages or developments that are irreversible, in terms of material loss or environmental change. At the same time, the very idea of irreversibility has to be processed in language and media; it is part of a discourse and thus of history. In literary theory, the term ‘peripety’ signifies a reversal of action: How do narrations model and maybe alter the irreversible? How do geopolitical tipping points affect subsequent generations? In taking historico-political, narrative, ecological, material, and aesthetic changes into consideration, this summer term program seeks to bring conceptional clarifications, concrete case studies from a broad range of disciplines and regional studies approaches together.

Organisation and moderation:

Dr. des. Verena Liu, International Centre for Baltic Sea Region Research (IFZO) | Dr. Arne Segelke, Master Programme “History and Culture in the Baltic Sea Region” (HiCuBaS)| Torsten Veit, Research Centre for Manors in the Baltic Sea Region | Dr. Alexander Waszynski, IRTG “Baltic Peripeties. Narratives of Reformations, Revolutions and Catastrophes”

Programme:

April 7 2022

Assoc-Prof. Immo Trinks, Ph.D. (Wien)
Mapping the Past – from Irreversible Archaeological Excavations to the Non-invasive Exploration of Entire Archaeological Landscapes

April 14 2022

Prof. Dr Benno Wagner (Hangzhou)
“He could never go home now”. Imperceptible Turning Points and Irreversible Trajectories as Narrative Devices in Conrad and Kafka

April 21 2022

Maja Hagerman (Falun)
Herman Lundborg – The Enigma of a Swedish Racial Biologist

April 28 2022

Prof. Dr Luc van Doorslaer (Tartu)
The Paradigm Shift from Non-change to Change: Reflections on Translation and Translation Studies

May 5 2022

Oliver Hauck (Frankfurt am Main)
Digital Reconstruction and “Rechte Räume” – Architectural Reconstruction between Cultural Heritage Mediation and “Right-Wing” Urbanism

May 12 2022

Prof. Dr Marie-Theres Federhofer (Tromsø/HU Berlin)
In Search of the Northern Lights. On the Research History of a Riddle of the Sky

May 19 2022

Roundtable: Irreversible Actions in Politics (18.15 – 19.00 CEST)
Dr. Andris Banka, Prof. Dr. Roman Dubasevych, Natalia Iost (all Greifswald)

Prof. Dr Philipp Ther (Wien)
In the Storms of Transformation: Shipbuilding and Social Change in Eastern Europe and the EU (19.00 – 20.30 CEST, lecture in German)

June 2 2022

Dr Kathleen Schwerdtner Máñez (Greifswald)
Making the Baltic Blue – Supporting Ocean Literacy for the Sustainable Development of the Baltic Sea

June 16 2022

Wibke Müller (Greifswald)
Climate Crisis – Water Crisis

June 23 2022

Prof. Dr Micha Werner (Greifswald)
Choices, Harm, and Reconciliation: (Ir)reversibility in Contexts of Moral Philosophy

June 30 2022

Prof. Dr Holger Schulze (Copenhagen)
The Implex: On Transforming the Seemingly Irreversible in the 21st Century

July 6 2022

Prof. Dr Thomas Mohnike (Strasbourg)
Mythemes of the North. Tracing Historical Change in the Discursive Grammar of the North with Computational Methods (16.15 – 17.45 CEST)

July 14 2022

Zuzanna Hertzberg, Ph.D. (Warsaw)
Recovering Nomadic Memory of the Ignitions of the Revolution as a Spark for Embodiment of Utopia Today

For online participation please contact [email protected].