In The Curious Humanist: Siegfried Kracauer in America (University of California Press), Johannes von Moltke details the intricate ways in which the American intellectual and political context shaped Kracauer's seminal contributions to film studies and shows how, in turn, Kracauer's American writings helped shape the emergent discipline. Using archival sources and detailed readings, von Moltke asks what it means to consider Kracauer as the New York Intellectual he became in the last quarter century of his life.  Adopting a transatlantic perspective on Kracauer’s work, von Moltke demonstrates how he pursued questions in conversation with contemporary critics from Theodor Adorno to Hannah Arendt, from Clement Greenberg to Robert Warshow: questions about the origins of totalitarianism and the authoritarian personality; about high and low culture; about liberalism, democracy, and what it means to be human.

New Writings from Germanic Languages and Literatures
Friday, September 23, 2016

Literati Bookstore 
7:00 p.m. 

Please join us at Literati to celebrate the new work by the esteemed faculty of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures: Johannes von MoltkeHelmut PuffScott Spector, andSilke-Maria Weineck. Authors will be presenting and discussing their work -- and will have copies available for purchase. For a full list of works to be discussed, please click here