“Rethinking the West: Promise and Crisis of a Concept” was a transatlantic program series with events in the United States and Germany from December 2022 to February 2023. The program sought to explore changing definitions of common ideas of ‘the West’ vis-à-vis the rest of the world, taking into consideration the global developments amplified by the war in Ukraine. By focusing on cultural, political and artistic themes, the program invited scholars, artists and intellectuals from different backgrounds and fields, to discuss these changing cultural concepts. On this page we present, in three individual reports, some of the results.
East Comma West – Münster
Even the most casual observers of current events will recognize the immediacy with which a term, whose fortunes and uses had been mixed and uncertain for quite some time, has once more been thrust into to the spotlight: the West. That term has been a useful stand-in for the system of transatlantic economic and educational ties, military and political alliances, and sentiments of a common heritage reaching back to Antiquity and the founding of Christendom…
→ Read the full reportArt Between Cultures – Los Angeles
In late January, the Thomas Mann House collaborated with the Wende Museum, the University of Münster and the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation for a conversation with the artist Phung Huynh and curator Asha Bukojemsky, moderated by the Wende Museums Chief Curator and Director of Programming Joes Segal. This event is part of a series on “Rethinking the West: Promise and Crisis of a Concept.” The conversation took place at the Wende Museum in Culver City on January 22, 2023…
→ Read the full reportAmerica as Future and Past – München
The systemic question between Western liberal democracy and Chinese capitalist central state lies at the center of contemporary global political debates. At an event hosted by the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung on Feb. 13, 2023 entitled “America as Future and Past: Alexis de Tocqueville and Wang Huning,” sinologist Daniel Leese and historian Jörn Leonhard, both from Freiburg, offered two perspectives on this question from a history of ideas perspective…
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