Professor Ritchie Robertson is the former Schwarz-Taylor Chair of German Language and Literature, Fellow of The Queen’s College, University of Oxford. He is interested in a wide range of authors and topics in the period from 1750 onwards, notably Kafka; Heine; Schiller; Austrian literature; and the Enlightenment as an international movement. He is convenor of the monograph series Germanic Literatures, published by Legenda. His New History of the Enlightenment is due out from Penguin Books in March 2020. He is author of The ‘Jewish Question’ in German Literature, 1749-1939 (Oxford: OUP, 1999), as well as numerous other works. He is currently working on a study of Machiavelli’s reception in Germany from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. His books include Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature (1985); The ‘Jewish Problem’ in German Literature 1749-1939 (1999); and most recently The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness 1680-1790 (2020).

Introduction by: Dr Meindert Peters
‘Kafka: the making of an icon: Introduction to Exhibition’

Dr Peters is co-curator of Kafka: Making of an Icon, a major exhibition at the Weston Library in Oxford. He has research interests in literary modernism, German philosophy (especially Nietzsche, Heidegger, Benjamin), twentieth-century dance (especially Pina Bausch), and contemporary theories of embodied cognition. His first monograph-length project explored embodied responses in German modernist literature and thought, and the existential implications of the training and re-shaping of such responses. His current Leverhulme-funded project explores dance adaptations of European modernist literature and what they might tell us about the continuing relevance of modernist texts in the 21st century. He is series editor of Brill’s Bodies & Abilities in Culture, Literature, and the Arts.

Dr Naftali Loewenthal
‘Franz Kafka and Jiri Langer’

Naftali Loewenthal is assistant Professor at the Dept of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL. He is author of Communicating the Infinite: the Emergence of the Habad School (Chicago, 1990) and Hasidism beyond Modernity, Studies in Habad Thought and History (Littmann Library).

Buffet Reception 19:00 – RSVP for buffet: mailto:info@oxfordchabad.org

Join Zoom Meeting: us02web.zoom.us/j/84043331777?pwd=adIljIOBnkVGWtm25TgDmsH2OD8y5e.1
Meeting ID: 840 4333 1777 / Passcode: 096773