The Department of Germanic Studies Presents:
Helmut Puff
"Toward a History of Waiting: Mozart, Watteau, Müller"
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
4:30pm, Wieboldt 206
"For all too long, waiting has lingered below the threshold of our historical perception. Despite the fact that “waiting is … a key dimension of modernity,” as Craig Jeffrey claims, it “is a temporal region hardly mapped and badly documented” (Harold Schweizer). The moment has come to delve into how those who waited increased their awareness of time as well as of themselves and their place in the world. By bringing waiting in history to the fore, this talk seeks to lead the debate on time away from the existential themes that have dominated its exploration. This first foray into this new terrain is therefore less interested in the final truths about time’s essence than in the temporal poetics of the everyday."
Helmut Puff is professor of German Studies, History, and Women’s Studies at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He is the author of Sodomy in Reformation Germany and Switzerland 1400-1600 (2003) and Miniature Monuments: Modeling German History (2014). His scholarly profile focuses on German literature, history, and culture in the medieval and early modern periods. He specializes in gender studies, the history of sexuality, and the literature of the Reformation. Recently, he has started a new project on waiting as a mode of experienced temporality between the Middle Ages and the twentieth century.
If you have a disability and need assistance, please contact Michelle Zimet at mzimet@uchicago.edu or (773)702-8494.