Panel: As we lay bearing. The Vulnerability of Pregnant Bodies in the History of Medicine and Visual Arts (Sep 2024)
The mankind is »of woman born« as Adrienne Rich, feminist, activist, mother, writer, and scholar has put it fifty years ago (cf. Rich 1976). Her book was not just a feministic statement on motherhood and pregnancy, but a social, cultural, and political confession that motherhood is more than an individual feeling or state of mind, it is an existential transformation of two different bodies connected by tissues, blood, hormones. She also denaturalizes the feeling of a mother and criticizes the religious-romantic vision of mothers as holy figures in society. One can say that there is no embodied history without the bodies that lay down giving birth to human beings.
In our interdisciplinary Panel we will discuss with Prof. Dr. Birgit Nemec (Charité), Dr. Jesse Olszynko-Gryn (MPIWG), Yanara Schmacks (New York), Sophie König (Leipzig) and Mareike Haley (Berlin) stories of Disability, Guilt, and Perseverance, Debates and Reforms Concerning Maternal Care and Infant Mortality in Germany, the Maternal Body and Feminist Motherhood and the Dual Connotation of the Feeding Breast in modern Photography.
Our Panel 5 will take place on Friday, 6th of September 2024, 9.00-11.00 Panel Session at the New Palais in Potsdam
See the whole panel program of our guests here
International Conference
Latin America and East Central Europe: Comparisons, Bridges, Entanglements, 26. - 28. October 2022 at FU Berlin
concept and organization by Agnieszka Hudzik (University of Saarbrücken), Jorge Estrada (FU Berlin), Patricia Gwozdz (University of Potsdam) und Joanna Moszczynska (University of Regensburg)
The literary entanglements between Latin America and East Central Europe from the 20th century to the present are politically, culturally, and literarily diverse, but never random: Critical examinations of terms such as "post-imperial", "marginal", or "peripheral" are reflected in their respective intellectual fields and literary productions that negotiate transatlantic "elective affinities", while competing for recognition within the history of world literature.
The international conference explored literary history, poetics, intellectual networks, and aesthetic theory on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The participating scholars discussed the situatedness of the literatures and actors of the regions and reflected on their transcultural and transareal convivialities.
For more information read here
International Conference
Transitions. Theories and Practices of the Literatures of the World
concept and organization by Patricia A. Gwozdz & Markus Lenz, University of Potsdam, 14.12.16 – 16.12.16, with public lectures by Emine Özdamar & Yoko Tawada
French-German Workshop
Thinking the Vital: Art, Science, Anthropology, 23.06.2016
french-german workshop organized by Patricia A. Gwozdz (Romance Studies, University of Potsdam), Thomas Ebke (Department of Philosophy, University of Potsdam) and Moritz Gansen (Leuphana University)
International Conference
Ma(n)chines: Life, Forms, Machine - Machine, Forms, Life, 5.-7.12.2013
concept & organization by Patricia Gwozdz, Jakob Heller & Tim Sparenberg funded by the German Research Foundation and the Research Training Group "Forms of Life & Knowledge of Living" at the University of Potsdam & Europe-University Viadrina Frankfurt/Oder in cooperation with "Haus der Kulturen der Welt" (Berlin) & the Max-Planck Institute for the History of Science (Berlin)