The Department of German at NYU and Deutsches Haus at NYU present “Overcoming the Present,” a dialogue and bilingual reading with the acclaimed author Max Czollek – the DAAD Chair for Contemporary Poetics at NYU's Department of German this spring – and the literary translator Jon Cho-Polizzi.

How can art and popular culture respond to our age of profound social division? The political far-right is experiencing a resurgence unparalleled in German history since 1945. But the surprise therein lies not with the success of rightwing ideology in a country like Germany, but rather, with the way German politics as usual continue to cling to a self-image of Germany’s positive rehabilitation in which the return of far-right ideology should not be possible at all. And perhaps it is this supposed absence of crisis vis-à-vis Germany’s self-projections that requires more immediate attention than the multiple crises already facing Germany today. Gegenwartsbewältigung [overcoming the present] requires real time solutions and concrete (counter)measures: creative solidarities and collaboration against the odds.

Dr. Max Czollek was born in East Berlin. He studied political science at the Freie Universität Berlin and received his PhD from the Centre for Research on Antisemitism at the Technische Universität Berlin. Czollek’s works are distinguished by their multimediality: from poetry to theater, political non-fiction to museum exhibitions, the range of his expressive forms reflects the staggering spectrum of historical and present-day violence. Central to Czollek’s project are questions of the tension between aesthetic practice and cultural critique—the overlap between artistic freedom and social responsibility.

Dr. Jon Cho-Polizzi is a literary translator and Assistant Professor of German at the University of Michigan. Born and raised in Northern California, he studied European History, Literature, and Translation in Santa Cruz, Heidelberg, and Berkeley, where he received his PhD in German and Medieval Studies. Cho-Polizzi’s translation work and scholarship alike highlight the polyphony of a contemporary German-speaking world at the intersections of migration, multilingualism, and transnational resistance.

“Overcoming the Present: A Dialogue and Bilingual Reading with Max Czollek and Jon Cho-Polizzi” is funded by the DAAD from funds of the German Federal Foreign Office (AA).

Date and Time: Thursday, March 14^th 2024, from 6:00 PM-7:30 PM

Location: Deutsches Haus at NYU; 42 Washington Mews, New York, NY 10003

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