Journal Service - Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
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MacLeish/Oppenheimer, Trump, and the Conquest of America
No full textArchibald MacLeish (Pulitzer prize-winning poet/playwright) published his highly acclaimed essay “The Conquest of America” in the August 1949 Atlantic Monthly. His essay focused on an American crisis of national purpose, and central to his account is the importance of a national image for America. In particular, he called for a redeclaration of American purpose by appealing to a Jeffersonian “Revolution of the Individual.” MacLeish’s friend Robert Oppenheimer responded to his essay with high praise but also criticism. In this article, we use the MacLeish/ Oppenheimer exchange as a springboard for a discussion of the crisis of American democracy today exemplified by the election of Donald Trump. We take a synthetic approach, relying not simply on MacLeish/Oppenheimer but more importantly on contemporary scholars. We attempt to construct an American image with a realistic meaning for today. The image includes three interweaving political components—Liberal Democracy, Liberal Nationalism, Liberal Internationalism—complemented by America’s historical role as Democracy’s Vital Center. After sketching this national image, we discuss each component, touching on several contemporary issues as well as the general nature of the image in light of Trump and the current crisis of American democracy
Rauf Yekta’s Notes on the 1932 Congress of Arab Music: Being a Mediator in a Dual Musical Universe
No full textThe participation of the Turkish musicologist Rauf Yekta (1871–1935) in the Cairo Congress of Arab Music in 1932 and his rejection of the proposed 24-tone equal-tempered scale are well-known facts in musicological literature. However, due to the dearth of primary sources, Yekta’s influential role in the discussions remains largely unknown. Recently discovered notes, published in the periodical Mukhādana/Muhadenet following the Congress, provide new insights into Yekta’s musicological approach in general and his position relative to other participants at the Congress. Based on these notes, this article provides the first comprehensive analysis of Yekta’s opinions on the Congress. While Yekta’s stance cannot be fully understood without considering Turkey’s position between the “Arab” and the “Western” world at the time, as a scholar defending the Turkish makam tradition from the musical revolution of the Republic, his views did not align with the official views of Turkish state representatives. Instead, Yekta depicted a dual musical universe and considered himself capable of reconciling these two worlds’ respective qualities, positioning himself as a mediator between them
Annus Mirabilis: Your Silence Will Not Protect You
No full texta poem by L. Lamar Wilson
Photo by Thierry Jone
Professorenvorstellung
No full textIn diesem Beitrag stellt sich Prof. Dr. Alexander Baur den Studierenden und Mitarbeitenden der Juristischen Fakultät Göttingen als neuer Inhaber des Lehrstuhls für Strafrecht und Kriminologie in einem Interview vor
Peter O. Chotjewitz (1934-2010), Die Herren des Morgengrauens (1978)
No full textDer Beitrag bewegt sich im interdisziplinären Forschungsfeld von Recht und Literatur. Er behandelt ein heute weitgehend unbekanntes Werk, das einen Einblick in das politische Klima der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in den 1970er Jahren ermöglicht. Im Mittelpunkt stehen die Folgen des Verdachts, mit den von der Bundesrepublik verfolgten RAF-Terroristen zu sympathisieren
Die fachspezifische Promovierendenausbildung auf Reisen: Die Promovierendenexkursion an der Juristischen Fakultät Göttingen
No full textDie Juristische Fakultät Göttingen ermöglicht durch großzügige finanzielle Förderung seit dem Sommersemester 2022 Exkursionen von Promovierenden. In diesem Beitrag veranschaulichen Julian Jansen und Jakob Schünemann anhand der beiden bislang stattgefundenen Exkursionen deren Mehrwert für die fachspezifische Promovierendenausbildung
Joking Aside: European Music and the Dislocation of Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Satire
No full textIn this article, I examine humorous portrayals of European music in satirical journals published in Istanbul during the 1870s. Drawing on theories of humor as a means of expressing ambiguity, I analyze a description of a private salon concert as well as polemical debates about the public performance and reception of Turkish-language operetta. Through the strategic use of irony and mistranslation, Ottoman satirists exposed the incongruities of being modern while playfully undermining perceptions of distance and proximity between “Istanbul” and “Europe.” Modernity produced a sense of dislocation, a being out of place, that was heightened by listening to unfamiliar sonic practices as part of a broader assemblage of civilized behaviors. Yet by making light of such disconcerting experiences, Ottoman satirists produced a form of cultural intimacy that relocated modernity itself within a more familiar and accessible space – as long as their readers got the joke
Provincializing Acoustics, Feeling Europe: Heritage and Sonic Atmosphere in Istanbul
No full textIn recent decades, churches and other spaces left over from Istanbul’s multi-confessional and multi-ethnic past have grown increasingly popular as concert venues for performances of Western classical music favored among Istanbul secularists. The popularity of this alternative acoustic infrastructure is often attributed to the ostensibly appropriate atmosphere and “good” acoustics of such spaces. Taking up Istanbul discourses of acoustics and atmosphere as novel sites of ethnographic inquiry, in this article I ask: What is the relationship between atmosphere and acoustics? Which modes of perception are afforded by good acoustics in Istanbul? What makes them good? What is the relationship between these discourses and acoustic spaces linked to non-Turkish and non-Muslim communities? I examine how acoustics in this context is less an objective, technical discourse of material and spatial qualities enabling clear aural perception, than a local discursive concept anchored by the multi-sensory affordances of certain spaces – in particular, Levantine churches in Istanbul’s staunchly secularist Kadıköy district. I demonstrate that good acoustics in this case are emergent from sonic atmospheres in which tuned bodies and spaces from Istanbul’s non-Muslim past are brought into dynamic relation. In this way, sonic atmosphere becomes a particularly clear instance of heritage as cultural process through which Europe comes to be felt, and attributions of good acoustics become a demotic discursive concept for referring to and evaluating that “feel.” I thus provincialize acoustics by elucidating the way in which it is not a universal concept of (social) scientific analysis but rather a local and colloquial, demotic concept for discussing how Europe comes to be felt in particular Istanbul spaces
Afterword: Istanbul, Cairo, and the “Demography of Babel”
No full textThis afterword considers Istanbul as a site of translation (architectural, acoustic, sonic, musical, poetic) – an approach to the city richly suggested in all of the articles in this themed issue. Might we consider the matter of translation in terms of the kinds of (radically opposed) comparative epistemologies that were being developed in Istanbul by Auerbach and Spitzer (principally, but other refugee scholars too, considering the work of Emily Apter) in the 1930s? How – viewed through such a lens – has Istanbul been configured as a global site of translation “between East and West,” and how have Istanbul’s intellectual worlds themselves forged the very terms with which we think “between East and West” (or “globally”). And what happens when we replace or enhance “comparative literature” with “comparative music/sound studies” as our framework? Does this make Istanbul “special,” in historical terms