On Friday, April 21st, the Advanced Certificate Program in Poetics & Theory, Deutsches Haus at NYU, and the NYU Department of German will co-host "The Clinical Complex: Reflections on Sick Buildings and the Architectures of Illness in Ten Images 1880/2020," a talk by Yale Professor Fatima Naqvi.
About the talk:
We are what Walter Benjamin calls “newcomers to eternity,” with new spatial coordinates: “when the end approaches, [people] are stowed away in sanatoriums or hospitals by their heirs.” The architectonic development that Benjamin outlines holds true not only for the late 19 th, but also for the 20th and 21st centuries. This talk looks back at the explosion of hospital construction in Austria-Hungary during its waning years and explores this moment as it is refracted in works by Arthur Schnitzler and Rainer Maria Rilke; it also suggests a connection to the present via works by Ulrich Seidl and Nikolaus Geyrhalter. The architecture of medicine and the medicalization of architecture have important implications for how we think about sickness and health today—and how we experience our clinical spaces.
Attendance:
This event will take place at 42 Washington Mews. This semester, based on NYU's guidelines, in-person events will be open to members of the general public.
Attendance instructions for members of the general public: According to new university guidelines, all visitors must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 (including a booster, if eligible); however, visitors no longer have to present proof of vaccination at the door. Please be prepared to present proof of compliance with NYU's COVID-19 vaccination requirements if asked to do so. You can read more about this new policy here. Please RSVP for the event using the link above.
Speaker Bio:
Fatima Naqvi is Elias W. Leavenworth Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and of Film and Media Studies at Yale University. She has written books on victimhood in European culture after 1968; the films of Michael Haneke; the degradation of the landscape; and the interrelationship between architecture and Bildung in Austrian author Thomas Bernhard. She is currently working on the hospital experience in fin-de-siècle Vienna.
This event is cosponsored by NYU's Department of German and the Advanced Certificate Program in Poetics & Theory. Additional support provided by Deutsches Haus at NYU and the DAAD from funds of the German Federal Foreign Office (AA).