A distinguished German scholar who has played an important role in contemporary debates about interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary studies will speak at Vanderbilt University on March 27.
Ottmar Ette, senior professor and chair of romance literature at the University of Potsdam in Brandenburg, Germany, will lecture on “Alexander von Humboldt: Transdisciplinary Perspectives and TransArea Studies.” Von Humboldt is widely viewed as one of the founders of modern geography whose research transformed Western science in the 1800s.
Ette’s talk, which is free and open to the public, is at 4 p.m. in Buttrick Hall, Room 102. During his visit, Ette will also meet with graduate students and lead two faculty seminars.
“Ette has argued eloquently in favor of new conceptual frameworks in which the humanities may best contribute to the production of knowledge and in support of more thoughtful relationships between academic disciplines and fields,” said Vera Kutzinski, the Martha Rivers Ingram Professor of English and director of the Center for the Americas. “He generally writes in German, French and Spanish, and his lecture will offer us a rare chance to benefit from ideas that are otherwise inaccessible to many United States audiences.”
Kutzinski, who is translating Ette’s recent work into English, expressed the hope that his visit will also mark the beginning of a collaboration between Vanderbilt and the University of Potsdam around producing the first scholarly English editions of Humboldt’s works on the Americas.
Ette is the author of 15 books on French, Latin American and Caribbean literatures. In 1987 he received the Maier-Leibnitz Award from the German Ministry of Culture and the German Research Association for his edition of Alexander von Humboldt’s personal narrative. The University of Freiburg honored him twice, with the Romance Literature Award in 1991 for his book on Cuban poet and essayist José Martí and with the Hugo-Friedrich/Erich Kőhler Award in 2001 for his study of French intellectual Roland Barthes.
For more information, contact the Center for the Americas at 343-2818.
Media Contact: Ann Marie Deer Owens, 615-322-NEWS
annmarie.owens@vanderbilt.edu