Shanghai and Berlin: Seminar Faculty

The directors are both members of the Department of Comparative Literature at Stanford—Russell Berman is also in German Studies, and Ban Wang is in Asian Languages. We share many interests in literature and cultural theory, particularly involving critical approaches to modernism and “Critical Theory,” broadly understood. However we have focused on different cultures with contrasting historical experiences, which leads us to approach texts from different perspectives.

Professor Berman’s work treats questions of modernism and modernity, with particular attention to critics of modernity within the German tradition. His Rise of the Modern German Novel: Crisis and Charisma (1986) includes an extensive discussion of Max Weber, a foundational thinker for any discussion of cultural modernization and on Alfred Döblin, whose Berlin Alexanderplatz, is the emblematic modernist novel of Berlin. He has pursued debates over modernity in Modern Culture and Critical Theory (1989) and  in Cultural Studies of Modern Germany (1993). His Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture (1998) is especially pertinent to the seminar by raising questions of the spatial displacement of culture from the European “center,” and the relationship between modernization and imperialism. His Fiction Sets You Free (2007) reflects on the complex relationship of literature, literacy and democracy. He has published numerous essays on German modernism, including figures important to the seminar, such as Bertolt Brecht, and on filmmakers Pabst and Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Professor Wang’s scholarship is centrally involved with questions of cultural modernity in China.  Examining modern aesthetic innovations in relation to political modernity in the East and West, he has published The Sublime Figure of History (1997), a widely influential book on aesthetics and politics in modern Chinese political culture.  He served as co-editor and translator of the Chinese edition of Walter Benjamin’s seminal volume Illuminations, which is foundational to discussions of cultural modernity, especially with regard to the role of cinema.  He has addressed questions of cross-cultural modernity frequently, including in Narrative Perspective and Irony in Chinese and American Fiction  (2002) and in Illuminations from the Past: Trauma, Memory, and History in Modern China(2004) Professor Wang and Professor Berman are collaborating on a special issue of the journal Telos that will treat Çhina and Critical Theory.