The Work of Hannah Arendt (Workshop and Staged Reading)

Fifty years ago, on November 24, 1972, the first conference on German-Jewish political theorist Hannah Arendt’s work was held in Toronto, resulting in her only visit to the city. The Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies marks the 50th anniversary of this historical conference with a one-day workshop. Faculty, graduate students, and postdocs at Toronto universities will revisit the “work of Hannah Arendt” in three interdisciplinary thematic panels.

Please note that due to space constraints, in-person attendance is limited to University of Toronto faculty, students, and staff. The staged reading of the play can be attended virtually, and all are invited.

Program

9:15–10:45AM – Panel I: “Men in Dark Times II: Too Dark, Too Curious”

Panelists:

Griffin Klemick, “Arendt on Hope: Pro or Contra?”

Jacob Hermant, “Hannah Arendt, Bertolt Brecht, and Rethinking Law and Politics in the Wake of the Shoah”

William Paris, “‘Socialism or Barbarism?’: C.L.R. James and Hannah Arendt on the Politics of Hope”

Tobias Hof, “Hannah Arendt’s Defactualization and the Rise of (Neo-)Fascism”

Respondent: Michael Rosenthal

11:00AM–12:30PM – Panel II: “Setting Boundaries”

Panelists:

Maddie Hay Keller, “What is cooking to Hannah Arendt?”

Jennifer Nedelsky, “Relations of Freedom and Communities of Judgment”

Miko Zeldes-Roth, “Jewishness, Sovereignty, and Exile: Considering Binationalism Through Hannah Arendt’s Jewish Politics”

Schulyer Playford, “Absence, Desire, and Friendship in Arendt’s Account of Thinking”

Respondent: Ronald Beiner

1:15–2:45 – Panel III: “Pariahs, Creoles, Nobodies”

Panelists:

Neil Roberts, “Creolizing Arendt”

Julie Sharff, “The ‘Nobody’ and Self-Definition: The Politics and Precarity of Jewish Identity After the Holocaust”

Hazim Mohamed, “Statelessness as an Instance of Crisis of the Political in Arendt”

Jens Hanssen, “What would Arendt have said? Documenta 15 and Anti-Palestinian Racism in Germany”

Respondent: Miriam Chorley-Schulz

The workshop concludes with the premiering of the play Hannah Arendt Quits Smoking, written by the playwright collective Kansas, in a virtual table-reading from 3–5PM (for the virtual stage-reading of the play, with Rebecca Comay as Hannah Arendt, you can register for the webinar.

Organized by Jasmine Chorley-Schulz & Miriam Chorley-Schulz. Presented by the Anne Tanenbaum Centre for Jewish Studies and co-sponsored by the Munk School and CERES, the Intellectual Community Committee and the Wolfe Chair for Holocaust Studies of the History Department, the German Department, the Department of Philosophy, the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, and the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Research Fund.