Program

Introduction · Thursday · Friday · Saturday
Sessions: Panel ·   I   ·   II   ·   III   ·   IV   ·   V   ·   VI

Contemporary globalization and postmodern culture have made New York City and Berlin exemplary sites for revisioning public space, urban design, the social order of public cultures, changing mediascapes, and for the redefinition of citizenship and the parameters of urban theory. Both cities are emblematic of a "new urbanism" in that they are transforming the ideal vision of modern urbanization - a common, homogeneous citizenry and public space and culture - into a paradigm of heterogeneity and difference. This conference will address conceptual and philosophical as well as pragmatic aspects of these cultural changes which shape urban life in the 21st century.

This is the second part of an international conference, co-organized by Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, New York University and the American Academy in Berlin. The first part took place in New York, February 10-12, 2000.

Thursday, June 29, 2000, 14:00 s.t. - 18:00

(Humboldt-Universität, Senatssaal)

14:00 to 16:00: Opening of the Conference

Hans Meyer (President, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Welcome Address

Linda Hartley (Assistant Cultural Attaché, American Embassy)
Welcome Address

Günter H. Lenz (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Welcome Address and Opening Remarks

Wolfgang Hock (Dean, Philosophische Fakultät II, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Welcome Address

Thomas Bender (New York University)
Towards a New Metropolitanism and a Pluralized Public?
Keynote Address

Coffee Break 15:45 - 16:00

As the social, political, and economic basis of urbanism as the emancipatory lifestyle and vision of the modern metropolis has more and more eroded, the role and the potential of the social practices, institutions, and media of urban culture have to be reassessed. What are the parameters of a new urbanism in a globalizing (and relocalizing) world of transnational migrations, diaporas, social heterogeneity, new media of communication, and cultural hybridity? What are the objectives and strategies in city planning and the reconstitution of public spaces at the turn of the century? What are the most significant differences in these restructuring processes between Berlin and New York City?

Chair: Roger Keil (York University, Canada)

Participants:
Ulf Hannerz (University of Stockholm)
Hartmut Häußermann (Humboldt-Universität)
Regine Leibinger (Berlin)
John Mollenkopf (Graduate Center, CUNY)
Rainer Münz (Humboldt-Universität)
Bernhard Schneider (Berlin)

18:15: Reception at the "Professorenmensa"
Humboldt-Universität, Main Building

Friday, June 30, 2000, 9:30 s.t. - 18:30

(American Academy)

9:30 s.t. - 11:15: Session I:
Cultures of Difference and Social Integration

Gary Smith (Director, American Academy)
Opening Remarks

If metropolitan life is increasingly characterized by new types of de-localized urban lifestyles, consumer cultures, forms of social inequality, and social movements as well as a plurality of conflicting cultures of difference, how can social integration and political democracy be reconceived and realized in the different national/transnational contexts?

Chair: Gisela Welz (J.W. Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt/M.)

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (Tisch School, New York University)
Rethinking Locality

Steven Vertovec (Oxford University)
Fostering Cosmopolitanism: A Conceptual Survey and a Media Experiment in Berlin

Margit Mayer (Freie Universität Berlin)
New Spaces of Difference and the Politics of Social Inclusion in Berlin

Coffee break 11:15 - 11:30

11:30 to 13:15: Session II:
Social Practices and Utopian Visions of a New Urbanism

If living in the contemporary metropolitan city means to pursue a form of urban culture that is "constituted by contradictions and conflicts" that can only be solved in a "utopian perspective," how can people in the city "confront and sustain ambivalences and contradictions" and create images, discourses, and social practices that explore the potential and the modes of a "new urbanism" (Häußermann/Siebel)?

Chair: Günter H. Lenz (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

James Holston (University of California-San Diego)
Insurgent Urbanism

Beate Binder, Péter Niedermüller (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
The "New Berlin": Reconstructing the Past and Envisioning the Future

Mario Maffi (Università di Milano)
What the Lower East Side Taught (and Teaches)?

Lunch break 13:15 - 14:30

14:30 to 16:15: Session III:
Consequences of the Changing Mediascapes in Globalizing Cities

As global mass media interpenetrate the local lifeworlds in cities and as urban residents dramatically extend their communicative reach by telecommunication, the ways in which social relations and everyday life are tied to places - to urban neighborhoods, to central city districts, to public places - are changing. If the transformation of mediascapes has resulted in the key role of the "imagination as a social practice" (Appadurai), which new forms of urban communication and cultural representation have been created, or are to be developed, that articulate the dynamics of a new urbanism?

Chair: Bernd Hüppauf (New York University)

Manfred Faßler (Universität für angewandte Kunst, Wien)
The Mediamorphosis of the City

Ayse Caglar (Freie Universität Berlin)
Entanglements in public sphere in Berlin: media, advertisement industries and the state

Gary Gumpert (Queens College, CUNY), Susan J. Drucker (Hofstra University, New York)
The Sidewalks of New York (and Suburbia): Security and Surveillance

Coffee break 16:15 - 16:30

16:30 to 18:30: Session IV:
Fictions of Urban Diversity and Cultural Difference

Fiction and film can be seen as the prime artistic media of the symbolic representation of diversity and difference in the cosmopolitan public culture of the modern metropolis. As a consequence of the dramatic changes in mediascapes, how is the postmodern urban culture of the global or globalizing cities of New York and Berlin at the turn of the century (to be) re-imagined and rearticulated? Which media and modes of representation are most pertinent to an exploration and performance of multicultural identities and communities (beyond pluralist diversity) and transnational, diasporic cultures in postmodern cities? Can the (world) city still be "narrated" as a "text," and how has the semiotics of the city been transformed and "de-realized" in an artistic montage of urban signs (Scherpe, Brooker)?

Chair: Renate Hof (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

John Carlos Rowe (University of California-Irvine)
Interpellation, Urbanization, and Globalization in John Dos Passos' Manhattan Transfer (1925)

Donald E. Pease (Dartmouth College, Hanover)
Re-Imagining the Borderlands: The City of Los Robles in Orson Welles' A Touch of Evil

Heinz Ickstadt (Freie Universität Berlin)
City, Circuit, and Conspiracy in Joseph McElroy's Lookout Cartridge (1974) and Don DeLillo's Players (1977)

Saturday, July 1st, 2000, 9:30 s.t. - 13:00

(American Academy)

9:30 s.t. to 11:00: Session V:
New York and Berlin as Sites for Generating Urban Theory

For urban theorists, big cities are places where "symbolic analysts" and "expressive specialists" congregate and interact, thereby continually producing new types of urban knowledges and cultural expression. Berlin and New York City have constituted different scholarly traditions in theorizing the dynamics of urban metropolitan life. New York City today is the center of influential urban theory, both in terms of cultural and social history of the city as site of modernity as well as in urban sociology and political analysis concerned with the transformations of globalization. How do these urban theories relate to the different site of a European city like Berlin? Which are the specific theoretical approaches to contemporary urban life developed and emerging in the "New Berlin"?

Chair: Friedrich Ulfers (New York University)

Brian Ladd (State University of New York, Albany)
Urban Design, Place Memory, and Resistance to Globalization in Berlin

John Mollenkopf (Graduate Center, CUNY), Elizabeth Strom (Rutgers States University, Newark)
Talking and Doing: Discourse and Development in New York and Berlin

Coffee break 11:00 - 11:15

11:15 to 13:00: Session VI:
The Social Reorganization of Urban Knowledges

The present increase in transnational scholarly communication and cooperation as well as the emergence of a global academic labor market are transforming the sciencescapes of late modern society in crucial ways. Cultural practices and actors outside the academy, the media in particular, have entered a competition with scholars for the production and marketing of knowledge. Also, globalization is calling into question the role of Western acedemic institutions as privileged sites for the production of knowledge. What is the role of world cities in these changes? How are urban knowledges to be redefined, and how can they be organized and - in their transdisciplinary thrust - be institutionalized in the radically changing societies on both sides of the Atlantic?

Chair: Rolf Lindner (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)

Helmut Berking (Berlin)
Local Frames and Global Images: Hierarchy, Negation, and the Diffusion of Urban Knowledge

Ulf Hannerz (University of Stockholm)
Foreign Correspondents as Flaneurs: Journalists' View of Urban Life in the Global Ecumene

Richard Sennett (NYU / London School of Economics)
Concluding Remarks

Lunch break 13:00 - 14:30

Saturday Afternoon 14:30

Trip to Potsdamer Platz Discussion with Leading Architects of the "New Berlin"

End of conference.