GRADE - Die (Post-)Graduiertenakademie der Goethe-Universität

Project Outline and Key Research Questions

The GRADE-initiative Aesthetics of Democratic Life-Forms invites scholars interested in the systematic analysis of political phenomena from the perspective of methods informed by aesthetic theory. We organize seminars, reading groups, lecture series, and conferences in which we engage with these topics from an interdisciplinary perspective. Most members of our group are PhDs or postdocs, but we are also open to interested MA students and faculty. Out now—our OA-volume Spaces of Appearance: Aesthetics and Politics After Analogy

Contact

If you want to join our mailing list or get in touch, send a mail to: Martin Renz or Julius Schwarzwälder.

Summer Term 2026 (April–July)

Reading group: Critiquing Democracy

Every second Tuesday (16h–18h) @ IG 1.414

• Apr 28 @ IG 2.351
  Republican Critiques I: Against “Pure Democracy,” For the Republic (Montesquieu, Federalist Papers).
• May 12
  Republican Critiques II: Neither Bourgeois nor Citoyen; State- and Self-Rule (Marx).
• May 26
  Does Democracy Hide Oligarchy? Political Parties, Anti-Trust, and Monopoly (Michels, Brandeis).
• June 9
  Feminist Critiques: Anarchist and Socialist (Goldman, Zetkin).
• June 23
  Anti-Parliamentarian Critiques: Monarchist, Socialist, Authoritarian (Mann,Schumpeter, Schmitt).
• July 7
  Federalist Critiques: The Nation-State and Neo-Colonial Domination (Du Bois, Arendt, Getachew).

Past Events

Winter Term 2025/26

• Reading group: O. K. Werckmeister’s The Political Confrontation of the Arts in Europe.
• Workshop: „Guns on the Ballot – The Iconography of Stormings of the Capitol in Brazil, the US, and in Germany“, with Luciana Villas Bôas (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro) and Ricardo Spindola Diniz (Universidade Federal do Tocantins).

Summer Term 2025

• Author’s workshop: “What’s Behind Our Book?”

Winter Term 2024/25 

• Reading group: Susan Buck-Morss’ Dreamworld and Catastrophe alongside Robert Havekamp’s Morgen.
• Workshop: “Dreamworld and Catastrophe at 25,” with Susan Buck-Morss.
• Author’s workshop: “What are Spaces of Appearance?”
• Workshop: “What’s Behind a Book? An Introduction to Typography, Editorial and Book Design in the Humanities.”

Summer Term 2024

• Reading group: “Spaces of Appearance: Aspects and Approaches” (Hannah Arendt, T. J. Clark, Fritz Saxl, Jacques Rancière, Martin Seel, Hans Blumenberg, Raymond Wiliams, John Berger, Oskar Negt/Alexander Kluge, Maurice Merleau-Ponty).

Winter Term 2023/24

• Group discussions on Sianne Ngai, Elisa Tamarkin, Leigh Claire La Berge, and Miguel Tamen.
• Colloquium with contributions by Friedrich Weber-Steinhaus, Bianca Laliberté, and Marlon Lieber.

Summer Term 2023

• Co-organization of a graduate conference on the Aesthetics of Democratic Life-Forms.
• Discussion of foundational texts (Martin Jay, Nikolas Kompridis, Stanley Cavell, Sandra Laugier, Sianne Ngai, Barbara Carnevali, Raymond Williams) and member projects.
• Workshop with Adrian Dauband Simon Strick on Rechte Agitation und populistischer Diskurs.

Winter Term 2022/23

• Event series with Johannes Völz, Till van Rahden, Sophie Loidolt, Juliane Rebentisch, Pavan Malreddy.

Members

Internal

External

Partners

The initiative cooperates with other project, such as the DFG-funded Research Training Group Aesthetics of Democracy. Other important partners include Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften in Bad Homburg and its project Democratic Vistas: Reflections on the Atlantic World. We have also collaborated with the civil society network Netzwerk Paulskirche