Guest Lectures
Guest Lecture: Coastal Futures - Water, Communities, Imaginaries
by Claire Waffel, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar
Friday, 20 June 2025
10:15-11:45, GW2 B1630, University of Bremen
Organized by Dr. Paula von Gleich as part of the MA English-Speaking Cultures seminar "Water and/in Cultural Theory."
In the context of a growing water crisis, this presentation focuses on a Welsh village predicted to be lost to rising seas in the near future. In contrast to common perceptions of the coastline as a fixed boundary disconnected from temporal change (Bezan & Neimanis, 2022), this presentation will examine the coastal zone through the concept of “thick time” (Neimanis & Walker, 2014), where past and future narratives illuminate the fluidity of water-land boundaries. Engaging in a performative walk along the village’s sea defences, architectural remnants become juxtaposed with future predictions and imaginaries. The presentation will take a multidisciplinary approach, incorporating video and photography. The aim is to create an embodied and situated visual narrative that brings a wider range of future possibilities to the fore.
Claire Waffel is an artist and Scientific Associate at the professorship of Arts and Research at the Bauhaus-Universität in Weimar, where she is currently pursuing a practice-based Ph.D. She works with lens-based media and speculative storying in order to produce situated, embodied and place-based accounts of climate change. Through compiling different methodologies into a visual language, her work aims to reveal relationships between communities, climate change and futures. Her research is situated at the intersection of artistic research, environmental humanities, STS and new materialism. She has previously exhibited her work among others at Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin, Kunsthaus Dresden, Wilhelm Wagenfeld Haus, Bremen as well as MWW Wroclaw Contemporary Museum and been invited on different artists residencies internationally by the Goethe-Institut.
Samoa – “Jewel of Germany’s Pacific?”
Guest Lecture by Tony Brunt (Auckland) and Dr. Nicole Perry (U Auckland)
On 27 June, 2024, 12-14 hours, we will have our INPUTS lecture Bremer Denkanstösse with Tony Brunt (Auckland) and Dr. Nicole Perry (U Auckland) on German colonialism in Samoa: Samoa – “Jewel of Germany’s Pacific?”. The lecture is in English. All are welcome.
INPUTS Writer-in-Residence
Anthony Brunt (Samoa, New Zealand)
In the summer semester of 2024, NZ/Samoan historian Anthony Brunt will be a guest at the University of Bremen for two months as an INPUTS writer-in-residence (13 May – 07 July 2024). Tony Brunt is a historian and photo historian specialising in colonial era photography from the South Pacific, especially from the former German colony of Samoa. For many years he has researched and archived images from private collections and moved them into public access and visibility. Tony Brunt has been a consultant and volunteer photo archivist to the Museum of Samoa since 2012 and created the museum’s long-running online photo exhibition on the German colonial period “To Walk Under Palm Trees”, which ran from 2013 - 2019 and featured over 400 images from private collections. He has spearheaded the museum’s public outreach through social media in relation to historical photography. He has written two illustrated books on early Samoa, including a 2020 study of the recently discovered Karl Hanssen Album of historical photography.
During his stay Anthony Brunt will engage in the following activities:
- co-teach the course “German Colonialism in the Pacific” (with Kerstin Knopf, Wednesdays, 16-18 hours);
- give the lecture “The Legacy of Scientist Otto Tetens: German Samoa’s most important documentarian photographer” within the framework of the exhibition and lecture series “Points of View” (Wednesday 15 May, 18-20 hours, Hafenmuseum, Am Speicher XI 1, Bremen);
- engage in cooperative research at the Deutsches Schifffahrtsmuseum, incl. Panel Discussion “Traces of Samoan Colonial Past in the Collections of the German Maritime Museum”, Monday 03 June, 16-18 hours, Research Depository, with online access;
- give INPUTS Bremer Denkanstösse lecture (with Dr. Nicole Perry, U Auckland) “Samoa – Jewel of Germany’s Pacific?” (Thursday 27 June, 12-14 hours, MZH 1460).
Organisation: Kerstin Knopf
Everybody is welcome to single classes, lectures and panel discussion.
Points of View: The Legacy of Scientist Otto Tetens
15 May, 2024, Hafenmuseum Bremen
The Legacy of Scientist Otto Tetens: German Samoa’s most important documentarian photographer.
Lecture by Anthony Brunt (Samoa/New Zealand), in English
There were three commercial photographers operating in Samoa during the German colonial period and also a number of amateur photographers among the settler community. Arguably, none can match the body of work of Otto Tetens, the astronomer who came to Apia in 1902 and spent several years setting up the Samoa geophysical observatory at Mulinu'u. His collection, most of it unrelated to his scientific endeavours, reflects a bold, even adventurous intrusion into Samoan and settler life to get the shots he wanted, clearly driven by a wide-eyed curiosity and fascination with his exotic new home in the South Seas. Photo historian Tony Brunt examines Tetens' large collection - much of it still unseen and held privately in Germany - and mines it for its enduring historical and cultural insights.
In the context of the exhibition Pointsof View_ Artistic and Scientific Perspectives on German Colonial History in the Western pacific (14 April - 18 August, 2024)
Tickets: 8 € / 6 €
HAFENMUSEUM BREMEN
Am Speicher XI 1 // 28217 Bremen
“Summer School: Blue Humanities,” Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, Delmenhorst, 03-07 June 2024
organized by Norbert Schaffeld, Keir Waddington, and Martin Willis
with contributions by Martin Willis, Keir Waddington, Steve Mentz, Owain Lawson, Stewart Mottram, and Jennifer Henke.
- Jennifer Henke (University of Bremen). “Workshop: Academic Careers,” Blue Humanities Summer School, Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, Delmenhorst, 05 June 2024.
- Martin Willis and Keir Waddington (Cardiff University). “Getting Published,” Blue Humanities Summer School, Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, Delmenhorst, 05 June 2024.
- Owain Lawson (Cardiff University). “Rivers in the Web of Life, Blue Humanities at the Land-Water Nexus,” Blue Humanities Summer School, Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, Delmenhorst, 04 June 2024.
- Stewart Mottram (University of Hull). “Estuary and Coast: Adventures in the Green-Blue Humanities,” Blue Humanities Summer School, Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, Delmenhorst, 04 June 2024.
- Martin Willis and Keird Waddington (Cardiff University). “How to be Interdisciplinary,” Blue Humanities Summer School, Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, Delmenhorst, 03 June 2024.
- Steve Mentz (St. John’s University, New York). “Kinds of Blue: Watery Forms in the Blue Humanities,” Blue Humanities Summer School, Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg, Delmenhorst, 03 June 2024.
“Possible Futures for the Blue Humanities”
Guest Lecture by Steve Mentz (St. John’s University, New York)
in the seminar “Key Topics in Literature: Narratives of Ocean Cultures,” organized by Mohammed Muharram and Norbert Schaffeld, 13 December 2022.
Annual conference of GAPS and IACPL: “Postcolonial Oceans: Contradictions and Heterogeneities in the Epistemes of Salt Water"
with keynote lectures by Bill Ashcroft, Nicholas Faraclas, Anne Storch, Robbie Shilliam, Karin Amimoto Ingersoll, and Anne Collett.
University of Bremen, 30 May-02 June 2019, organized by Kerstin Knopf, Anna-Katharina Hornidge, Michi Knecht, Thomas Stolz, Ingo Warnke
- Bill Ashcroft (University of New South Wales). “Oceans: The Space of Future Thinking,” “Postcolonial Oceans: Contradictions and Heterogeneities in the Epistemes of Salt Water,” annual conference of GAPS and IACPL, University of Bremen, 30 May 2019. [video lecture]
- Nicholas Faraclas (University of Puerto Rico). “Subaltern Currents and Transgressive Waves: Trans-Oceanic Agents and ‘Creole’ Languages,” “Postcolonial Oceans: Contradictions and Heterogeneities in the Epistemes of Salt Water,” annual conference of GAPS and IACPL, University of Bremen, 30 May 2019. [video lecture]
- Anne Storch (University of Cologne). “Terrible Magical Ways of Healing - Sea, Spa and Skin,” “Postcolonial Oceans: Contradictions and Heterogeneities in the Epistemes of Salt Water,” annual conference of GAPS and IACPL, University of Bremen, 31 May 2019. [video lecture]
- Robbie Shilliam (Johns Hopkins University) “Africa in Oceania: Blackness Connecting Islands,” “Postcolonial Oceans: Contradictions and Heterogeneities in the Epistemes of Salt Water,” annual conference of GAPS and IACPL, University of Bremen, 31 May 2019. [video lecture]
- Karin Amimoto Ingersoll (University of Hawai’i). “Seascape Epistemology: An Embodied Knowledge of and Movement through the Sea,” “Postcolonial Oceans: Contradictions and Heterogeneities in the Epistemes of Salt Water,” annual conference of GAPS and IACPL, University of Bremen, 01 June 2019. [video lecture]
- Anne Collett (University of Wollongong). “Building on the Strata of the Dead: A (Very) Brief History of Coral Reef Ecologies,” “Postcolonial Oceans: Contradictions and Heterogeneities in the Epistemes of Salt Water,” annual conference of GAPS and IACPL, University of Bremen, 02 June 2019. [video lecture]