MaJaC Colloquium: Prof. Dr. Laura Bieger (RUB): Notes on Mending One’s World

With the impulse Notes on Mending One’s World Prof. Dr. Laura Bieger will give the third lecture within the context of the MaJaC Colloquium in the winter term 24/25. Laura Bieger Professor of American Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

Being, at least when that being is human, means being in a world. But worlds can fall apart, and they often and regularly do. Which is why being in the world also means mending one’s world. Worlds are human artifacts, collectively built, genuinely shared, and fundamentally storied as such. We tend to inhabit multiple worlds, some large, some small, some of them more freely chosen than others, yet all of them ours somehow. I tend to think that the firmness of our stance and our propensity to act in and upon our worlds is contingent upon our capacity to foster relations to our surroundings and spin worlds out of them, in part by weaving them into the existing and ever-evolving worlds of others. But if this was true, would it not mean that our place in these worlds that are ours somehow is contingent upon on the state (the wholeness or intactness) of our “storybeing”? And if so, what does this being (contingent) entail? How does one care for it and what does it need to flourish? Can it be cultivated and taught? Is there an art to it? Is there an ethics? This talk meditates on these questions by drawing on my academic work on the nexus of belonging and narrative, the philosophical anthropology of Martin Heidegger, Helmuth Plessner and Hannah Arendt, the feminism of Simone de Beauvoir, Caroline Hanisch and bell hooks, the psychology of William James, and perhaps also on my personal experience of mending my world.

Laura Bieger is Professor of American Studies at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. She is the author of Belonging and Narrative (transcript 2018), which considers the need to belong as a driving force of literary production and the novel as a primary place and home-making agent. In another book, Ästhetik der Immersion (transcript 2007), she examines public spaces from Washington DC to Las Vegas that turn world-image-relations into immersive spectacles. Her essays have appeared in New Literary History, Narrative, Studies in American Naturalism, Amerikastudien/American Studies and ZAA. Her current work explores the relational aesthetics of socially committed art in and across different media, with a special focus on the aesthetics of infrastructure.

Prof. Dr. Laura Bieger’s lecture starts at 6:15 PM on the ground floor of Uni 105 (Universitätsstraße 105, Room 14). It will be held in English spoken language. The room is accessible for wheelchair users. Please let us know if you require any assistance.

Please find further information on the other lectures within the context of the MaJaC Colloquium here.