Skip to main content

Thoughts without content are empty,
intuitions without concepts are blind.

Originally conceived as a university-wide reading group for faculty and graduate students interested in contemporary critical theory, GSLL’s theory group has narrowed its focus in recent semesters and queried not only place of German and Slavic conceptual thought in contemporary theory, but also the recent revival of older German and Slavic theories for research in the humanities today. The group is open to all advanced students and faculty interested in exploring theoretical texts within a relaxed collegial setting. The reading group is open to all members of Carolina’s Department of Germanic & Slavic Languages & Literatures, its partners in the Carolina-Duke Graduate Program in German Studies and the larger UNC-Chapel Hill community. In the spring of 2024, the reading group convenes in Dey Hall 314 once a month on Tuesdays from 6-7 PM to read selections from the Penguin translation of Giambattista Vico’s The New Science (1725).

Spring 2024 Meetings:

  • February 13: Idea of the Work, pp. 1-31 and pp. 75-134
  • March 19: Poetic Wisdom I, pp. 135-187
  • April 16: Poetic Wisdom II, pp. 252-305

For more information about the theory group and the readings, write to one of the following:

  • Aleksandra Prica (aprica@email.unc.edu)
  • Gabriel Trop (gtrop@email.unc.edu)
  • Richard Langston (relangst@email.unc.edu)
Fall 2013: Bernard Stiegler
Fall 2013: Bernard Stiegler
Spring 2014: Luhmann & Lotman
Spring 2014: Luhmann & Lotman
Fall 2014: The Early Lukács
Fall 2014: The Early Lukács
Spring 2015: Bakhtin
Rancière & Badiou
Spring 2016: Rancière & Badiou
ReadingGroup_Blumenberg_F16
Fall 2016: Blumenberg
arendt_poster
Spring 2017: Arendt
Fall 2017: Agamben
Spring 2018: Diederichsen
Fall 2018: Simmel
Spring 2019: Ahmed
Fall 2019: Spinoza
Spring 2020: Balibar
Fall 2021: Berlant
Fall 2023: Whitehead’s Modes of Thought
Spring 2024: Vico’s New Science