Benjamin on Goethe at Yale

Friday, October 24, 2025 - 1:00pm
Location: 
Humanities Quadrangle, #136, 320 York Street, New Haven

Join the German Department for a

Roundtable with the Editors

of Walter Benjamin On Goethe

Friday October 24th, 1-3pm, HQ 136

A light lunch will be served

“The value of On Goethe consists not least in allowing for a deepening understanding of Benjamin’s concept of criticism, and especially the relation between truth, criticism, and the work of art.”

Anthony Curtis Adler, Los Angeles Review of Books

Susan Bernstein, Professor of Comparative Literature, Professor of German Studies, Brown University

Peter Fenves, Joan and Sarepta Harrison Professor of Literature, is Professor of German, Comparative Literary Studies, and Jewish Studies

Kevin McLaughlin, George Hazard Crooker University Professor of English, Professor of Comparative Literature, Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Advanced Study, Dean Emeritus of the Faculty, Brown University

In conversation with:

Aida Feng, Holy Cross

Paul North, Yale German

Kirk Wetters, Yale German

Join the editors of this new translation and critical edition of Benjamin’s writings on Goethe, which are more than a critical work on a canonical writer. The works in this collection showcase Benjamin’s unique relationship to literature as a mode of philosophizing, the development of his concept of critique, and his understanding of the relationship of beauty and history.