Sebald Radio Programme with Uwe Schütte

On Tuesday, 26 January, at 8.04 pm the Saarländischer Rundfunk (SR) will broadcast a 2.5 hrs programme on the writer W.G. Sebald. On the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day, the programme will discuss, amongst other topics, how Sebald’s literary writings dealt with the atrocities of the Holocaust. Infos on the programme can be found on the Sebald blog VERTIGO.

Among the  experts interviewed is our colleague Uwe Schütte, whose PhD was supervised by Sebald. He will argue, however, that it is a mis-conception to regard Sebald as an author of Holocaust fiction. Sebald, in his view, actually questioned the uniqueness of the Holocaust, which he considered a part of an overarching destructive tendency he called the “natural history of destruction”.

You can listen to the programme via the SR Lifestream here.

On W.G. Sebald’s Radicalism

 

 

Our resident Sebald expert Uwe Schütte has just published an online essay entitled On W.G. Sebald’s Radicalism. The essay deals with the political side of the writer and academic who served as Uwe’s PhD supervisor.

The essay, which is also available in Spanish, appeared in the Sebaldiana blog that accompanies the current major Sebald Variations  exhibition  at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona.

 

 

Celebrating W.G. Sebald at Literaturhaus Stuttgart

Renowned German author and academic W.G. Sebald  would have celebrated his 70th birthday this week. To mark the occasion, Uwe Schütte, Reader in German at Aston, was invited to Literaturhaus Stuttgart to read from and speak about an aspect of Sebald’s work which is less familiar to most readers than his prose writing: his poems, created over more than four decades and mostly published posthumously.

To find out more about this event, click here.

Celebrating Sebald: Uwe Schütte Speaks about the Late Author’s Life and Works

On 1 July 2012 Dr Uwe Schütte, Head of German Studies at Aston, appeared at Bridport Art Centre as part of the Celebrating Sebald event. The talk, which was attended by an audience of nearly 100 Sebald enthusiasts, was very well received.

Dr Schütte’s talk was informed by both his intimate knowledge of Sebald’s works and his close personal relationship with the distinguished writer, who taught at the University of East Anglia until his untimely death in 2001. Starting out as one of Sebald’s postgraduate students in the 1990s, Uwe Schütte quickly developed into an internationally renowned expert on the late author’s works. His book on Sebald’s critical writings will be published next year.

Click on the youtube link below for an extract of the talk. Listen to Uwe Schütte address the sigificance of “Austerlitz” for the interpretation of Sebald’s literary oeuvre, and hear his comments on the reception of this book by the reading public.

 

 

 

Celebrating Sebald

Bridport Arts Centre is going to do so with a film screening and a talk by

Uwe Schütte, Head of German at Aston, his former student and acclaimed Sebald scholar, who will speak about “Sebald’s Legacy”.

The talk will be followed by a screening of “Patience”, a film after Sebald’s novel “The rings of Saturn” by Grant Gee. The Guardian called the documentary a “guide through the psycho-geography of the author”, taking the viewer on a literary stroll along the coast of East Anglia, where Sebald spent most of his adult life. Read the Guardian review here

Philip French commented in the Observer that watching the film made him want to read all of Sebald’s oeuvre. The images are accompanied by readings from the book, as well as by comments by friends, readers and fellow authors.

 

Tickets for the event are available at info@bridport-arts.com

 

 

 

 

Uwe Schütte on WG Sebald

In BBC Radio 3’s series “The Essay, listen to Uwe Schütte speaking about his teacher WG Sebald. Uwe relates his experience of studying with the German writer and academic, and talks about Sebald’s ambiguous relationship with British academia.

Click here for the podcast.

WG Sebald on BBC Radio 3

This week, BBC Radio 3’s The Essay is all about German writer and academic WG Sebald. All week, friends, colleagues and literary scholars will focus on different aspects of Sebald’s life, work and influence in Germany and Britain where Sebald spent years working at various universities.

Tomorrow, Tuesday Dec 6, at 22:45, Dr. Uwe Schütte from Aston University will reflect on the life and work of his former teacher in “Looking and Looking Away”.

For the full programme of broadcasts, click here.

Germanist W.G.Sebald remembered by former student

To mark the 10th anniversary of German writer and literary scholar W.G.Sebald’s untimely death in 2001, Uwe Schütte, Reader in German here at Aston University and former student of Sebald’s, reflects on his life and work in British academia in the latest edition of Times Higher Education.

© Times Higher Education

“I taught for almost 30 years until I took early retirement in 1991,” explains Austerlitz, the eponymous hero of W.G. Sebald’s last work of prose fiction, “because of the inexorable spread of ignorance even to the universities.” One would not be mistaken to see this criticism as also coming straight from the heart of the writer who created Austerlitz. After all, apart from being considered a strong contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature, Sebald was first and foremost an academic who had spent all his professional life in UK higher education.

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To read the whole article, click here.