Eduardo Cadava - “Reading Historically in a Moment of Danger: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay”

“Reading Historically in a Moment of Danger: Walter Benjamin’s Artwork Essay”

Cadava will argue that Walter Benjamin’s 1936 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility” is best understood as a training manual on how to read historically in a moment of danger, this presentation will demonstrate that the essay remains, still today, one of our greatest resources for engaging, analyzing, and countering the emergence of fascism.

Eduardo Cadava is the Philip Mayhew Professor of English at Princeton University (USA), and an Associate Member of the Department of Comparative Literature, the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the School of Architecture, the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, and the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. He also serves on the Executive Committees of the Program in Media and Modernity, the Program in European Cultural Studies, the Program in Latin American Studies, and the Program in Jazz Studies.

Header image: Holland House Library, October 23, 1940. Crown Copyright, NMR.