About Talk:

In interwar Germany, photographically illustrated magazines informed and entertained readers much as television and the internet do today. And they were equally popular, with millions of copies circulating each week. Yet surprisingly, little scholarship exists about one of the most influential illustrated titles: the Illustrierter Beobachter (Illustrated Observer), the Nazi Party’s official illustrated magazine. This talk revisits this popular Nazi publication in which antisemitic screeds and excerpts from Mein Kampf occupied the same pages as swastika-shaped crossword puzzles, cartoons, and ads for toothpaste. In a manner that sheds light on contemporary strategies of media disinformation, this talk examines how the Nazis’ enormously consequential tabloid paradoxically copied the cosmopolitan and modernist-inspired visual style of politically mainstream illustrated titles to advance anti-modern, anti-Enlightenment, and anti-democratic ideas.

About the Speaker:

Daniel H. Magilow is Lindsay Young Professor of German as well as an affiliated faculty member with the Fern and Manfred Steinfeld Program in Jewish Studies, the Cinema Studies Program, and the Department of History at UT. He earned his BA in Comparative Literature from Columbia University and his MA and PhD in German from Princeton University. With Helene Sinnreich, Dr. Magilow serves Co-Editor-in-Chief of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He serves on the Academic Council of the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University and the Academic Committee of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Dr. Magilow’s teaching and research, which have been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Getty Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Blavatnik Archive, and the University of Tennessee Humanities Center, center on photography and film and their intersections with Holocaust Studies, Weimar Germany, and postwar memory. Alongside many articles, book chapters, and reviews focusing on photography, film, and memorials, he is the author, co-author, editor, or translator of the several books.

About the Series:

Conversations & Cocktails is a free public lecture series hosted by the UT Humanities Center, showcasing the original research of our distinguished University of Tennessee arts and humanities faculty. Our monthly online talks give you the opportunity to hear about fascinating and groundbreaking work in the arts and in fields such as philosophy, history, and literary studies. Presentations are 30-40 minutes long and are designed for the general public. A spirited question-and-answer discussion follows each presentation.

Where:

Via Zoom. Register at tiny.utk.edu/CC-Magilow