Transatlantic Dialogue in Thomas Mann House in California

Literary Scholar Stefan Keppler-Tasaki Wins Thomas Mann Fellowship for 2019 No 230/2018 from Sep 10, 2018 Professor Stefan Keppler-Tasaki, an Einstein Visiting Fellow at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies of Freie Universität, has been awarded a Thomas Mann Fellowship for 2019 at the newly established Thomas Mann House in Los Angeles. The Thomas Mann House and the Villa Aurora - the former homes in California of the writers Thomas Mann and Lion Feuchtwanger, who had been forced into exile by the Nazis - are run today by a German nonprofit association and funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and the German Federal Government's Commissioner to Promote Culture and Media. The fellowships of the Villa Aurora & Thomas Mann House e.V. are intended to help intellectuals in all areas to carry out major projects dealing with issues of transatlantic exchange. As a Thomas Mann Fellow in 2019, Stefan Keppler-Tasaki will examine the significance of Villa Aurora as a residence for German-speaking artists (1995-2015) and explore their literary work on themes related to escape and refuge, survival and new beginnings. Stefan Keppler-Tasaki is a professor of German literature at the University of Tokyo. Since 2015 he has also been teaching and doing research as an Einstein Visiting Fellow at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Freie Universität Berlin, where he is also responsible for the Transpacifica project. In his work Keppler-Tasaki deals with the complex web of relationships between the history of literature, religion, and ideology with particular emphasis on the formation of individuality and collectivity.