In her lecture, Gundela Hachmann thinks with Hannah Arendt and Christa Wolf about creativity and politics. Natality, the human ability to create something new, takes center stage as she considers Arendt's timely thoughts about the human condition. Wolf's influential feminist pacifism enables her to draw connections among the height of Cold War tensions in the 1980s, today's political climate, and the importance of thoughtful and socially resonant creativity.

Bio: Dr. Gundela Hachmann teaches German and Comparative Literature and Film at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Her ongoing research, a monograph entitled The Arts and the Social, advocates the social relevance of the creative arts by revisiting key debates among artists and critics at German and North American universities. She also serves as book review editor for the German Studies Review.