The Legacy of Leo Lowenthal: A Conference Commemorating His Life and Works on the Tenth Anniversary of His Death

Leo Lowenthal (1900-1993), a founding member of the Frankfurt Institut für Sozialforschung and Professor of Sociology at Berkeley from 1956 until his retirement in 1968, was a pioneer in the critical sociology of literature and culture. His collected works have been published both in English and German editions with Transaction Press and Fischer Verlag, and his autobiographical reflections, An Unmastered Past, came out with the University of California Press in 1987. Bringing together an international roster of scholars, many of whom were his personal friends, this conference will assay Lowenthal's intellectual legacy a decade after his death. Among the participants are Jan Philipp Reemtsma (Hamburg), who will deliver the keynote address, Michael Bernstein (UCB), Howard Bloch (Yale), Victoria Bonnell (UCB), Helmut Dubiel (NYU and Giessen), Catherine Gallagher (UCB), Stephen Greenblatt (Harvard), Peter-Erwin Jansen (Frankfurt), Anton Kaes (UCB), Thomas Laqueur (UCB), Olli-Pekka Moisio (Jyvaskyla), Lars Rensmann (Berlin), Ann Swidler (UCB), and Richard Wolin (CUNY).