European Graduate School - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The European Graduate School (EGS) in Saas-Fee, Switzerland is a privately funded graduate school

Graduate school

A graduate school is a school that awards advanced academic degrees with the general requirement that students must have earned a previous undergraduate degree...

founded by the non-profit European Foundation of Interdisciplinary Studies. Its German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

name is Europäische Universität für Interdisziplinäre Studien ("European University for Interdisciplinary Studies"). It is governed by a presidential board that includes a representative of the Swiss canton of Valais

Valais

The Valais is one of the 26 cantons of Switzerland in the southwestern part of the country, around the valley of the Rhône from its headwaters to Lake Geneva, separating the Pennine Alps from the Bernese Alps. The canton is one of the drier parts of Switzerland in its central Rhône valley...

. Instruction is in English.

History

EGS was established in 1994 as a postgraduate degree-granting school with two divisions: Media and Communications; and Arts, Health and Society. Founding contributors include thinkers such as Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...

and Jean-François Lyotard

Jean-François Lyotard

Jean-François Lyotard was a French philosopher and literary theorist. He is well known for his articulation of postmodernism after the late 1970s and the analysis of the impact of postmodernity on the human condition...

. The setting of the campus in the Alps at an altitude of 1,800 m (6,000 ft), with a magnificent view of some of Switzerland's highest mountains, provides a unique learning atmosphere.

It is a fully accredited school controlled by a school council ("Hochschulrat") in which the Canton of Valais is represented with at least one member. The school is supervised by representatives of the education ministry of the Canton of Valais, the Graduate School of Music and Theater, Hamburg, the Appalachian State University

Appalachian State University

Appalachian State University is a comprehensive , public, coeducational university located in Boone, North Carolina, United States. Appalachian State, also referred to as Appalachian, App State, or simply App, is the sixth largest institution in the University of North Carolina system...

in Boone, NC, and the California Institute of Integral Studies

California Institute of Integral Studies

California Institute of Integral Studies is a private institution of higher education founded in 1968 and based in San Francisco, California. It currently operates in three locations just south of the Civic Center district...

in San Francisco.

Arts, Health and Society Division

Offers certificate programs (MAPS and CAGS) and Masters and Doctoral degrees in Expressive Arts Therapy and Expressive Arts Coaching and Consulting, Education, and Social Change. The MA Programs in Expressive Arts are designed to further training and research in the therapeutic, coaching, consultative, educational and social use of the arts. The programs encourage students to take seriously the tradition and disciplines of the arts as they have evolved over the course of human history. In all societies up to the present, the arts have played an essential role in enabling human beings to make sense of their world, to live with suffering when necessary and to be able to celebrate the joy of life. Teaching takes place in the town of Saas Fee in the Swiss Alps (State of Valais, Switzerland) in two sessions each summer from June to August. Students and faculty from all over the world meet to participate in intensive training seminars.
The doctoral program in Expressive Arts combines two Summer residential training's at EGS leading to a Certificate of Advanced Post-Graduate Studies (CAGS) with individualized dissertation research in the student's home country. The Summer training is conducted in English; dissertations can be written in English, German or French if suitable advisors can be found. The granting of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by EGS has been approved by the Ministry of Education, Canton Wallis, Switzerland.

The format of a Graduate School for professionals with training exclusively in intensive summer seminars has the advantage that it can commit a faculty of excellent reputation who are internationally engaged leaders or founders in their field. Faculty members come from interdisciplinary practices that cross institutional boundaries. They advocate investigative learning and creative inquiry which embraces the stratified complexity of the concrete problems we face today. They are familiar with thinking that expands the horizon of established frameworks and creates networks between disciplines and institutions in both the private and public sector. Faculty that have joined EGS are enthusiastic about projects that engage the typical adult learner. They appreciate the benefit of the innovative learning that goes on between faculty, students and participants in on-going projects.

Media and Communications Division

The Media and Communication Department focuses on creative breakthroughs and theoretical paradigm shifts, bringing together master's and doctoral students with an interest in art, philosophy, communications, film, literature, internet, web and cyberspace studies with artists, writers, and philosophers.

Faculty and guest lecturers give 3-6 day long courses during the 4 week summer seminars. Visiting faculty have included Giorgio Agamben

Giorgio Agamben

Giorgio Agamben is an Italian political philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception and homo sacer....

,,,, Chantal Akerman

Chantal Akerman

Chantal Anne Akerman is a Belgian film director, artist, and professor of film at the European Graduate School. Akerman's best-known film, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles , exemplifies a dedication to the ellipses of conventional narrative cinema.-Early life:Akerman was born to...

,,,, Pierre Alferi, Pierre Aubenque, Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou

Alain Badiou is a French philosopher, professor at European Graduate School, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure . Along with Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek, Badiou is a prominent figure in an anti-postmodern strand of continental philosophy...

,,,,,, Lewis Baltz

Lewis Baltz

Lewis Baltz is a visual artist and well known photographer who became an important figure in the New Topographic movement of the late 1970s....

, Julian Barnes

Julian Barnes

Julian Patrick Barnes is a contemporary English writer, and winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize, for his book The Sense of an Ending...

, Jean Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard

Jean Baudrillard was a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and post-structuralism.-Life:...

,,,,,,,, Yve-Alain Bois

Yve-Alain Bois

Yve-Alain Bois is an historian and critic of modern art. Yve-Alain Bois was born on April 16, 1952 in Constantine, Algeria.-Education:...

,,, Catherine Breillat

Catherine Breillat

Catherine Breillat is a French filmmaker, novelist and Professor of Auteur Cinema at the European Graduate School.-Life and career:Breillat was born in Bressuire, Deux-Sèvres, but grew up in Niort...

,,, Victor Burgin

Victor Burgin

Victor Burgin is an artist and a writer. Burgin first came to attention as a conceptual artist in the late 1960s and at that time was most noted for being a political photographer of the left, who would fuse photographs and words in the same picture. He has worked with photography and film,...

,,,,,,, Judith Butler

Judith Butler

Judith Butler is an American post-structuralist philosopher, who has contributed to the fields of feminism, queer theory, political philosophy, and ethics. She is a professor in the Rhetoric and Comparative Literature departments at the University of California, Berkeley.Butler received her Ph.D...

,,,,,,, Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle

Sophie Calle is a French writer, photographer, installation artist, and conceptual artist. Calle's work is distinguished by its use of arbitrary sets of constraints, and evokes the French literary movement of the 1960s known as Oulipo. Her work frequently depicts human vulnerability, and examines...

, Hélène Cixous

Hélène Cixous

Hélène Cixous is a professor, French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, literary critic and rhetorician. She holds honorary degrees from Queen's University and the University of Alberta in Canada; University College Dublin in Ireland; the University of York and University College...

,, Diane Davis, Manuel DeLanda, Claire Denis

Claire Denis

Claire Denis is a French film director and Professor of Film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.-Early life:...

,,, Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida

,,, Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin

Tracey Karima Emin RA is a British artist of English and Turkish Cypriot origin. She is part of the group known as Britartists or YBAs ....

,,, Bracha Ettinger,, Christopher Fynsk

Christopher Fynsk

Christopher Fynsk is Head of the School of Language and Literature at the University of Aberdeen, Director of the Centre for Modern Thought and Professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. He is well known for his work relating the political and literary aspects of continental...

,, Antony Gormley

Antony Gormley

Antony Mark David Gormley OBE RA is a British sculptor. His best known works include the Angel of the North, a public sculpture in the North of England, commissioned in 1995 and erected in February 1998, Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool, and Event Horizon, a multi-part site...

,,, Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway

Peter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular...

,,,,,, Durs Grünbein

Durs Grünbein

Durs Grünbein is a German poet, living in Berlin since 1985.Grünbein is hailed as the most significant and successful poet to emerge from the former East Germany, and his work has been awarded many major German literary prizes, including the highest, the Georg-Büchner-Preis, which he won in 1995...

, Werner Hamacher

Werner Hamacher

Werner Hamacher is a German literary critic and theorist influenced by deconstruction. Hamacher studied philosophy, comparative literature and religious studies at the Free University of Berlin and the École Normale Supérieure , where he got in touch with Jacques Derrida...

, Barbara Hammer

Barbara Hammer

Barbara Hammer is an American filmmaker in the genre of experimental films and a professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee.-Biography:...

, Donna Haraway

Donna Haraway

Donna J. Haraway is currently a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States...

,,,, Michael Hardt

Michael Hardt

Michael Hardt is an American literary theorist and political philosopher perhaps best known for Empire, written with Antonio Negri and published in 2000...

, Martin Hielscher, Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq

Michel Houellebecq , born Michel Thomas, 26 February 1958—or 1956 —on the French island of Réunion, is a controversial and award-winning French author, filmmaker and poet. To admirers he is a writer in the tradition of literary provocation that reaches back to the Marquis de Sade and Baudelaire;...

, Shelley Jackson

Shelley Jackson

Shelley Jackson is a writer and artist known for her cross-genre experiments, including her groundbreaking work of hyperfiction, Patchwork Girl...

,, Mitchell Joachim

Mitchell Joachim

Mitchell Joachim is acknowledged as an innovator in ecological design, architecture, and urban design. He is also a researcher, and architectural educator...

,, Friedrich Kittler

Friedrich Kittler

Friedrich A. Kittler was a literary scholar and a media theorist. His works relate to media, technology, and the military.-Biography:Friedrich Adolf Kittler was born in 1943 in Rochlitz in Saxony...

, Claude Lanzmann

Claude Lanzmann

Claude Lanzmann is a French filmmaker and professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.-Biography:Lanzmann attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. He joined the French resistance at the age of 18 and fought in Auvergne...

,,,,, Christian Marclay

Christian Marclay

Christian Marclay is a Swiss-American visual artist and composer.Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film...

,,, Colum McCann

Colum McCann

Colum McCann is an Irish writer of literary fiction. He is a Professor of Contemporary Literature at European Graduate School and Professor of Fiction at CUNY Hunter College's Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing with fellow novelists Peter Carey, twice winner of the Man Booker Prize,...

, Carl Mitcham

Carl Mitcham

Carl Mitcham is a philosopher of technology. Born in 1941, Mitcham is currently Professor of Liberal Arts and International Studies at the Colorado School of Mines and a professor at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee....

,,, Jean-Luc Nancy

Jean-Luc Nancy

Jean-Luc Nancy is a French philosopher.Nancy's first book, published in 1973, was Le titre de la lettre , a reading of the work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, written in collaboration with Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe...

,,,,,,,, Klaus Ottmann

Klaus Ottmann

Klaus Ottmann is an independent curator and writer based in New York. He received a M.A. in philosophy from the Free University of Berlin, Germany, and a Ph.D...

,,,, Hans Ulrich Obrist

Hans Ulrich Obrist

Hans Ulrich Obrist is a contemporary art curator, critic and historian of art. He is currently Co-director of Exhibitions and Programmes and Director of International Projects at the Serpentine Gallery, London...

, Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Ann Parker OBE, RA is an English sculptor and installation artist. -Life and career:Parker studied at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design and Wolverhampton Polytechnic...

, Laurence A. Rickels

Laurence A. Rickels

Laurence Arthur Rickels is an American literary and media theorist, whose most significant works have continued the Frankfurt School's efforts to apply psychoanalytic insights to analysis and criticism of modern mass media culture. Some of his best known works include The Case of California, The...

, Avital Ronell

Avital Ronell

Avital Ronell is a Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee and a Professor of German, comparative literature, and English at New York University, where she co-directs the Research in Trauma and Violence project...

,,,,, Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid,,,,, Wolfgang Schirmacher

Wolfgang Schirmacher

Wolfgang Schirmacher is an editor and educator in the field of philosophy and the program director at the European Graduate School. He has edited many journals and written books, as well as developed curriculum in philosophical disciplines at major universities.-Biography:Schirmacher has taught...

,,,,, Volker Schlöndorff

Volker Schlöndorff

Volker Schlöndorff is a Berlin-based German filmmaker who has worked in Germany, France and the United States...

,, Michael Schmidt

Michael Schmidt

Michael Schmidt may refer to:* Mike Schmidt, baseball player* Michael Q. Schmidt, American actor* Michael Schmidt , poet and scholar* Michael Schmidt , Canadian bowling player* Michael Schmidt , Canadian dairy farmer...

, Hendrik Speck,, Bruce Sterling

Bruce Sterling

Michael Bruce Sterling is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his work on the Mirrorshades anthology, which helped define the cyberpunk genre.-Writings:...

,, Allucquére Sandy Stone,,,,,, Elia Suleiman

Elia Suleiman

Elia Suleiman , is a Palestinian film director and actor. He is best known for the 2002 film Divine Intervention , a modern tragic comedy on living under occupation in Palestine which won the Jury Prize at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival...

, Friedrich Ulfers, Gregory Ulmer

Gregory Ulmer

Gregory Leland Ulmer is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Florida and a professor of Electronic Languages and Cybermedia at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.- Career :...

,, Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda

Agnès Varda is a French film director and professor at the European Graduate School. Her movies, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary — with a distinct experimental style....

, Paul Virilio

Paul Virilio

Paul Virilio is a cultural theorist and urbanist. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power, with diverse references to architecture, the arts, the city and the military....

,,, Victor J. Vitanza,,, Hubertus von Amelunxen

Hubertus von Amelunxen

Hubertus von Amelunxen is a professor at the Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal, and the European Graduate School, Saas-Fee. He studied Roman, German, and Art History at Marburg and Paris and finished his Ph.D. in Roman Studies at the University of Mannheim...

,,,,,,, Margarethe von Trotta,, John Waters

John Waters (filmmaker)

John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...

,,,,,,, Samuel Weber,, Caveh Zahedi

Caveh Zahedi

Caveh Zahedi is an American film director and actor of Iranian descent.-Early years:Zahedi was born in Washington, D.C. to Iranian immigrant parents. He studied philosophy at Yale University...

, Krzysztof Zanussi

Krzysztof Zanussi

Krzysztof Zanussi, is a Polish producer and film director.He is a professor of European film at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland where he conducts a summer workshop...

,, Siegfried Zielinski

Siegfried Zielinski

Siegfried Zielinski is a German media theorist. He holds the chair for Media Theory: Archaeology and Variantology of the Media at Berlin University of the Arts , he is Michel Foucault Professor for Techno-Culture and Media Archaeology at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee, and he is director...

,, Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek is a Slovenian philosopher, critical theorist working in the traditions of Hegelianism, Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis. He has made contributions to political theory, film theory, and theoretical psychoanalysis....

,,,,, and Jan Zwicky

Jan Zwicky

Jan Zwicky is a Canadian philosopher, poet, essayist, and musician.She received her B.A. from the University of Calgary and earned her PhD at the University of Toronto in 1981 where her studies focussed on the philosophy of logic and science...

.

In 2006, Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek

became the Jacques Lacan Professor at EGS, which has helped to further publicize the school regionally and globally.

Teaching philosophy

Studies involve two years of coursework, including rigorous on-line writing requirements based upon a structured reading list, and two three-week summer seminars in Switzerland, during which students are evaluated for their active participation in nine hours of seminars and lectures each day with visiting professors, philosophers, filmmakers, and artists and spend their final three years writing a thesis or dissertation, followed by a traditional oral defense.

Slavoj Žižek

Slavoj Žižek

described his involvement in EGS in an interview with Swiss magazine Die Weltwoche
Die Weltwoche
Die Weltwoche is a Swiss weekly magazine based in Zürich. It is privately owned by Roger Köppel. The magazine's regular columnists of note include the former president of the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland, Peter Bodenmann, as well as Christoph Mörgeli MP, a leading figure of the right...

:

There is an international summer school, the European Graduate School... What is interesting with this school is the selection of lecturers – there are well-known philosophers and artists from the whole world, including filmmakers Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular...

and Volker Schlöndorff
Volker Schlöndorff
Volker Schlöndorff is a Berlin-based German filmmaker who has worked in Germany, France and the United States...

, theorists Donna Haraway
Donna Haraway
Donna J. Haraway is currently a Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, United States...

and Sandy Stone, and philosophers Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben is an Italian political philosopher best known for his work investigating the concepts of the state of exception and homo sacer....

, Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou
Alain Badiou is a French philosopher, professor at European Graduate School, formerly chair of Philosophy at the École Normale Supérieure . Along with Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek, Badiou is a prominent figure in an anti-postmodern strand of continental philosophy...

and I. We three are friends. We meet there each year, are engaged for three weeks. I can bring my wife, do a 90 minute lecture each morning and am free afterwards.

Slavoj Žižek

also described the rigor and prestige of EGS as an academic institution during an interview in 2006:

EGS is not only a place to create an interaction between students, but gives them freedom. Not freedom to do nothing, but precisely freedom to work in this creative inter-space. Also, the way the talks are done, we do very serious theoretical work here. I like how the school approaches me. You know, I had to be there for exams for the students so I thought how should I terrorize them, I told them: "You ask yourself a question and then you answer it". Ah, but you know, they didn’t have any excuses. They couldn’t have said: "Ah, sorry, I could not answer you." They had to be at their best. No excuses. We are challenged to do so. So, it’s wonderful to see how somebody like Badiou comes; it’s like work in progress that you can see. It’s really serious work. It’s enough mixing between students and professors as equals so that you can get real productive exchange, not just ritualistic questions, answers and so on. I think this is what accounts for the growing success of EGS. It’s simply a negative proof of the failure of today’s academia.

Wolfgang Schirmacher

was the founding Dean of the Media and Communications division (which confers Masters

Master of Arts (postgraduate)

A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...

and Ph.D.

Doctor of Philosophy

Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

degrees). Professor Schirmacher retired from that post in the Autumn of 2006 and now serves as the Program Director. The current (as of 15 March 2007) Dean of this division is Professor Friedrich Ulfers

Friedrich Ulfers

Friedrich Ulfers is Professor of German at New York University. He is a distinguished fellow, having been awarded several highly regarded honors from New York University. He also is the Dean of the Media and Communications division at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, where he confers on...

(also distinguished faculty at New York University

New York University

New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...

Intercollegiate connections

EGS has established curricular cooperation with:

Appalachian State University
Appalachian State University
Appalachian State University is a comprehensive , public, coeducational university located in Boone, North Carolina, United States. Appalachian State, also referred to as Appalachian, App State, or simply App, is the sixth largest institution in the University of North Carolina system...

Boone
Boone
- Places :In the United States:* Boone, Colorado* Boone, Iowa* Boone, North Carolina* Boone Grove, Indiana* Boone Township, Minnesota* Boones Mill, Virginia* Boonesboro, Missouri* Boonesborough, Kentucky* Booneville...

, North Carolina.
Beit Berl Academic College
Beit Berl
Beit Berl is a village and the largest academic college in Israel in number of students and the range of programs it offers. Located on the outskirts of Kfar Sava, it falls under the jurisdiction of Drom HaSharon Regional Council...

. Doar Beit Berl, (Israel)
California Institute of Integral Studies
California Institute of Integral Studies
California Institute of Integral Studies is a private institution of higher education founded in 1968 and based in San Francisco, California. It currently operates in three locations just south of the Civic Center district...

, San Francisco, California.
Clemson University
Clemson University
Clemson University is an American public, coeducational, land-grant, sea-grant, research university located in Clemson, South Carolina, United States....

, College of Architecture, Arts, Humanities. Clemson, South Carolina
Clemson, South Carolina
Clemson is a college town located in Pickens County in the U.S. state of South Carolina. The population was 11,939 at the 2000 census and center of an urban cluster with a total population of 42,199...

.
Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg
Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg
The Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg is one of the larger universities of music in Germany.It was founded 1950 as Staatliche Hochschule für Musik on the base of the former private acting school of Annemarie Marks-Rocke and Eduard Marks.Studies include various music types from church music...

, Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, Germany.
Instituto de Estudios Críticos. Mexico
International School of New Media
International School of New Media
International School of New Media in Lübeck, Germany is an international, affiliated private institute at the University of Lübeck.ISNM was established in 2001 for the purpose of providing a course that combines the* Technological,...

, Lübeck
Lübeck
The Hanseatic City of Lübeck is the second-largest city in Schleswig-Holstein, in northern Germany, and one of the major ports of Germany. It was for several centuries the "capital" of the Hanseatic League and, because of its Brick Gothic architectural heritage, is listed by UNESCO as a World...

, Germany.
Internationale Hochschule für künstlerische Therapien und Kreativpädagogik, Calw
Calw
Calw is a municipality in the middle of Baden-Württemberg in the south of Germany, capital of the district Calw. It is located in the northern Black Forest.-History:...

, Germany.

In addition, EGS is engaged in a collaboration with Resling Publishing House in Israel, including on a translation of Avital Ronell

Avital Ronell

's 2001 book Stupidity.

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History

Arts, Health and Society Division

Media and Communications Division

Teaching philosophy

Intercollegiate connections

External links