CURE Summer School 2026: Beyond Division

The ever-deepening division within and between societies is one of the most pressing problems of the day, because it damages the ways in which people live with others, relate to one another, and fashion their own selves. In response, a number of thinkers have asked: How can we bridge the gaps created by processes of fragmentation? Are there ways of thinking, speaking, or acting that can help to prevent or repair division? Beginning with this question, the participants in the Summer School—twenty doctoral candidates from around the world, together with scholars from the partner universities—will seek to go “beyond division”: what can the arts, literature, film, music, or philosophy offer in response to dehumanisation, oversimplification, and the flattening of complexity?

The second CURE Summer School is organized by the Käte Hamburger Centre Cultural Practices of Reparation (CURE) and the ZfL in cooperation with partner institutions from Lisbon, Paris, Naples, and Trieste. The keynote will be delivered by the author Véronique Tadjo.

Fig. above: Igor Chuxlancev: Ants build their-body bridge to cross the big canyon, Thailand, around Chiang Mai, Mai Clang waterfall, December 2015, licence: CC BY 4.0, source: Wikimedia Commons.