Current Directions in Walter Benjamin studies

Join us for this one-day conference bringing together the editor, Nathan Ross, and other contributors to The Palgrave Walter Benjamin Handbook to discuss current directions in the study of Walter Benjamin's thought and to celebrate the launch of the handbook in March 2025.

The conference will include a number of panels with contributors from the handbook, who will reflect on the topical themes addressed in their own chapters, as well as a discussion with the handbook's editor Nathan Ross (Adelphi University) about current directions in Benjamin's thought. A list of confirmed speakers and a schedule will be published here prior to the event.

The event is hosted by the Institute of Modern and Contemporary Culture at the University of Westminster and takes place in Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London, W1B 2HW. Attendance is free but advance registration is required.

For information about the conference, please contact Matthew Charles (University of Westminster).

The Handbook will be launched in March 2025:

"Walter Benjamin is one of the most influential authors in contemporary humanities, exerting a deep fascination for students and garnering scholarly interest in a variety of fields, such as history of philosophy, literature, film and media studies, political science, religion, architecture, art and history. The Palgrave Walter Benjamin Handbook provides students and scholars with a guide to Walter Benjamin’s work that explores each of these areas in depth while also giving the reader a chance to discover connections to other areas of thought.

In order to do justice to the complexity of Benjamin’s thinking, this volume includes international scholars from a variety of academic disciplines, and is organized such that a dialogue emerges between them. Each section presents an argument for the integration of its subject into the whole, demonstrating that what might seem specialized and esoteric actually intersects with the problems and questions of the other sections."
Nathan Ross teaches interdisciplinary classes and philosophy at Adelphi University, USA. His books includeThe Philosophy and Politics of Aesthetic Experience (2017) and Walter Benjamin’s First Philosophy (2021), as well as translations and edited volumes.

Matthew Charles is the author of Modernism Between Benjamin and Goethe (2019), co-author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Benjamin (2020), and has published in The Sage Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, New German Critique, boundary 2 and Radical Philosophy.

Host or Publisher School of Humanities, University of Westminster