Growing up has a miserable reputation in contemporary culture: maturity is the moment when we’re told to abandon adventure, hope and dreams and resign ourselves to the world as it is. But how does this picture of maturity arise, and whose interests does it serve? How are childhood and maturity viewed in different cultures and eras? Is it possible to develop another model of maturity in which the adult – not Peter Pan, the eternal youth – is viewed as a subversive ideal?

Concept: Susan Neiman, Potsdam
Participants: Omri Boehm, New York; Wolfram Eilenberger, Berlin; Alexandra Freund, Zürich; Konstanty Gebert, Warschau; Stephen Holmes, New York; Eva Illouz, Jerusalem; Winfried und Barbara Junge, Berlin; Monika Keller, Berlin; Peter D. Kramer, Providence; Diana Pinto, Paris; Pierre-Henri Tavoillot, Paris; James Wood, Cambridge, Mass.