CFP: Re-evaluating DEFA Cinema

In recent years, scholarship about East Germany's film company DEFA has undergone a cultural turn. Barbara Eichinger, co-editor of the 2009 essay collection Film im Sozialismus - die DEFA, acknowledges a shift in GDR scholarship towards 'transnationale und historiografische Perspektiven auf die kulturellen, soziologischen und politischen Gegebenheiten' (20). Among other conferences, the Fifth Biennial Summer Film Institute by the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst in 2009 looked at new approaches of Rewriting
(East) German Cinema: Issues in Film Methodology and Historiography.

We seek to continue these methodological discussions at the 2010 GSA convention in Oakland, CA, and invite abstracts of approximately 250 words for two interdisciplinary panels and a roundtable discussion under the overarching topic 'Re-evaluating DEFA Cinema.' Panel I will combine papers addressing aspects of 'Star Culture,' panel II centers around the topic 'DEFA Dis/Continuities.' The topic for the roundtable discussion will be 'DEFA's Afterlife - and Why We Should Care.'

Please send an abstract, indicating which panel you are submitting to, and a current CV to both organizers by January 31st. All presenters have to be GSA members at the time of submission.

Benita Blessing, <blessing[at]ohio.edu> and Sebastian Heiduschke, <sebastian.heiduschke[at]oregonstate.edu>

Sebastian Heiduschke
Oregon State University