From Sarmatia to Mare Nostrum: Borderland Spaces in German-language Literature and other Media

From Sarmatia to Mare Nostrum: Borderland Spaces in German-language Literature and other Media

Veranstalter
The Irish Centre of Transnational Studies and Department of German Studies, MIC, and Nottingham Trent University
Veranstaltungsort
Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR), University of London.
Ort
London
Land
United Kingdom
Vom - Bis
27.04.2017 - 28.04.2017
Deadline
12.12.2016
Von
Bill Niven

On the occasion of the centenary of Johannes Bobrowski, the Irish Centre of Transnational Studies and Department of German Studies, MIC, will organise an international conference on “Borderland Spaces in German-language Literature and other Media”. The conference will take place on 27 and 28 April 2017 at the Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR), University of London.

The event is organised in cooperation with Nottingham Trent University, and the Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London, and is supported by the Modern Humanities Research Association.

With his „Sarmatien“, Johannes Bobrowski’s poetry and fiction of the 1950s and early 1960s, marked by his experience of the Second World War in Central and Eastern Europe, suggests a European borderland space which questions national borders as well as cultural and temporal boundaries, and challenges prevalent ideas and aesthetics on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Taking Bobrowski’s Sarmatia as a starting point, this international conference aims to provide researchers with a forum to discuss how Central and Eastern European borderland narratives and poetics have changed in the course of the 20th to 21st century in German-language literature and other media, and how such processes may be interlinked with national, European or global discourses, structures, and contexts. While the main focus will be on shifts in narratives and poetics in the context of global migration and displacement of people in the 20th and 21st century, links between these and earlier narratives will be taken into account. The main disciplinary focus will be on how such narratives are performed, reflected or deconstructed in German-language literature and other media, what role this may play in a particular “field” (P. Bourdieu) or “canon” (S. Winko), and with regard to cultural, economic, and political discourses. However, comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives, linking German Studies with other Modern Languages, Media Studies, and History, are also invited to open different perspectives on the topic. Central Eastern and Eastern European narratives are of particular interest here, not least in view of the “Eastern European Turn” (B. Haines) which has informed German literature and other media of the last two decades, and which makes Bobrowski’s writing particularly relevant in a contemporary context. At the same time, it would be of interest to take into account other directions (North-South), dichotomies, and language spaces when looking at European borderlands. The conference takes the centenary of Bobrowski, who was born on 9 April 1917 in Tilsit (now Sovetsk), and his border poetics therefore as a starting point, rather than a thematic frame, to explore shifts in German, Central, and Eastern European border narratives from a national to a European or global perspective and vice versa.

200‐word abstracts for papers of 20‐minutes length are invited by 12 December 2016 to the organisers Sabine Egger (sabine.egger@mic.ul.ie) and Bill Niven (william.niven@ntu.ac.uk).

Programm

Plenary speakers will include Professor Maren Röger (Augsburg), Professor Joanna Jablkowska (Łódź), Professor Carsten Gansel (Gießen), Dr. Andreas Degen (Potsdam), and Professor Wladimir Gilmanov (Kaliningrad).

Kontakt

Bill Niven

Nottingham Trent University, Clifton Campus, Clifton Lane, Nottingham NG11 8NS, UK

0044 115 848 3232

william.niven@ntu.ac.uk

http://www.ictstudies.eu/international-conference-from-sarmatia-to-mare-nostrum-borderland-spaces-in-german-language-literature-and-other-media-27-28-april-2017/
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Englisch, Deutsch
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