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From: kizer walker <kw33@cornell.edu>
Subject: CFP: Thinking Culture (Ithaca, 7.-8.11.97)
Date: Friday, June 6, 1997 15:37:07 MET |
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"Thinking Culture: Literature and Beyond"
Graduate Student Conference of the Cornell University Department of German
Studies
Sponsored by the Institute for German Culture Studies
November 7-8, 1997 at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
We welcome submissions pertaining to any of the following topics. One need
not strictly adhere to the five themes listed, which should be considered
jumping-off points for presentations. We encourage abstracts which address
areas of overlap between panels. 1-2 page abstracts for approximately 20
minute presentations are due by September 17, 1997. All abstracts will be
read without consideration of the author's name or institution.
-
Der, die oder das?
Thinking Genders and Sexualities How does the emergence of such fields as
"gender studies" and "queer theory" affect the way we practice "German studies"?
Can American visions of feminism and lesbian/gay culture and politics be
"translated" into German(y)?-what might some key differences be? What is
at stake in "queer readings" of canonical literary texts? How might we rethink
masculinity-how is it constructed in German cultural productions? What are
the discursive legacies of late 19th and early 20th century German theories
of gender and sexual identity (e.g., those of Krafft-Ebing, Hirschfeld, Freud,
Weininger)? How do particular moments in German culture challenge us to fine-tune
our working notions of gender and sexuality?
-
Culture (Re)Viewed: Performing German
How is German culture defined, represented, and critiqued by the visual and
performing arts-how is German culture performed, onstage and off? What does
"German" look like? In what sense are representations of German culture and
identity dependent on representations of the non-German. Does filmic language
communicate something about German culture that written language cannot?
From medieval iconography to the Brechtian gestus, how do gesture and movement,
physical presence (or absence) describe, inscribe, or proscribe German culture
in a particular way?
-
Postmark Germany: Contextualizing Postcolonialism
What are the historical or conceptual constraints on the paradigms of
postcolonialism and Orientalism in German Studies? How is Germanness racialized
and gendered? How can one employ such categories as minority literature without
reifying notions of the margin and the center? What happens to representations
of the body and sexuality in the colonial and postcolonial condition? How
do "hybrid identities" trouble conceptions of Germanness? How do texts reconcile
postmodern subjectivity and ethnic identity?
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Psychoanalytic Culture, Cultural Psychoanalysis
How can psychoanalysis (which psychoanalysis?) enrich concepts of self and
internal psychic life? How can it (or should it?) help us recuperate the
notions of "depth" and interiority jettisoned in Marxist, postmodernist,
or Foucauldian theories? How might the concept of the phantasmatic elucidate
and complicate the relationship between internal psychic life and politics?
In concrete terms, for example, how might the phantasmatic enable us to rethink
orientalist fantasy in the German context? How do political fantasies relate
to forms of political engagement? What might German studies contribute to
the study of the writings of Freud and psychoanalytic theory?
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Thinking History, Memory, Identity
Do historians have an "ethical" relationship to their mode of representation?
How have particular events in German history changed shape in their various
representations? What are the "proper" uses of history, and what are its
abuses? What role does or should trauma play in historical representation?
What are the connections between history, memory, and identity? How might
we understand German attempts at Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung, both in "historical"
texts and in literature and film? What is the status of pre-modernity-what
are the cultural stakes in studying pre-modern, as opposed to "recent," history?
-
Open Topic
We welcome any contributions to German studies, particularly those with
interdisciplinary themes.
Please send abstracts to:
Christopher Clark
Department of German Studies
183 Goldwin Smith Hall
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-3201
E-mail: <cmc22@cornell.edu>
Fax: (607) 255-1454
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