Women Writing the First World War
German Conference October 23-26, 2014 // Shawnee on Delaware, PA
The 100th anniversary of the First World War is an opportunity to revisit the texts that emerge out of this violent conflict, to expand the canon dominated by male writers, and to reconsider the understanding of the experience of war beyond the arenas of combat. German women not only commented on their nation’s war efforts in various ways, but they also documented and imagined the events of this tumultuous time period through literature, journalism and life writing, in both fictional and non-fictional texts. This panel seeks to examine how German women wrote the First World War and how these writings deepen our understanding of the gendered experience of the war.
This panel seeks to address such questions as:
- What roles did German women play in war efforts, both on the front and at home, and how are these contributions described through women’s literature?
- What genres do women employ in writing the war, and how does genre influence the text or the story told?
- How do women narrate their experiences of war? What narrative strategies do they use?
- What themes are prevalent in women’s writings about the war, and what new topics, insights, and approaches to the discussion of war do they introduce?
- In what ways do women’s representations of war broaden our understanding of the history of the First World War, as well as women’s experiences of war and conflict?
- What is the place of German women’s literature in the canon as we examine the First World War 100 years later?
We invite proposals from across disciplines that examine female-authored texts about the First World War. Please send a 250-350 word abstract and brief bio by March 15, 2014 to Barbara Kosta (bkosta@email.arizona.edu and Julie Shoults (julie.shoults@uconn.edu).
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The 19th Annual Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization
The Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University
(Evanston, Illinois, June 22 to July 3, 2014)
Call for Fellows
The Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University is pleased to invite applications for fellowships to participate in the nineteenth annual Summer Institute on the Holocaust and Jewish Civilization from June 22 to July 3, 2014, at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The renowned program is an intensive two-week course of study designed to broaden and deepen the background of current and prospective Holocaust educators. It is open to faculty at the college or university level and to graduate students who are planning on teaching Holocaust-related courses.
The Institute is ideal for those with a knowledge of one disciplinary approach to the Holocaust but who are looking to broaden their interdisciplinary perspective. Approximately 25 Fellows are selected annually, each of whom receives free room, board, and tuition during the program. (Fellowships do not cover travel expenses to and from Evanston or
the cost of assigned books. It is generally not possible to accommodate spouses or partners on campus during the Institute).
The Institute curriculum consists of seminars and lectures taught by leading scholars on the following themes: the religious practice and history of European Jewry, problems in Holocaust interpretation, the Holocaust in literature, art and film, the Holocaust and modern ethics, gender and the Holocaust, and the pedagogy of the Holocaust. Faculty for the 2014 Summer Institute will include Professors Doris Bergen, Alan Berger, Roger Brooks, Gershon Greenberg, Dagmar Herzog, Paul Jaskot, Stuart Liebman, and Barry Trachtenberg.
By February 28, 2014, applicants should submit electronically (1) a letter explaining their interest and experience in Holocaust studies, (2) a curriculum vitae, and, (3) in the case of graduate students, a letter of recommendation from the principal dissertation advisor. Applications and letters of recommendation should be emailed (separately) with the subject line “Summer Institute 2014” to: hef@northwestern.edu
Please email any questions to: hef@northwestern.edu
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DAAD FACULTY SUMMER SEMINAR 2014
JUNE 16 – JULY 25, CORNELL UNIVERSITY
“The Epic Side of Truth: Narration and Knowledge in the German Literary
Tradition”
This six-week seminar for North American faculty in the interdisciplinary field of German Studies investigates the unique modes of knowledge produced in various forms of narration-from myth, epic, and the novel to the anecdote, autobiography, and case history. The seminar explores the ways in which storytelling and its intensive theorization in the German tradition provide a form of knowledge sui generis about experience, temporality,
consciousness, subjectivity, sociality, and history. This “epic side of truth” (Benjamin) or “non-conceptual thinking” (Blumenberg) circumscribes epistemic insights that cannot be obtained by strictly conceptual thought nor by the natural sciences’ model of verification and repeatability.
Readings and other materials will be exemplary rather than comprehensive, and selections will be based in part on participants’ research interests and disciplinary expertise. While the seminar takes its cue from canonical work on the novel, autobiography, and storytelling in the German tradition, scholars concentrating on any historical period or cultural medium (e.g. film, oral history, montage arts, serialized TV dramas) are very welcome to apply, as the seminar aims to promote dialogue among various specializations within German Studies. Current debates about literature and
evolutionary theory, literature and cognitive science as well as literature and biopolitics will provide an additional frame of reference for seminar discussion.
At a time when the Humanities are pressed to justify their relevance, this seminar stakes a claim for the ineluctable function of storytelling and narration with respect to consciousness, politics, history, and knowledge formation in general. Possible points of inquiry include (but are in no way limited to) the novel and forms-of-life for modern subjectivity (Blanckenburg, Lukács); narrative and the hermeneutics of the subject
(Dilthey, Simmel, Foucault, Brooks); the talking cure and case histories (K. Ph. Moritz, Freud); storytelling and the wisdom of lived experience (Benjamin); the cartography of storytelling (Cohen, Moretti); the novel of consciousness and lifeworlds (Cohn, Husserl); evolutionary theory and the literary animal (Boyd, Gottschall); temporality, historicity, and
contingency (Jameson, Ricouer); anecdotes and New Historicism (Greenblatt, Fineman); as well as the most recent critical work in German Studies on narration and knowledge (Vogl’sWissenspoetologie, Koschorke’s project of a universal theory of narration).
In short, this seminar on narration and knowledge invites a multi-perspectival, interdisciplinary examination of narrative trajectories in their epistemological insights, temporal dimensions, and social-political ramifications. Participants will be encouraged to
contribute from their own fields of interest as well as present their work-in-progress.
The seminar will take place June 16-July 25, 2014 (TBC), at Cornell University.
Seminar Director: Paul Fleming, Professor of German Studies and Director of the Institute for German Cultural Studies, Cornell University
Program: Under the auspices of Cornell University’s Institute for German Cultural Studies, the program will combine regular seminar meetings and discussions with presentation of participants’ research and occasional guest lectures. Seminar meetings will be conducted in English; advanced reading knowledge of German required.
Tuition: There is a $50 fee; participants are eligible for a stipend.
Eligibility: Participation is open to faculty members in the Humanities and Social Sciences at colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada. Applicants who have received their Ph.D.s within the past two years but do not yet hold faculty appointments are encouraged to apply. Graduate students and Ph.D. candidates are not eligible. Participants must be
citizens or permanent residents of the U.S. or Canada.
Application Deadline: March 1, 2014. All application materials and questions to be addressed to:
Prof. Paul Fleming
Institute for German Cultural Studies
Cornell University
726 University Avenue
Ithaca, NY 14850
Tel.: (607) 255-8408
Fax: (607) 255-1454
E-mail: paul.fleming@cornell.edu
For other seminar-related questions, please contact Olga Petrova at Cornell University’s Institute for German Cultural Studies (ogp2@cornell.edu).
UB Graduate Group for German & Austrian Studies 