The research group Cultural History & Literary Imagination at the University
of Cambridge presents its 1st international conference!

THE FRAGILE TRADITION: THE GERMAN CULTURAL IMAGINATION SINCE 1500

1 - 3 October 2002

St John¹s College & Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge

Keynote speakers

ALEIDA ASSMANN (University of Konstanz),
Four Forms of Memory: From Individual to Collective Constructions of the
Past

MANFRED ENGEL (University of Hagen),
Deutschland/Hesperien: Kulturelle und nationale Identitätsstiftung in
Hölderlins später Dichtung

ULRICH GAIER (University of Konstanz),
 National Myths in Anthropological Perspective: The Example of 'Suevia'

JOACHIM WHALEY (Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge)
The Right Kind of Memory? Recent German Attempts to Revive the Long-Term
Past

HELEN WATANABE-O'KELLY (Exeter College, Oxford),
Knowledge, Memory and Text at the Dresden Court in the Sixteenth and
Seventeenth Centuries


The full programme and abstracts are available in HTML and PDF formats at:
http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/german/researchgroup/conferences.html

The conference will provide an opportunity to investigate the forms and
functions of the cultural imagination, and the way it is reflected in
literary and discursive texts, in the German language area since 1500. The
contributions will mainly focus on four topics:

- Changes in the material culture of the German-speaking world and their
reflection in literature, including the impact of scientific and
technological developments and changes of cultural paradigm (e.g. literary
responses to scientific thinking and scientific views of the world, the
materiality of knowledge and its representation in literary and discursive
texts, the impact of industrialisation, social change, the influence of new
media and their anthropological dimension.

- The construction of cultural meaning through literary texts, models of
historical explanation, forms of historiographical representation, and media
systems, particularly with reference to continuities and discontinuities of
cultural and political identity, or of Œnational consciousness, and with
reference to the canonisation (or subversion) of lines of tradition.

- The status and the forms of historical and cultural memory, particularly
the cultural constitution of tradition and memory, and the spatial and
visual expression of cultural memories (lieux de mémoire in the sense
promoted by Pierre Nora), the dynamic metaphors by which cultural memory is
transmitted, and its representation in literary and discursive texts and
visual media.

- Questions of the methodology of a trans-disciplinary and historically
orientated investigation of cultural thinking and its representation in the
medium of text, image, film, etc. Of particular interest here is the
question of how to deal with diverse media when constructing and
interpreting cultural developments historically.

Sections: 

1. Reformation & Renaissance

SUSANNE RAU (University of Dresden), Reformation and History: The
Construction of (Dis)Continuities in the Historiography of the Reformation
in the Early Modern Period. SUSAN BOETTCHER (University of Texas, Austin),
1521 in 1546: Luther's Death and the Creation of Lutheran History. WILHELM
RIBHEGGE (University of Münster), German or European Identity? Luther and
Erasmus in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century German Cultural History and
Historiography. MARTIN RUEHL (Queen's College, Cambridge), Renaissance Italy
and the German Historical Imagination, 1870-1940.

2. The Heritage of the Enlightenment

STEFAN BUSCH (Lincoln College, Oxford),'Wenn Sie an Tugend und Vorsicht
glauben!' ­ Ideals and Life in Lessing's 'Minna von Barnhelm', Wieland's
'Geschichte des Agathon', and Moritz's 'Anton Reiser'. RITCHIE ROBERTSON (St
John's College, Oxford), Cultural Memory in Austria: The Josephinist Legacy
down to Grillparzer's 'König Ottokars Glück und Ende'. LAURA BENZI
(University of Pisa), Die Entstehung der Lyrik in der zweiten Hälfte des 18.
Jahrhunderts und die spätaufklärerische Affektenlehre. AXEL GOODBODY
(University of Bath), Constructions of Nature and Naturalness in
Twentieth-Century German Literature.

3. Media, Technology & Literature

DAVID MIDGLEY (St John's College, Cambridge), Technology as a Marker of
Cultural Change. JEANNE RIOU (University College, Dublin), Joseph Roth's
'Bekenntnis zum Gleisdreieck': Technology and Experience in 1920s Berlin.
HARRO SEGEBERG (University of Hamburg), Industrielle Kultur, das Kino und
die Schriftsteller: Zur Mediengeschichte der Weimarer Republik. GÜNTHER
STOCKER (University of Salzburg), Lesebilder und Mediengeschichte: Zur
Selbstreflexion der Literatur am Beginn der modernen Lesekultur und an ihrem
vermeintlichen Ende.

4. Aspects of Intermediality

RICARDA SCHMIDT (University of Manchester), Raphaels Schüler und Meister
Salvator Rosa in E.T.A. Hoffmanns Malererzählungen: Tradierung und
Modernisierung eines frühromantischen Kunstdiskurses. CAROLIN DUTTLINGER (St
John's College, Cambridge), 'Die Ruhe des Blickes': Kafka, Media Culture and
the 'Kaiserpanorama'. CORINNA MÜLLER (University of Hamburg), Übergang vom
Stummfilm zum Tonfilm: Entwurf einer Kultur des Fiktionalen.

5. Literature & the Scientific Imagination

JÜRGEN BARKHOFF (Trinity College, Dublin), Envy of the Gods: The Dream of
Creating Artificial Humans around 1800. DANIEL STEUER (Sussex University),
Laws of Conservation and the Metaphysical Imagination. MALCOLM HUMBLE (St
Andrew's University), Monism and Literature in the Later Years of the
'Kaiserreich'.

6. Cultural Transfers

JÖRN STEIGERWALD (University of Bochum), Galanterie als kulturelle
Identitätsbildung: Frankreich ­ Deutschland. MARTINA LAUSTER (University of
Exeter), The Continuity of the 'Gentleman Ideal' in German Literature from
Lichtenberg to Hofmannsthal. LOTHAR SCHNEIDER (University of Giessen),
Liberalismus, Positivismus, Anglophilie: Über ein Projekt bürgerlicher
Kultur in der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts.

7. Traces of Cultural Memory

ANNE FUCHS (University College, Dublin), 'Schmerzensspuren der Geschichte':
The Landscape of Memory in W.G. Sebald. SILKE HORSTKOTTE (University of
Leipzig), Visible Gaps: Photography Inserted into Narrative in W.G. Sebald.
KAREN LEEDER (New College, Oxford), 'rhythmische historia': Contemporary
Poems of the First World War by Thomas Kling and Raoul Schrott.

8. Figures of Memory and History

CONSTANZE GÜTHENKE (Oriel College, Oxford / Princeton University), From the
'Archipel deutscher Kleinstaaterei' to Nature in Arms: The Image of the
Greek Land around 1821. CHRISTIAN EMDEN (Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge),
The Invention of Antiquity: Classicality, Classicism and Classical
Scholarship, 1780-1930. MARC OLIVER HUBER (Free University, Berlin), Memoria
in Zeiten des Zeitenbruchs: Zur Strukturkrise des kulturellen Gedächtnisses.

9. Cultural Reconstructions

SIMON WARD (University of Aberdeen), The Ruins of Culture in Germany after
1945. WILLIAM NIVEN (Nottingham Trent University), Martin Walser¹s ŒTod
eines Kritikers¹ and its Reception in Germany. INGEBORG CLEVE (University of
Saarbrücken / Stiftung Weimarer Klassik), Von der Subversität beherrschten
Erbens: 'Weimarer Klassik' in der DDR. SILKE ARNOLD-DE SIMINÉ (Sidney Sussex
College, Cambridge), Der Kult des Erinnerns: Musealisierungsprozesse in
Wenderomanen und -filmen.

10. History & Identity

TUSKA BENES (University of Pennsylvania), Linguistic History and Memories of
National Origin, 1806-1815. CHARLOTTE WOODFORD (Selwyn College, Cambridge),
ŒMit Gott für König und Vaterland¹: Contrasting Models of Patriotism in the
Historical Novels of Theodor Fontane and Gustav Freytag. MANUELA ACHILLES
(University of Michigan), Reforming the Reich: Political Violence and
Republican Identification in Weimar Germany.



The research group ŒCultural History and Literary Imagination¹ is based in
the German Department of the University of Cambridge, and is primarily
concerned with the relationship between literary texts and their cultural
and historical contexts, whether these are conceived in social, political or
intellectual terms.

For further information, see the website
http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/german/researchgroup/intro.html

Or contact on of the organisers:

Dr David Midgley
Director of Studies in Modern Languages
St John¹s College
Cambridge CB2 1TP
United Kingdom
e-mail: [log in to unmask]

Dr Christian Emden
Research Fellow in the Arts and Humanities
Sidney Sussex College
Cambridge CB2 3HU
United Kingdom
e-mail: [log in to unmask]