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From: Andrew Mills <[log in to unmask]>
The Indiana University Department of Germanic Studies presents its:
5th Biennial Graduate Student Conference, February 18-20, 2005
TITLE:
"Looking Forward, Looking Back: Image, Imagination, and Media"
KEYNOTE SPEAKER:
Geoffrey Winthrop-Young
Department of Central, Eastern and North European Studies
University of British Columbia
DESCRIPTION:
The term "image" bears various meanings, literal and figurative,
receptive and productive. In a literal sense, images are pictures or
other visual representations. These images are either created
reproductively and constitute memory and identity or they are
constructed productively to generate fantasies of something new.
"Image," on the other hand, can also be defined as reputation or
outward presentation of identity, that is, how an individual or group
is perceived or would like to be perceived either by observers or
constituents. In light of recent debates on such issues as the
representation and reception of collective memory, monuments and
commemoration, and national identity, as well as linguistic discussions
on the derivation of form and meaning, this conference will engage in
examinations of images and their roles in imagination and media as they
are relevant to the field of Germanic Studies.
This conference aims to consider questions such as the following:
- What mechanisms of imagination are involved in literary and other
aesthetic production, as well as in language competence?
- What roles do image, imagination, and media play in the processes of
identity formation and community building?
- How is imagination represented and/or steered by the media?
- In linguistics, what can a limited access to media, such as older
Germanic texts, still convey about a language or dialect?
- How can views of history such as nostalgia, collective memory,
Vergangenheitsbewältigung, etc. be explored using the concepts of
image, imagination, and media?
- What role do national memories and/or fantasies play in international
and domestic decision-making?
CALL FOR PAPERS:
We invite contributions that explore image, imagination, and media in
all their manifestations. The conference welcomes papers from all
areas of Germanic Studies that investigate these issues, and encourages
interdisciplinary and comparative scholarship that places German and
Germanic Studies in a larger context.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Germany's Literary and Cinematic Memory
- Memento Mori: Memory, Memorial, Death
- Nostalgia and Utopia
- Visions and Images of the Political
- Bilderflut and Bilderverbot
- Creating Myths
- Futurism
- PF and LF: Form and Meaning
- Mapping the Language
- Reality and Illusion/Dreams/Fiction
- Medializations: Media, Globalization, and Subjectivity
- Imagination of the Other
- Queer Eye for German Literature
- Images and Narratives
- Historical Dialects and their Media
- Imagery in Older Germanic Literature
Please submit abstracts (ca. 250 words) by email to:
[log in to unmask]
or mail them to:
Indiana University Graduate Student Conference
Department of Germanic Studies
Ballantine Hall 644
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN 47405
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