Dear all, Roger Woods has asked me to send this on.
The conference is in March 2007 and the
deadline for abstracts is 19 September 2006.
Best,
Debbie

......................................

Call for Papers

German Life-Writing in the Twentieth Century
International, interdisciplinary conference from 24-26
March 2007 at
the University of Nottingham, UK

The conference will examine German autobiographical
writing after major
turning points in Germany's history in the twentieth
century, including
the First World War, the Nazi era, the collapse of
socialism and German
Unification. These turning points prompted an
outpouring of
autobiographical writing with a variety of purposes
related to the point in time
when they were written. They may have been produced in
diary form as
events unfolded or long after the event in the form of
autobiographical
prose, but common to them all is the attempt by
individuals to make sense
of their experiences and to reassess their lives
against a background
of a broader public reassessment of the past and
struggles to promote a
particular interpretation of that past.
The conference will bring together researchers working
in the areas of
literature, history, politics, and cultural studies to
address three
key issues:
1. How has the broadening of our understanding of what
sources may be
regarded as autobiographical - from traditional
(literary) autobiography
to published and unpublished diaries, letters,
interviews and related
texts - affected our understanding of recent history
and the
significance of autobiography itself?
2. Some historians now argue that accounts of the past
that deal with
social structures and institutions do not capture the
tensions and the
full complexity of individuals' lives. To what extent
does the study of
personal accounts and sources that take the individual
as their
starting point reveal a complexity and subtlety of
human experience which
deepens our understanding of societies that have
undergone major upheavals?
3. How do the factors of generation, gender, religion,
social class,
cultural and geographical background shape
individuals' interpretations
of their lives, and how do individuals locate
themselves in larger
historical narratives?
At the conference the University of Nottingham's
Writer in Residence,
Annett Gröschner, will discuss her 1998 book Jeder hat
sein eigenes
Stück Berlin gekriegt. This collection of literary
portraits is told in the
first person and based on Gröschner's interviews at an
East Berlin
Erzählcafé with an older generation of Berliners
shortly after German
Unification in which they related their life-stories
from the Weimar period
to the end of the GDR.
Abstracts (max. 150 words, in German or English),
indicating how the
paper addresses one or more of the three key issues
outlined above,
together with a one-page cv, should be submitted via
email or letter by 19
September 2006 to all three conference organisers:
 
Birgit Dahlke
[log in to unmask]
Humboldt-Universität
Phil. Fakultät II
Institut für deutsche Literatur
Hegelplatz 2
10099 Berlin

Dennis Tate
[log in to unmask]
Department of German Studies
University of Bath
Bath BA 7AY
UK

Roger Woods
[log in to unmask]
Department of German Studies
University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham NG7 2RD
UK

The conference languages are English and German, and
the organisers
anticipate that the proceedings will be published in
the UK and/or
Germany. Financial support for participants from
abroad may be available.





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