Dear colleagues,

As the deadline for registration is fast approaching, I would like to remind you that you are all invited to register your interest to participate in the 2014 GSA Seminar "German-Jewish Literature after 1945: Working Through and Beyond the Holocaust" (registration is via the GSA website). I hope to see many of you there!
 
German Studies Association Annual Meeting, Kansas City, Missouri
Sept 18th-21st, 2014
 
Conveners: Helen Finch (University of Leeds), Katja Garloff (Reed College), Erin McGlothlin (Washington University in St. Louis) and Agnes Mueller (University of South Carolina)
 
Scholars interested in participating are invited to apply by January 30th through the German Studies Association website: https://www.thegsa.org/conference/documents/GSA_Seminars_2014.pdf
 
Seminar size: 12-15 participants
 
This seminar examines the creation of a 'new' German-Jewish literature in the wake of 1945. Its aims are twofold: to create a robust and close network of scholars working on related aspects of German-Jewish literature, and to create a volume examining the central questions to be discussed at the seminar in 2014. It is particularly concerned with the following intersecting set of questions:
 
German-Jewish literature?
o   How can we re-interrogate the terms 'Jewish' and 'German', particularly as these identities reconstituted themselves in the wake of 1945?
German-Jewish literature working through the Holocaust:
o   What relation did German-Jewish literature post-1945 bear to the tradition of German-Jewish literature that existed prior to the Holocaust?
o   How did German-Jewish literature by exiles relate to literature written by remigrants?
o   How does German-Jewish Holocaust literature relate to transnational questions about Holocaust literature, especially since this literature is by definition transnational? Here, we think for example, of Jean Améry's correspondence with Primo Levi, or the ways in which Edgar Hilsenrath was received outside the German-speaking world.
German-Jewish literature beyond the Holocaust:
o   To what extent did the caesura of 1989 create a renewed impetus in German-Jewish literature?
o   Can we speak of generational discourses within German-Jewish literature? How has literature by Jewish immigrants to Germany after 1989 (such as Maxim Biller, Julya Rabinovitch) reconfigured the German-Jewish literary landscape in particular its relationship to the Holocaust and to the German past?
o   To what extent can we now speak of a transnational, hybrid or cosmopolitan German-Jewish literature?
German-Jewish literature in canon
o   To what extent has the Holocaust influenced the creation of a new "canon" of German-Jewish literature after 1945? What topics and authors became "canonized," and which fell out of favor? What methodological tools, such as Bourdieusian "field" theory or the analyses of the German canon initiated by Saul and Schmidt (2007), can help us to interrogate the formation of such a canon and how its status might have shifted in the period 1945-present?
o   How does German-Jewish literature relate to Jewish literatures outside Germany and in other languages? Does literature written in the German language have an uncomfortable relationship to post-war Jewish literatures?
o   How does German-Jewish literature interact with the wider canon of post-
1945 German-language literature?
o   How has German-Jewish literature travelled, transferred or been re-mediated in the digital age?
 
The seminar will meet three times over the three days of the conference. Participants will be asked to read pre-circulated position papers of ca. 1000 words each, sent by each of the participants one month in advance of the conference.
o   Suggested readings will be distributed to all participants in early February.
o   Participants will be asked to submit their position papers by July 1, 2014, giving the convenors time to read and comment on these initially.
o   Position papers will be distributed to all participants by August 1, 2014, along with a proposal for a volume based on the submissions.
The first seminar will be dedicated to a discussion of the readings and the key questions arising from the topic. The subsequent two sessions will be dedicated to reading and discussion of the position papers. The final session will also discuss the volume to emerge from the seminar, including prospective publishers.

With best wishes,

Helen Finch

Dr. Helen Finch,
Academic Fellow in German,
School of Modern Languages,
University of Leeds,
LS2 9JT
U.K.

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web page: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/arts/people/20054/german/person/750/helen_finch
monograph: Sebald's Bachelors. Queer Resistance and the Unconforming Life: http://www.legendabooks.com/titles/isbn/9781907975905.html
blog: http://helenfinch.wordpress.com