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German-Jewish Women Writers 1900 – 1933
A Conference at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies
University of London
17 – 18 May 2007
Co-Ordinators: Andrea Hammel (Sussex) and Godela Weiss-Sussex (IGRS)
First Call for Papers
The first three decades of the 20th century were a period of irreversible social change in Germany; a period in which the conditions and opportunities for women altered rapidly; a period in which German-Jewish artists and writers flourished, but which also saw a frightening increase of anti-Semitic criticism.
The writing by German-Jewish women of this period has met with rather patchy research interest to date. While their male counterparts (Franz Hessel, Walter Benjamin, Joseph Roth, to name but a few) have received the interest they deserved, and while the salonières of the 19th century and the literature produced by women in exile have received some attention in recent years, the interest in the period 1900 to 1933 has been all but restricted to a few outstanding women writers of the twenties and early thirties, such as Irmgard Keun and, to a lesser extent, Gabriele Tergit.
This conference aims to re-discover and re-consider some of the many other German-Jewish women writers of the period, be they novelists, poets, autobiographers, or journalists, who recorded their engagement with their social surroundings, their German-Jewish identity, and/or their position as women at the beginning of the 20th century.
We now welcome proposals for papers (300-word abstract) to be submitted by 15 October 2006 to:
Dr Godela Weiss-Sussex
IGRS
School of Advanced Study
University of London
Senate House, Malet Street
London WC1E 7HU
Email: [log in to unmask]
A publication of a selection of the papers presented at the conference is planned.