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Picture YourSelf – Authorship and Media in Contemporary German Literature Saturday 8th May 2010, University of Warwick One-day workshop Keynote speaker: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Stefan Neuhaus, University of Innsbruck The German-speaking literary market has changed its face within the past two decades. The media, namely television and Internet, have become increasingly important for the promotion of authors and their books. Writers have adapted their literary strategies to the new forms of distribution, reception and production. In their writing, many authors reflect the effects these transformations have on both the literary public and their own role as creative intelligentsia. These developments in literary practice have been accompanied by theoretical attempts to reassess the relevance of the concept of literary authorship in German studies and to describe the socio-historical changes it has undergone. In case studies on individual writers, the relationship of authorship and media has attracted growing interest, but the discussion has not yet been transferred into a comparative perspective that encompasses sociological and historical as well as aesthetic aspects. The conference would like to do so by addressing the following questions: • Which models of aesthetic, literary or political self-understanding of contemporary authors have emerged? • Which ways of mediated self-presentation exist for the different types of media? • How do authors negotiate their public representation when becoming celebrities and objects of media scandals? • How has the literary public sphere changed under the influence of the (new) media? • What impact do the media have on the literary reception and canonization of authors in terms of image politics and literary criticism? • How are the writers’ works and lives represented in texts, films and websites? The conference would like to encourage a dialogue between both scholars from Britain and the continent in order to establish a broader and interdisciplinary perspective for this analysis. It is also intended as an opportunity to facilitate discussions between both experienced researchers and postgraduate students. We favour a workshop atmosphere with papers of approximately 20 minutes length and 15 minutes for discussion. We would like to encourage contributions from the diverse fields of literature history and theory, media studies, sociology of literature and literary criticism to tackle the wide range of questions arising from the process of reshaping authorship in Germany’s media society. Please send abstracts of no more than 400 words by Wednesday 25th of November to Jeanine Tuschling at [log in to unmask] For more information on the event, please visit the conference website at http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/hrc/confs/gl/