Conference of University Teachers of German in Great Britain and Ireland

Seventy-First Meeting 26-28 March 2008 was held at:-

The University of Nottingham

and The Nottingham Trent University


The Seventy-First Meeting was hosted by the University of Nottingham and the Nottingham Trent University, and was held in the Portland Building on the University of Nottingham campus from Wednesday 26 March to Friday 28 March 2008.

The lead panel at the Seventy-First Meeting was entitled "National Identities, Minority Cultures and Their International Contexts: From Medieval Universalism to Postcolonial Globalisation" and sought to explore the following issues: cross-cultural experience and its impact on domestic culture and identity; minority culture, cross-cultural experience and their international contexts in the development of the German language and its variants; critiques of national and cultural identity in German critical theory and philosophy; interactions between the regional, the national and the international in German, Austrian and Swiss history and culture; minority cultures, transnational experience and the rise of German national identity in the 19th century; diasporic literatures and cultures in the German speaking world (German-Turkish, Oriental, East European, African, etc.), their national and transnational implications; legacies of colonialism and aspects of postcolonialism in German literature, film and culture; globalisation and its impact on the culture of the German speaking countries; German cross-cultural and postcolonial discourses and their relationship to relevant discourses in Anglophone, Francophone etc. culture and theory.

Other panels included Critical Theory, Linguistics, History and panels on 18th Century, 19th Century and 20th Century Studies, Gender and German Studies, and the theme of Flucht und Vertreibung.

Programme

Wednesday, 26 March
12.00 onwards

Arriving members will be met by representatives of the Nottingham and Nottingham Trent German Departments, in the Portland Building, Floor C.

15.00-15.30

Opening Business

15.30-17.00 (parallel sessions)

Lead panel 1 (C11)

David Rock (Keele): Cultural versus regional/territorial identity: The case of Romanian-German writer Richard Wagner Raluca Radulescu (Bukarest)

Raluca Radulescu (Bukarest): Go between: Die rumniendeutsche Literatur als Minderheitenliteratur. Identitre Selbstsuche und Kanonbildung

Katharina Wessely (Brno): Sudetendeutsche Identitten auf der Bhne

Ulrich Tiedau (UCL): German-Speaking Identity in Belgiums Eastern Cantons

History and remembrance 1 (Anna Saunders) (East Concourse)

Debbie Pinfold (University of Bristol): Images of Childhood in the GDR

Ute Hirsekorn (University of Nottingham): The Self-Presentation of GDR Party Officials in Post-Wende Autobiographical Texts

Ute Wlfel (University of Reading): Das Leben der Anderen - Bourgeois tradition in the GDR museum

17.00-18.30
(parallel sessions)

Linguistics 1 (Nils Langer) (C11)

Melani Schrter (Reading): Key Words in Debates: A grassroots approach to political discourse.

John Bellamy (Manchester): Language attitudes in Austria and the UK

20th century and contemporary studies 1 (Debbie Pinfold) (East Concourse)

Ian Cooper (Selwyn College, Cambridge): Grnbeins Wende: Space, Time, Voice

Steve Joy (Selwyn College, Cambridge): The Voice of the Other in Thomas Manns Deutsche Hrer!

Sara Jones (Nottingham): Nicht verboten, nur nicht erlaubt: Hermann Kant and the publication of Impressum in the GDR

19.00

Dinner in Lenton and Wortley Hall of Residence

20.30

Plenary (C11)

Dan Hall (Nottingham): Mrchen, the marvellous and more: the beginnings of the Fantastic in German literature

Tuesday 27 March

8.00

 

Breakfast

9.00-10.00

Plenary (C11)

Margaret Littler (Manchester): Cramped creativity: The politics of a minor German literature

10.00-10.30


Reports (C11)

Report by DAAD

Reports from other organisations

10.30-11.00

Coffee / Tea (West Concourse)

11.00-12.30

(parallel sessions)

Critical theory (Steve Giles) (C11)

Ben Hutchinson (Kent): Jean Amerys Dialog mit dem franzsischen Strukturalismus

Angus Nicholls (QMUL): Begriffsgeschichte contra Hermeneutik: notes on a confrontation between Hans-Georg Gadamer and Reinhart Koselleck.

19th century studies (Eleoma Joshua) (East Concourse)

Susanne Kord (UCL): Strategies of containment: Female vampires in literature

Tanja Hagedorn (Limerick): The humourless German in late nineteenth century German literature

Peter Davies (Edinburgh): Why are ideas convincing? The career of matriarchal myths in the late nineteenth century

12.30 Lunch (West Concourse)

13.45-15.15
(parallel sessions)

Linguistics 2 (C11) (Nils Langer)

Filippo Nereo (Manchester): Language as a residual marker of identity: the case of the Vy?kov/Wischau speech enclave

Jenny Carl (Southampton): Minority policy and identities: a case study in Prague

History and remembrance 2 (Anna Saunders) (East Concourse)

Veronika Tuckerova (Columbia University): Whose Kafka? Reception of Franz Kafka in Czechoslovakia, East- and West Germany

Karina Lindeiner-Strsk (Aberystwyth University): Im Urteil ihrer Zeit ? The memory of Gustaf Grndgens and Wilhelm Furtwngler in biographies and memoirs of the 1950s and 1960s

Charlotte Ryland (Queens College, Oxford): Re-membering Adorno: Political and cultural agendas in the debate about post-Holocaust art

15.15-15.45

Tea / Coffee (West Concourse)

15.45-17.15
(parallel sessions)

Flucht und Vertreibung (Bill Niven) (C11)

Elizabeth Boa, Lost Heimat in novels by Reinhard Jirgl, Christoph Hein and Angelika Overath

Karina Berger (Leeds): German wartime suffering in Walter Kempowskis Alles umsonst (2006)

Bill Niven (Nottingham Trent): Flight and expulsion in GDR novels of the 1950s and 1960s

Axel Bangert (Gonville and Caius, Cambridge): Eine integrale Geschichte des Leidens? Flucht und Vertreibung in contemporary German film

20th century and contemporary studies 2 (Debbie Pinfold) (East Concourse)

Martin Brady (Kings College, London): Die Schwmme... Wer das lesen knnt.: Peter Handkes magic mushrooms.

Helen Finch (Leeds): Die Vermessung der Weimarer Klassik. Daniel Kehlmanns Die Vermessung der Welt and the rehabilitation of Enlightenment.

Johannes Birgfeld (Saarbrcken): Engaged with the world?: Contemporary German literatures transgressions of German issues and history

17.15-18.15

Business Meeting

AGENDA

  1. To confirm minutes of the Bristol meeting (included in the summer 2007 Newsletter. Further copies will be made available at the beginning of the Nottingham meeting)
  2. Matters arising
  3. Presidents report
  4. New format of AHRC postgraduate funding
  5. REF: New format of research assessment and funding
  6. Treasurers report
  7. Reports from other organisations
  8. Date / lead panels of next two conferences (Ulster 2009, Reading 2010)
  9. Constitution of new Committee
  10. A. O. B.

18.30

Reception in Mix Bar, Lenton and Wortley Hall of Residence

19.00

Conference Dinner in Lenton and Wortley Hall of Residence

20.30

Lead panel 2 (C11)

Chen Tzoref-Ashkenazi (Heidelberg): Auxiliary troops in overseas: German colonial identities in the 18th century

Axel Dunker (Mainz): Patriotismus und Poesie: Minoritten in Achim von Arnims Novellensammlung von 1812 vor dem Hintergrund der Befreiungskriege

Monika Albrecht (Nottingham): Creating difference: Postcolonialism and the German headscarf debate

Friday 28 March

8.00

Breakfast

9.00-10.30

(parallel sessions)

18th century studies (Dan Wilson) (C11)

Steffan Davies (Bristol): Unreliable evidence: historical documents on Schillers stage

Yvonne Nilges (Oxford): What is, and to what end do we study, Schiller's narratives? Seelenlehre and criminal aetiology

Gert Vonhoff (Exeter): Erzhlgeschichte

Gender and German Studies (Renate Rechtien) (East Concourse)

Lorna Martens (University of Virginia): Gender, psychoanalysis, and childhood autobiography: Christa Wolf's Kindheitsmuster

Emily Jeremiah (Royal Holloway, University of London): Strange encounters: Nomadism in contemporary womens writing in German

Matthias Uecker (University of Nottingham): Wann ist ein Mann ein Mann? Performances of masculinity in contemporary German cinema

10.30-11.00

Coffee / Tea

11.00-12.30

Lead panel 3 (C11)

Michaela Wirtz (Aachen): Deutsche Juden und der Erste Weltkrieg: Nationale Identittsbestimmungen zwischen Deutschtum und Judentum, deutschem Nationalismus und Zionismus

Katya Krylova (Cambridge): Identity, topography and melancholy in Thomas Bernhards Ungenach and Ingeborg Bachmanns Drei Wege zum See

Robert Knight (Loughborough): Cultural exchange in a polarised context? Slovenes and (Austrian) Germans in post-Nazi Carinthia 1945-1958

12.30-13.00

Closing Business

13.00

Lunch (West Concourse) and Departure