CFP: Spectacle (deadline: 15 January 2012)

[Thomas O. Haakenson]

The Visual Culture Network (VCN) of the German Studies Association (GSA) seeks papers for a series of panels on “spectacle” as part of the thirty-sixth annual GSA conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, October 4-7, 2012.

From battlefield pageantry to political posturing, from Shaufensterhypnose to cinematic subterfuge, the spectacle has been and continues to be a site of extreme negotiation and intervention. How does the visual nature of spectacle inform the citizenry, destabilize the political, challenge aesthetic convention, and celebrate cultural creativity? What are the limits—aesthetic, political, social, cultural, economic—of spectacle? How do we explain the inherently exclusionary, revolutionary, dehumanizing, and utopian elements of spectacle? And, finally but not exhaustively, what is the relationship between spectacle and “the spectacular”?

Presentations may explain one or more of the above themes, or other themes that relate to spectacle but are not explicitly stated. Selected presentations will be included in a proposed volume on the spectacle in German visual culture.

Send a 250 word abstracts and a curriculum vitae by 15 January 2012 to the GSA’s VCN coordinators, Deborah Ascher Barnstone (<das...@acm.wsu.edu>) and Thomas O. Haakenson (<thaak...@mcad.edu>).

Presenters will be notified by 1 February 2012. Please note that accepted presenters must be members of the German Studies Association or become members by 15 February 2012. Information on membership is available on the GSA website (thegsa.org).

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Thomas O. Haakenson, PhD
Chair and Professor, Liberal Arts Department
Chair, Visiting Artist Committee

Minneapolis College of Art and Design
2501 Stevens Avenue
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A.  55404

Email: thaak...@mcad.edu
Office Telephone: 612.874.3821
Cellular Telephone: 651.894.2894
Website: http://mcad.edu/faculty/thomas-haakenson