Representations of German Identity in Visual Culture
Deadline for Proposals: 15 January 2011
CALL FOR PAPERS: VISUAL CULTURE NETWORK
35th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association (GSA)
September 22-25, 2011, Louisville, Kentucky
Questions
about identity have confounded and continue to challenge Germans,
German-language speakers, and foreign observers. “Who is German?” and
“What qualities define Germanness?” These questions have been at the
heart of the Gross Deutschland/Klein Deutschland debates of the 18th
and 19th centuries, Weimar-era and Nazi-era attempts to define the
German state, Cold War struggles on both sides of the Wall, and are
still present in post-Wende disputes over the constitution of
contemporary German identity. Yet questions about German identity not
only play out in political discussions but in visual cultural forms as
well.
The German Studies Association’s Visual Culture Network (VCN)
welcomes individual paper proposal, group submissions, as well as
interest from moderators and commentators on the theme of
“Representations of German Identity in Visual Culture” for the GSA’s
2011 conference in Louisville, Kentucky. The VCN envisions a series of
panels devoted to visual cultural forms engaging the issue of German
identity:
• How has German identity been represented in particular examples
from the broad spectrum of visual culture from painting to sculpture,
advertising to architecture, television to film to installation art?
•
What role have museums played in constituting, questioning, performing,
subverting German identity, either historically and in the present?
• In what ways have identity claims made through visual cultural forms
by Germans and non-Germans, those residing inside the national borders
and those observing from abroad, conflicted, contested, and constituted
an authentic German identity?
• To what ends do select visual cultural forms—either as specific case
studies or as more general interventions—confront German identity
positively, negatively, sarcastically, ironically, subversively,
comically?
Please email a 250-word proposal along with name and institutional
affiliation by 15 January 2011 to both Dr. Deborah Ascher Barnstone
(<
das...@acm.wsu.edu>) and Dr. Thomas O. Haakenson (<
thaak...@mcad.edu>).
Panelists will be notified by 1 February 2011 and will be required
to register as a member and submit materials through the GSA website at
www.thegsa.org by 15 February 2011.
--
Thomas O. Haakenson, PhD
Chair and Associate Professor
Liberal Arts Department
Minneapolis College of Art and Design
2501 Stevens Avenue
Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. 55404
Email:
thaak...@mcad.eduTelephone:
651.894.2894
Website:
http://www.mcad.edu