January 23, 2008
Twenty Years On: Remembering the GDR and Germany's unification process
Conference to be held at the University of Bath from 14 to 16 September 2009, jointly organised by the Department of European Studies and Modern Languages at Bath and the Centre for East German Studies at the University of Reading, in association with the Stiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur, Berlin.
The autumn of 2009 will see the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the transformation process that led to the formal act of German unification on 3 October 1990. The approach of these milestones provides a good opportunity to take stock of how life, politics and culture in divided Germany have been remembered since the demise of the East German state and to consider the status of competing memory discourses on the GDR and the unification process in today's Federal Republic. Who is remembering, in which socio-political context, in relation to which view of the past, to counter which tendency to forget or distort? In what ways have official and unofficial processes of memorialisation been instrumentalised or commercialised? How has the end of the GDR influenced German memory culture in general over the past twenty years? Papers looking at these questions from post-1989 cultural, political and historiographical perspectives , or seeking to illuminate the intersections between these spheres, are invited.
The organisers are interested in offers of papers focusing on areas such as the following:
- Autobiographical accounts of the GDR (competing memories of victimhood, opposition and complicity; generational and gender-based differences in memory culture; working life and private experience)
- West German accounts of the impact of national division on life in the (old) Federal Republic
- European memories of German division and unification
- Memorials and museums (the public commemoration of the GDR past)
- 'Ostalgie' (the maintenance of GDR 'traditions' after 1989; the
commercialisation of memory)
- Memory cultures in the former GDR and in other former socialist states
- The role of individual media in shaping memories of the GDR (film,
literature, television, other visual arts)
- Reassessments of the Third Reich in the light of the demise of the GDR
- The changing memories since 1989 of specific events: 17 June 1953; the building of the Wall; the Prague Spring , the Biermann affair, the fall of the Wall, etc.
- Topographies of memory and regional identities
Preliminary enquiries are welcome and should be addressed to
David Clarke
D.Clarke@bath.ac.uk
Renate Rechtie
R.A.Rechtien@bath.ac.uk
Dennis Tat
G.D.Tate@bath.ac.uk
Ute Wölfel
U.Wolfel@reading.ac.uk
The formal call for papers and details of keynote speakers will follow in April 2008.
Posted by sjearlds at 02:02 PM
CFP: French Historical Studies
The editors of French Historical Studies seek articles for a special issue on Intersections of Race and Gender in French History. Articles on research topics covering all chronological periods are welcome. Among other possibilities, we invite articles treating the following topics:
• women and race, and/or feminism and race, in the colonies/metropole
• colonial and postcolonial masculinity/manhood
• gender, whiteness, and racial identity
• the segmenting of French national identity along the lines of race and gender
• the impact of locality, region and/or other spaces upon understandings and experiences of race and gender
Queries regarding submissions and all other matters should be addressed to the guest editors, Tyler Stovall (tstovall@berkeley.edu) and Jennifer Boittin (jab808@psu.edu). Articles may be either in English or in French but must conform to French Historical Studies style (see http://fhs.ucdavis.edu/style/shtml for details) and must be accompanied by abstracts in both languages. Papers should be between 8,000 and 10,000 words (up to but not longer than 14,000 words including notes). For the inclusion of illustrations written permission must be obtained from the relevant persons or institutions for print and on-line publication.
Manuscripts can be sent by post or electronically to Jessica Namakkal, Managing Assistant, French Historical Studies,Department of History, University of Minnesota-twin cities, 614 Social Sciences Building, 267 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55455 We encourage, but do not require, electronic submission of manuscripts. Manuscripts submitted electronically should be sent in MS Word or Rich Text Format (RTF). The deadline for submissions is October 1, 2008.
Posted by sjearlds at 01:44 PM