Körperkontrolle/Kontrollkörper:
From Regulation to Excess in Fictional Models and Social Practices.
(12/15/04; 3/11-12/05)

An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference hosted by the Department of
Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago, March 11-12, 2005.

Keynote speaker: Niklaus Largier
Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Department of German;
recent works include Lob der Peitsche. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Erregung.
(Munich, C.H. Beck, 2001.)

Attempts to understand the relationship between the body, control, and
sociopolitical life are at least as old as Plato and Aristotle, and
significant among them are the contributions offered by German-speaking
thinkers.  In recent decades, commentators such as Foucault and Butler have
drawn upon Hegel, Nietzsche and Freud in theorizing ways in which habits,
technologies and institutional practices control the individual body, the
social body and the body politic.  In its interdisciplinary exploration of
control in the Germanic context, our conference is interested in both
documented social practices and fictional models across media such as
literature, film and painting, from the Middle Ages to the present.  By
exploring both controlled and controlling bodies, we hope to gain a better
understanding of the uncertain ontological status of control with respect to
regulation and excess.  How are the mechanisms of control involved in the
very excesses they purportedly regulate?  What role does control play in
generative/creative processes?  Does control function through repetition,
reproduction, and suppression, or does control force intensification of
bodily experience, pushing the body to transgress? How is excess regulated,
experienced and represented?  Furthermore, how do different disciplines
conceptualize and represent the phenomenon of control?

Scholars from the Humanities and Social Sciences are encouraged to interpret
the conference theme broadly and innovatively.

Graduate students from all disciplines working in the German-speaking
context are invited to submit paper abstracts of 350-500 words in German or
English.  Conference presentations are to be given in English and should not
exceed 20 minutes.  Abstracts must be received by 15 December, 2004.
Authors of accepted papers will be notified via email by 31 January, 2005.
Please email your abstract as a Word attachment to:

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In the body of your email, please include the following: title of paper,
author’s name, institutional and departmental affiliation, e-mail address
and primary phone number.  Accommodation will be provided for conference
participants.  For further information about the conference, please email to
the above address.

Organized by Darren Ilett, Kym Lanzetta, Catherine Sprecher and Terri Zhu.

*******************
The German Studies Call for Papers List
Editor: Stefani Engelstein
Assistant Editor:  Meghan McKinstry
Sponsored by the University of Missouri
Info available at: http://www.missouri.edu/~graswww/resources/gerlistserv.html