The editor
invites submissions on topics related to German literature, film and other media
after 1989 for a collection of essays that will be published in the book-series
of the research group Cultural History and Literary Imagination
(University of Cambridge). URL: http://www.mml.cam.ac.
uk/german/researchgroup/intro.html.
This essay collection aims to look at the
dynamics of memory organisation and the way they vary among different
media and modes of
discourse in the post-unification period. German Unification has put the post war period
into historical perspective. A rupture like this provokes questions concerning
the appropriate commemoration, preservation and reinterpretation of the past.
Literature was confronted with the demand to participate in establishing
cultural memory. The
processes of reorientation after unification influenced the self-conception of
literary authors as well as the social role, position and legitimation of German
literature. They also affected how writers viewed that competition in which they
found themselves pitted against visual media as rival windows on the past. In
the context of several debates on German literature during the 1990s the
discussion revolved not only around the adequate aesthetic representation of the
historical and cultural heritage, but even more so around the role of literature
itself in that process.
The contributers are invited to look at different discourses that
were and still are concerned with reinterpreting and creating new collective
symbols and narrative patterns in dealing with the German past. The volume wishes to examine the
competition literature found itself in with visual media like film, but also
with an institution like the museum, which combines object, image and text.
It focuses on the
effects of the characteristic discourses of these media on the depiction and
performance of memories.
Please send a one-page abstract in English by May 1, 2003 as attachment or on disk to the editor:
Dr Silke Arnold-de Simine
University of Cambridge
Sidney
Sussex College
Cambridge CB2 3HU
Great Britain
Tel.:
01223-3-39045
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
The deadline for
completed papers, as it stands, is August 31,
2003.