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GERMAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION San Diego, October 4-7, 2007 Buchstaben: The Literary Life of Letters Letters of the alphabet typically do not call attention to themselves. From time to time, however, the nature and quality, the presence or absence of a letter within a word, a text, or an orthographic system may matter. By the same token, philosophers of language, linguists, etymologists, and philologists occasionally take interest in the fate of a letter (Hamann, Herder, Moritz, J. Grimm, Saussure, and Jacobson come to mind, but certainly there are others). For this panel, I am looking for people who in the course of their reading have stumbled upon letter-related curiosities that invite interpretation and reflection on the life of letters. In the interest of full disclosure, I plan to contribute a paper on the letter H that will focus on Hamann’s “Neue Apologie des Buchstaben h” and orthographic mischief in Fontane’s Irrungen, Wirrungen. Please send paper proposals by 1 February 2007 to: Simon Richter ([log in to unmask]) University of Pennsylvani ******************* The German Studies Call for Papers List Editor: Stefani Engelstein Assistant Editor: Megan McKinstry Sponsored by the University of Missouri Info available at: http://www.missouri.edu/~graswww/resources/gerlistserv.html