Microsoft Word - focus2006.doc 219 CONTRIBUTORS 220 CONTRIBUTORS Viktória Bagi earned her B.A. degree in English at the University of Miskolc and her M.A. in German at the University of Debrecen in Hungary, where she also completed a minor in European Studies. Currently, she is an ABD student in German Applied Linguistics at the University of Kansas. She has teaching experience of English, German and Hungarian. Her other activities have included serving as the president of the Graduate Association of German Students at KU as well as a translator and interpreter in Hungary and Germany. Giles Harrington is a research student and part-time tutor at the University of Leeds, where he completed both his under- graduate and postgraduate degrees between the years 2000 and 2005. In January 2006 he began studying for a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Stuart Taberner in the Faculty of German at Leeds and is writing a thesis on contemporary German pop literature. He is particularly interested in the public staging and marketing of ‘popstar’ authors of the late 1990s, such as Alexa Hennig von Lange and Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre, and his research focuses, in particular, upon the aesthetic characteristics and thematic concerns of pop writing. Hrisztalina Hrisztova-Gotthardt studied at the University of Sofia (Bulgaria) and received her M.A. in German with a thesis on translation of Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm. After moving to Hungary, she attended PhD courses in Applied Linguistics at the University of Pécs. Currently she is working on her dissertation entitled „Multilingual Database of Proverbs” and teaching undergraduate German courses. She presented her work at several national and international conferences and published articles on paremiology in Hungary, Croatia and the United States. Besides Paremiology her research interests include Contrastive and Computational Linguistics. Darren Ilett is a PhD candidate in the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago. He received his BA from the University of Oregon in 1998 and an MA from the University of Chicago in 2001. His publications include translations of Feridun Zaimoglu and Benjamin von Stuckrad-Barre. He has organized interdisciplinary conferences on topics such as FOCUS ON GERMAN STUDIES 221 regimes of control and the body as well as the Turkish Diaspora in Germany. Darren has taught German language courses as well as courses on Weimar cinema and transcultural German literature. He is currently working on his dissertation, which interrogates the relationship between homosexual thematics and narrative form around 1900. His research interests include fin- de-siècle literature and art, film studies, queer studies, gender studies, transnational German literature, and German Orientalism. Theodore Jackson is a third-year graduate student in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis, where he received his M.A. in 2005. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from Wittenberg University in 2003 after spending a year abroad at the Universität Dortmund. His research interests include literature of the fin-de-siècle and early twentieth century, youth culture, modernism, and the aesthetics of speed. He is currently working on a project that examines various appropriations of the Siegfried figure by youth organizations such as the Wandervögel. Katharine Byrne Krueger graduated with a B.A. in American Studies and German from Carleton College in June of 2005. She is currently teaching math and poetry in a Seattle-area elementary school and will soon begin an internship at KEXP, a local non- profit radio station. Academic interests include the New German Cinema, the road film as a genre, 20th Century German drama and American regional literature. “The Long Dusty Highway: The German Postwar Generation in the Road Films of Wim Wenders” is her first published work. Kate is beginning to search for graduate programs with strong interest in film and cultural studies and hopes to begin graduate work in the fall of 2007. Charlotte Ryland gained a Bachelor’s Degree in German and French at Cambridge University in 2001, having written her undergraduate dissertation on the representation of the Holocaust in German drama. She then studied for a Masters in Modern German Literature at Oxford University, focusing on German-Jewish writing and post-Holocaust literature. Her PhD thesis, which she is researching at University College London, explores 222 CONTRIBUTORS metapoetic issues and processes of memorialisation in Paul Celan’s translations of French Surrealist poetry. Silke Schade is currently completing her Ph.D. in German Studies at the University of Cincinnati with a dissertation entitled “Rooted Cosmopolitanisms: Linking Migration and Home in the Work of Barbara Honigmann and Emine Sevgi Özdamar.” Her research interests include transnational literature and film, German Jewish literature, Romanticism, and the study of spatiality and gender. Silke has also enjoyed teaching at Middlebury College’s German Language School, completing dissertation research in Berlin, and editing Focus on German Studies Volume 10. She recently accepted a position at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. 223 ANNOUNCEMENTS 224 ANNOUNCEMENTS CALL FOR PAPERS he German Graduate Student Governance Association of the University of Cincinnati and the editors of the graduate student journal Focus on German Studies present the Eleventh Annual Focus Graduate Student Conference held on October 27-28, 2006 at the University of Cincinnati. “Between Future and Fatality: Utopian and Dystopian Ideas in German Literature, Film, and Culture.” Keynote speaker: Thomas Meinecke Modern societies are based on the premise that the tomorrow is predictable. Humanity has excelled in constructing high-tech computers, in changing genetic information, in mastering diseases and going into space. However, the prediction of the future, the old fantasy of overcoming the barrier of time is still a thorn in the flesh of the homo technicus. Human beings yearn to know how the world will be tomorrow and also how the course of the world could be changed. Literature and film have always served as media for drawing up an imaginary future. Be it as a harbinger of dark apocalyptic visions or as the beacon of a paradisiacal and ideal world. This conference seeks to explore any kind of utopian and/or dystopian thinking in German culture. We invite not only traditional scholarly works in the field of German Studies but also interdisciplinary responses focusing on literature, film, theory, philosophy, ethics, history linked to Germany. What kinds of representations of dystopian/utopian ideas exist? What genre is chosen and why? What techniques do the authors choose to portray these representations? In what way can these works be linked to the period in which they originated? To what extent did the authors’ prophetic power influence and change the society they lived in? Or are such works often escapist rather than ambitiously intent on change? Are these works rebellious towards their time or do they rather affirm it? Is there a specific German tone in such works that sets them apart from other utopian/dystopian traditions (e.g. as opposed to the vast amount of such works in English). To what extent do such works exert political power and therefore possibly transcend their status as mere cultural products? Are these dystopian utopian visions reflections of real historical conditions projected onto the level of fantasy or fantasy made similar enough to reality to create narrative interest? T FOCUS ON GERMAN STUDIES 225 We invite graduate students from all disciplines to submit paper proposals responding to these or similar questions related to the depiction of utopian and dystopian concepts in modern or pre-modern time periods. Possible topics include, but are by no means limited to: • “Traditional” utopian and dystopian texts • Philosophical texts attempting to construct a future world • Texts and films attempting to reconstruct imaginary historic settings (e.g. Chr. Wolf’s Kein Ort. Nirgends etc…) • War literature, Cold War literature • Science fiction literature and films • Fairy tales • Apocalyptic literature • Social utopias in art and architecture • The American dream in German literature and film • Holocaust literature / Blut-und-Boden literature • Romantic literature („Golden Age“ vs. “Nachtseitiges”) • Weimarer Klassik (the construction of a harmonious society) • Utopian courtly societies in medieval literature • Allegorical thinking in the literature of the Baroque • Films referring to utopian / dystopian ideas • Escapist literature • Political literature • GDR literature • Exile literature Revised conference papers can also be submitted for publication in our Focus on German Studies journal. Information on the keynote speaker will be announced soon. Please send an abstract of 250-300 words in either English or German as Word attachment by August 31, 2006 to Wolfgang Lückel and Todd Heidt at focusonlit@fastmail.fm (ATTN: Focus on GS Conference). On a separate cover sheet please list the proposed paper title, author’s name, affiliation, and e-mail address. Conference participants have the option of housing with UC graduate students. University of Cincinnati, German Studies Department 733 Old Chemistry Building, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0372 Phone: 513-556-2752, Fax: 513-556-1991 226 ANNOUNCEMENTS CALL FOR BOOK REVIEWERS he purpose of our book review section is to introduce our readership to primary and secondary works published within the last two years. Our aim is to discuss the work thematically and stylistically and, when possible, to contextualize the work within the author’s oeuvre or its respective genre. We have the cooperation of major Austrian, German and Swiss publishers and can provide review copies. Please see our website for current list of books available for review. http://www.artsci.uc.edu/german/newsEvents/focus/reviewers.html If you are interested in reviewing books for Focus on German Studies, please send us the following information: (1) name and address, (2) institution, (3) area of interest, (4) topic of MA thesis or dissertation, and (5) your projected date of degree completetion. Focus also accepts recommendations for books to review. SUBMISSIONS REQUESTED ubmit an example of your best academic work to Focus on German Studies! Focus on German Studies, a journal produced by the German Graduate Student Governance Association (GGSGA) at the University of Cincinnati, is an important voice of the next generation of scholars in German Studies. Submissions demonstrating original scholarship in any area of German-language literature or German Studies will be considered for publication. We also publish interviews with German-speaking writers. Please submit papers to the email below as a Microsoft Word attachment or on disk to the address below in Microsoft Word format. Manuscripts should be ca. 15-20 pages in length, double-spaced. They must follow the MLA style guidelines. The manuscript should be prepared so that it can be read anonymously. The deadline for submissions to be considered for the 2007 volume of Focus on German Studies is December 15, 2006. After that date, T S FOCUS ON GERMAN STUDIES 227 Focus will accept submissions for its 2008 volume. Inquiries and submissions should be made to the address below: Focus on German Studies Att: Wolfgang Lückel Department of German Studies University of Cincinnati PO Box 210372 Cincinnati, OH 45221-0372 USA Phone: (513) 556-2752 Fax: (513) 556-1991 focusonlit@fastmail.fm SUBSCRIPTIONS One volume per year Check appropriate option(s): ____ $ 20 Student Membership ____ $ 22 Faculty Membership ____ $ 28 Institution ____ $ 5 Additional postage for subscriptions outside North America ____ Back issue: Send Vol. ____ Issue ____ Total Amount Enclosed: ____________________________ Name: ____________________________ Address: ____________________________ All orders should be made payable in USD to: Focus on German Studies Department of German Studies University of Cincinnati Box 210372 Cincinnati, OH 45221-0372 USA Phone: (513) 556-2752 Fax: (513) 556-1991 228 NOTES