Each year the graduate students of the department organize and host a two-day conference on a specific interdisciplinary theme. The conference offers students and faculty from the U.S. and abroad an opportunity to present their research on such diverse topics as: “Finite Subjects: Mortality and Culture in Germany” (2002), ”Self-Made Germans: Authenticity, Authority and Self-Fashioning” (2001), “The German Soldier” (2000), “Reading Turn-of-the-Century Culture at the Turn of the Century” (1999), “Building Memory: City Space and Urban Experience” (1998), and “Conquering Women: Gender and War” (1997). Our recent conferences have received great praise from faculty and students both at Berkeley and around the country. They familiarize students with all phases of the conference process and provide unique insight into what constitutes an effective abstract and academic presentation.

SPEAKING BETWEEN: LANGUAGE AND INTERSUBJECTIVITY

Eleventh Annual Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference
at the University of California, Berkeley
March 15-16

“Language is not simply means for understanding, but the impression of the mind and world-view of the speaker. [. . .] That is why the learning of a foreign language is the achievement of a new standpoint in the present world.”         -Wilhelm von Humboldt

When our personal narratives no longer intersect, due to the fragmentary, heteroglossic nature of identity construction in the postmodern era, how do we create community or a sense of it? What roles do language, ideology and power play in community formation? And how does the meaning-making subject interact with and through the semiotic systems of its communities? The graduate students of the German Department at the University of California at Berkeley welcome scholars from across the disciplines to engage in this theoretical discussion.

The conference will take place at the Townsend Center for the Humanities, 220 Stephens Hall.

For more information, please contact:

Tes Skogmo (PhD Student)
Department of German
University of California at Berkeley
5319 Dwinelle Hall, MC 3243
Berkeley, CA 94720-3243