Annual Berkeley Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference

The Department of German at Berkeley has been a pioneering force in establishing interdisciplinary German studies. In 1985 and 1986, Professors Hinrich C. Seeba and Fritz Tubach organized the first two Interdisciplinary Summer Seminars in German Studies on “National Identity,” sponsored by the DAAD. These two DAAD Seminars in 1985 and 1986, which featured Gesine Schwan, Hans Jürgen Syberberg and other invited international speakers, were seminal for the creation of three ‘Centers of Excellence’ in the U.S., with Berkeley being the first, later renamed ‘Center for German and European Studies’ (with Richard Buxbaum and Gerald Feldman as first directors).

Since 1993, a rotating team of graduate students in the Department has organized the annual Berkeley Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference (BIGSC). In 2022, the 30^th edition of this conference is being planned. In a massive collaborative effort, students conceptualize a topic, write and advertise a call for papers, select contributions, compose the program, invite a keynote speaker, raise funds, find a venue, and host about twenty to thirty speakers and guests from the US and abroad. Students find this an exhilarating learning experience to be involved in all aspects of organizing an international conference.  

30th BIGSC, Arrested Mobilities: Stillness, Power and Modernity, 2022 Event Flyer

29^th BIGSC, Traveling Forms: Global German Studies, 2021

28^th BIGSC, Schul(d)en: Guilt, Debt, Education, 2020

27^th BIGSC, Affective Realism, 2019

26^th BIGSC, Elemental Media, 2018

25th BIGSC, Syncing… Subject, Media, Society, 2017

24^th BIGSC, Distraction, 2016

23^rd BIGSC, Barriers: Confronting Obstacles in Language, Media, Politics and Culture, 2015 (fed into the Special Topic “Barriers” in TRANSIT, Volume 10, Issue 1, 2015)

22^nd BIGSC, Linguistic Varieties and Variation, 2014

21^st BIGSC, Laughter, 2013

20^th BIGSC, The World Elsewhere, 2012

19^th BIGSC, The Neighbor, 2011 (published as a book: Yale Almog and Erik Born, eds.  Neighbors and Neighborhoods: Living Together in the German-Speaking World. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012) 

18^th BIGSC, The Uses of History, 2010 

17^th BIGSC, The Threat and Allure of the Magical in Literature, Language, Philosophy, History, and the Arts, 2009 (published as a book: Ashwin Manthripragada, Emina Mušanović and Dagmar Theison, eds., The Threat and Allure of the Magical. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013)

16^th BIGSC, Rebellion and Revolution: Defiance in German Language, History, and Art, 2008 (published as a book: Priscilla Layne and Mellisa Etzler, eds. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010)

15^th BIGSC, Dialects and Dialogs, 2007

14^th BIGSC, Ossi Wessi, 2006

13^th BIGSC, Finding the Foreign, 2005 (published as a book: Robert Schechtman and Suin Roberts, eds. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009)

12^th BIGSC, Germany and the Imagined East, 2004 

11^th BIGSC, Speaking Between: Language and Intersubjectivity, 2003 

10^th BIGSC, Finite Subjects: Morality and Culture in Germany, 2002

9^th BIGSC, Self-Made Germans: Authenticity, Authority and Self-Fashioning, 2001 

8^th BIGSC, The German Soldier, 2000

7^th BIGSC, Reading Turn-of-the-Century Culture at the Turn of the Century, 1999 

6^th BIGSC, Building Memory: City Space and Urban Experience, 1998

5^th BIGSC, Conquering Women: Gender and War, 1997

4^th BIGSC, Vagabondage: The Poetics and Politics of Movement, (Proceedings published with Berkeley Academic Press, 1996)

3^rd BIGSC, Issues of Performance in Politics and the Arts (Proceedings published with Berkeley Academic Press, 1995)