The Use of History
18th Annual Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference
University of California, Berkeley March 12-14, 2010

***

Friday, March 12 – B4 Dwinelle Hall (Level A)

6:00 p.m. Screening of “The Baader-Meinhof Complex” (dir. Uli Edel, 2008). A pre-screening talk will be given by Carrie Collenberg (California State University, Long Beach).

Saturday, March 13 – 370 Dwinelle Hall (Level F)

9:00-10:30 a.m. Panel I: The Use and Abuse of History

  • Josiah Simon (University of Oregon): “Der kritische Sammler”
  • Ulrike Wagner (Columbia University): “The Migration of the Muses: Historical Scholarship and Transnational German Romanticism”
  • Carolin Rocks (Washington University in St. Louis): “Geschichte im Widerstreit. Überlegungen zur Kants Geschichtsphilosophie”

10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Panel II: Spectacles of History

  • Lauren Hamer (University of Texas, Austin): “Im Geist der Gegenwart: Fritz Burger and Art History Between the Wars”
  • Sylke Kirschnick (University of Potsdam): “‘Hereinspaziert!’ ins Spektakel der Historie – Zirkuspantomimen als Propaganda und Anschauungsunterricht”
  • Kathryn Malczyk (University of Pennsylvania): “‘Ein wunderlîch geschiht’: The Complicated Alterity of Herzog Ernst’s Indian Princess”

1:30-2:30 p.m. Panel III: Historical Linguistics, Historical Ideologies

  • Oskar Reichmann (University of Heidelberg): “Zur Interessesteuerung der Sprachgeschichtsschreibung”
  • Anja Lobenstein-Reichmann (University of Trier): “Sprache, Geschichte, Rasse: Bausteine einer unheiligen Allianz. Dargestellt am Beispiel Houston Stewart Chamberlains”

2:45-3:45 p.m. Panel IV: Problems of Reinterpretation

  • Joseph D. Rockelmann (Purdue University): “The (Un)welcomed Metamorphosis of the GDR”
  • Jennifer Pavlik (Washington University in St. Louis): “Hannah Arendt: Geschichten also (Gegen-)Geschichte(n)”

4:00 p.m. Keynote address. John Efron (Koret Professor of Jewish History, UC Berkeley): “The Emergence of History as a Jewish Scholarly Pursuit”

Sunday, March 14 – 370 Dwinelle Hall (Level F)

9:00-10:30 a.m. Panel V: The Use and Abuse of History for Literature

  • Ben Robinson (Northwestern University): “Architecture, Aura, and Acknowledgement in W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz”
  • Jeanine Tuschling (University of Warwick): “Geschichte(n), die das Leben schreibt. Historizität und Erfahrung bei Elfriede Jelinek”
  • Martin M. Modlinger (University of Cambridge): “The Ethics of Historical Re-presentation: W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz and the Truth of Fiction”

10:45-11:45 a.m. Panel VI: …and Nietzsche Passes the Baton

  • Kevin P. Eubanks (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill): “Between Ontology and History: Thomas Mann and the Adorno-Heidegger Debate”
  • David Brandon Absher (University of Kentucky): “Historicity and Revolution: A Reading of Heidegger and Marx”

1:15-2:45 p.m. Panel VII: Remembrance and Revision

  • Annie Ring (University of Cambridge): “Double-Agents: Tales of Collaboration and Victimhood in Literature Remembering the Stasi”
  • Michael St. Clair (UC Berkeley): “The Kossinna Syndrome”
  • Priscilla Layne (UC Berkeley): “The Ethics of Provocation: Censoring the Past in German Cold War Punk”

3:00 p.m. Roundtable discussion. Closing remarks by Professor Karen Feldman (UC Berkeley).