news archive

GSA Spring 2024 Newsletter

Dear Friends and Members of the GSA,

Our Spring 2024 newsletter has been published and may be read via our website. In it, you will find advance information about the 2024 election opening on April 29, find out about changes at the German Studies Review, and a link to our membership survey. More information about both the elections and the conference will be coming soon.

With all good wishes,

  • Margaret E. Menninger, Executive Director
  • Jennifer L. Jenkins, Operations Director

 


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CfA: GSA Treasurer

Call for Applications: GSA Treasurer

The German Studies Association invites applications for a five-year renewable position of Treasurer, beginning in the fall of 2024. As the GSA’s chief financial officer, the Treasurer is responsible for the Association’s financial well-being. Using QuickBooks, the Treasurer maintains the Association’s financial records, oversees revenue streams and pays bills, supervises grant and fundraising monies, and manages the Association’s endowments. In consultation with the Executive Director, the Treasurer prepares the Association’s annual budget for the Board’s approval. The Treasurer serves as a full, voting member of the Executive Council, an ex officio, non-voting member of the Executive Board, and an ex officio member of the Investment/Financial Committee. Each of these bodies meets several times a year. Although this position is based on voluntary service,... Read more

Announcement: Birgit Tautz new Spektrum editor

Announcement: Birgit Tautz new Spektrum editor

 

 

The GSA is delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Birgit Tautz (German, Bowdoin College) as the new editor of the Spektrum book series published by Berghahn Books. Dr. David Luebke (History, University of Oregon) is passing the baton after over a dozen years representing the scholarly interests of the GSA, leading an interdisciplinary editorial board through the solicitation and review process, generously supporting authors and reviewers, working together with the editors at Berghahn Books, and connecting the GSA Executive Council and Board with both Berghahn and the series editorial board. In recognition of his substantial service and impact on the field, he will remain affiliated with the series as Founding Editor. 

Published under the auspices of the German Studies Association, Spektrum offers current perspectives... Read more

CfA: Seminar Participant Applications GSA 2024

GSA SEMINARS 2024

The 48th German Studies Association Conference in Atlanta, GA, from September 26–29, 2024 will again host a series of seminars in addition to panels and roundtables (for general conference information, click here).

Seminars meet for all three days of the conference (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) during the first or second morning slot to foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual exchange, and intensified networking. They are led by two to four conveners and consist of 10 to 20 participants, at least some of whom should be graduate students. In order to reach the goal of extended discussion, seminar organizers and participants are required to participate in all three installments of the seminar.

Please note some important seminar application guidelines:

Call for Volunteers: GSA Treasurer Search Committee

Call for Treasurer Search Committee Members

After five years of dedicated service, Dr. Thomas (“Tom”) O. Haakenson will conclude his term as the German Studies Association’s treasurer at the end of 2024. As the first person to fulfill this role in its new iteration separate from the secretary position, Tom was instrumental in bringing the GSA’s Conference Community Fund program to life, strengthening other forms of monetary support for our members, establishing a finance committee to serve in an advisory capacity to the executive council, and streamlining the organization’s bookkeeping, banking and investment processes. 

Thank you, Tom, for your sound fiscal judgment and your positive collegial presence on the executive council and board!

With this vacancy approaching, the GSA is forming a search committee to identify our next treasurer. The treasurer, per the GSA bylaws, serves a five-year, renewable term. As such, the next term will begin in 2025 and their first term would end in 2029. 

If you have an interest in financial management and learned society administrative... Read more

CfA: GSA Emerging Scholars Workshop 2024

December 12, 2023

Call for Applications: GSA Emerging Scholars Workshop (ESW) 2024

We are excited to issue this call for the next Emerging Scholars Workshop (ESW) to be hosted at the 48th German Studies Association Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, from September 26–29, 2024. This workshop is exclusively for graduate students.

The ESW will run parallel to the established seminars, regular conference sessions, and roundtables. It will convene Friday through Sunday, 8am–10am. Participants must commit to participating in all three workshop meetings. For general conference information, see https://www.thegsa.org/conference/current-conference.

Over the past decade or so, graduate programs across the country have contracted. Fewer graduate students now encounter fewer regular graduate courses that have often also become more general in content in order to produce satisfactory enrollment. As a result, much of the specialized but crucial field training has moved into one-on-one tutorials and directed readings. The ESW seeks to give the up-and-coming cohort of scholars access to the leading faculty in their field, increase the advice and mentoring they receive, and allow them to come together for sustained professional conversations. The goal is to enable the next generation of Germanists to produce their... Read more

GSA 2024 Panels/Roundtables: Finding Participants

Looking for people to complete a roundtable or panel that you'd like to organize for the GSA 2024 in Atlanta? Hoping to find a roundtable or panel in need of your expertise? Fill out this form!

Note: The information entered into this document will be public on this spreadsheet (shown below) until the submissions period is closed. If you don't want to share your name and email on a public form, please consider an alternate method for finding collaborators.

Please email us when your panel/roundtable is complete or if you are no longer planning on organizing a session (so that we can remove your entry and you won't keep being contacted!)

Want to amplify your search? Post on Bluesky, Facebook or Twitter and tag @thegsa.bsky.social, @thegsa or #thegsa2024!

Don't forget that you need to be a current (2024) GSA member to be part of a submission. You can join/renew here.

Looking for more information about the conference? Find it here.

 


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CfP: GSA 48th Annual Conference

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: GERMAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE

The German Studies Association (GSA) will hold its 48th Annual Conference from 26–29 September 2024 at the Courtland Grand Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia.

The Program Committee cordially invites proposals on any aspect of DACHL (German, Austrian, Swiss, Liechtenstein) studies, including (but not limited to) history, Germanistik, film, art history, political science, anthropology, musicology, religious studies, sociology, and cultural studies. The committee is especially eager to welcome proposals from scholars in subfields that have been underrepresented at recent conferences, including contemporary politics, economics, and society, as well as papers from all fields dealing with the nineteenth century or earlier.

Proposals for complete panels, for interdisciplinary presentations, and for panel series are strongly encouraged (a series is limited to no more than four panels). Individual paper proposals are also welcome – though experienced scholars are encouraged to develop full session submissions that can help build scholarly networks. The call for seminar proposals has been distributed separately; a call for applications for the Emerging Scholars Workshop will go out in mid-December.

Please see the GSA website for information about the submission process for papers, panels, and roundtables; the OpenWater conference portal... Read more

GSA 2024 Call for Seminar Proposals

The 48th German Studies Association Conference, to be held in Atlanta, GA from September 26–29, 2024, will continue to host a series of seminars in addition to regular panel sessions and roundtables (general conference information is available here). Seminars meet for all three days of the conference. They explore new avenues of academic exchange and foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual debate, and intensified networking. Seminars are typically proposed and led by two to three conveners and consist of a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 20 participants, including the conveners themselves. Seminars must be open to applications from interested participants, and conveners are expected to make every effort to aim for broad diversity and include scholars from different disciplines, types of institutions, and career stages, including graduate students. Seminars may enable

  • extended discussion of a recent academic publication;
  • exploration of a promising new research topic;
  • engagement with pre-circulated papers;
  • a debate among scholars with different approaches; or
  • in-depth discussion of a political or public policy issue, novel, film, poem, musical piece, painting, or other artwork.

Conveners are strongly encouraged to structure their seminars around creative and engaging forms of intellectual... Read more

CfA: GSR book review editor

Call for applications: GSR book review editor

German Studies Review is looking for a book review editor in charge of publications in Literature/Film/ Culture. Ideally, the candidate should be at the level of associate professor or higher, but we will consider applications from colleagues of all ranks. Tasks involve

  • monitoring the field for new publications,
  • communicating with publishers,
  • identifying qualified reviewers,
  • sending out books and keeping track of reviews in process, and
  • editing reviews.

The book review editors are supported by a graduate student assistant. German Studies Review comes out three times a year and publishes 15–20 reviews per volume. The three-year, renewable appointment begins in May 2024.

Questions can be addressed to Britta Kallin (bkallin@gatech.edu), the outgoing book review editor, or Katharina Gerstenberger, editor of GSR.

Please send letter of interest and a CV to Katharina Gerstenberger (katharina.gerstenberger@utah.edu) by November 15, 2023.

   


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GSA 2023 Conference Program

Forty-seventh Annual Conference, Oct. 5–8 2023, Montréal, Québec, Canada

#thegsa2023

Conference program

 


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Preserve World Languages at WVU

In full agreement with expressions of deep concern on the part of members of the GSA, the Executive Council has sent the following statement opposing the termination of World Languages at West Virginia University to the contacts recommended by our impacted colleagues. We would like to thank you for your vocal advocacy and for providing expert insights and perspectives in support of the preservation of subjects core to our disciplines, especially German language and German-speaking cultures. Individual EC members have also signed the open letters and petitions circulated by faculty and students at WVU, the Joint National Council of Languages and the Diversity, Decolonization and the German Curriculum collective and encourage you to consider doing the same.

We as officers of the German Studies Association write this letter in the name of our members to urge you emphatically to preserve the teaching of World Languages by disciplinary experts at West Virginia University by reversing the recommendation to close the World Languages program and terminate the work of its world-class faculty.

Language learning provides pathways to educational opportunities, jobs, and professions that rely on clear communication and cultural literacy. Language departments and the professional organizations... Read more

GSA Summer 2023 Newsletter

Dear Friends and Members of the GSA,

Our Summer 2023 newsletter has been published and is available on our website. You can read about GSA 2023 conference receptions and special events, conference accessibility information, a call for nominations for the Spektrum series editor, the election results for GSA Executive Board positions, and more. We look forward to seeing you in Canada in October!

With all good wishes,

  • Margaret E. Menninger, Executive Director
  • Jennifer L. Jenkins, Operations Director
  • Nina Mondré Schweppe, Communications and Strategic Initiatives Manager

 


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GSA 2023 Conference Registration Open

Dear Members and Friends of the GSA,

We are happy to announce that the registration portal is now open for our conference in Montréal, Québec, Canada, taking place from 5 to 8 October 2023. Your emailed receipt from Johns Hopkins will include a link to reserve your room at the discounted GSA conference rate at the Le Centre Sheraton hotel in Montréal, so make sure to check your spam folders if you don’t see it in your inbox. After you select the dates and room on the conference hotel registration page, you may, on the next page, request an accessible room and include other notes for the hotel.

Please note that we have updated our conference webpage to include the preliminary schedule as well as other useful information for presenters, including registration rates and a list of frequently asked questions. There will be more conference information coming throughout the summer.

Please check the preliminary schedule carefully (note that the full listings for the seminars are on a second tab, you may click on that at the bottom of the spreadsheet). We have worked hard to accommodate all accumulated... Read more

CfA: Spektrum series editor

Call for applications: Spektrum series editor

The German Studies Association seeks a new editor for the Spektrum series, published with Berghahn Books. Responsibilities include

  • soliciting manuscripts that reflect the scholarly interests of the GSA;
  • working together with the series board to review proposals and select reviewers;
  • maintaining academic standards;
  • supporting authors and reviewers to meet deadlines and goals;
  • working together with editors at Berghahn Books;
  • communicating with the GSA Executive Board, the Spektrum series board, and Berghahn Books.

Candidates should be active scholars in their field and have excellent written and verbal communication skills in German and English. The new series editor will initially work together with David Luebke, the outgoing editor, in order to learn the position’s procedures. Since its inception, the Spektrum series has published 23 volumes, with a current average of four volumes per year. 

Applications should include

  • a cover letter outlining the applicant’s experience in academic editing and publishing;
  • a current c.v.;
  • the names of three references.

Review of applications will begin on August 14, 2023 with the goal of announcing the new editor by the annual GSA conference in October. The German Studies Association and... Read more

GSA Preliminary Schedule, 47th Annual Conference

[posted June 12, 2023]

Dear Friends and Colleagues of the GSA:

The GSA 2023 preliminary conference schedule has now been published with day/time slots, titles of sessions, and participant names and affiliations. Please check it carefully and notify of us of any corrections requests on this form no later than June 30. The final program is due shortly thereafter and we will be unable to make changes to the printed program after that point.

As you look over the schedule, we ask that you note the following:

  • The full listings for the seminars are on a second tab, click on "Closed Seminars" at the bottom of the spreadsheet to view them.
  • We have worked hard to accommodate all special requests received regarding scheduling, placement in rooms with sound equipment, and honoring the order of panels in series.

If the affiliation displayed for you is no longer current or is inaccurate, let us know via the correction requests form, but please also make the correction yourself in your GSA member profile (this last item is not something we can do), as your member profile... Read more

GSA Spring 2023 Newsletter

Dear Friends and Members of the GSA,

Our Spring 2023 newsletter has been published and is available on our website. You can read about GSA 2023 book and article prizes, the 2023-24 Berlin Program Fellows cohort, our GSA 2023 conference in Montréal, the upcoming elections for GSA Executive Board positions, and more. We look forward to seeing you in Canada in October!

With all good wishes,

  • Margaret E. Menninger, Executive Director
  • Jennifer L. Jenkins, Operations Director
  • Nina Mondré Schweppe, Communications and Strategic Initiatives Manager

 


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Syria & Turkey Earthquake Disaster Relief

The GSA extends solidarity and sympathies to those impacted by the devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria, including our members who have lost or are waiting to hear from loved ones, friends, and colleagues.

To donate towards ongoing rescue efforts: 

 


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CfA: Seminar Participant Applications GSA 2023

GSA SEMINARS 2023

The 47th German Studies Association Conference in Montréal, Québec, Canada, from October 5 to October 8, 2023 will again host a series of seminars in addition to conference sessions and roundtables (for general conference information, click here).

Seminars meet for all three days of the conference (Friday, Saturday, Sunday) during the first or second morning slot to foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual exchange, and intensified networking. They are led by two to four conveners and consist of 8 to 20 participants, at least some of whom should be graduate students. In order to reach the goal of extended discussion, seminar organizers and participants are required to participate in all three installments of the seminar.

To access the submission portal in which you can apply for the seminar of your choice, click here. Applications ask for an abstract... Read more

GSA 2023 Panels/Roundtables: Finding Participants

Looking for people to complete a roundtable or panel that you'd like to organize for the GSA 2023 in Montréal? Hoping to find a roundtable or panel in need of your expertise? Fill out this form!

Note: The information entered into this document will be public on this spreadsheet (shown below) until the submissions period is closed. If you don't want to share your name and email on a public form, please consider an alternate method to find participants.

Please email us when your panel/roundtable is complete or if you are no longer planning on organizing a session (so that we can remove your entry and you won't keep being contacted!)

Want to amplify your search? Post on Facebook or Twitter and tag @thegsa or #thegsa2023!

Don't forget that you need to be a current (2023) GSA member to be part of a submission. You can join/renew here.

Looking for more information about the conference? Find it here.

 


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CfA: GSA Emerging Scholars Workshop 2023

December 15, 2022

Call for Applications: GSA Emerging Scholars Workshop (ESW) 2023

We are excited to issue this call for the next Emerging Scholars Workshop (ESW) to be hosted at the 47th German Studies Association Conference in Montréal, Canada, from October 5–8, 2023. This workshop is exclusively for graduate students. 

The Emerging Scholars Workshop will run parallel to the established seminars and in addition to regular conference sessions and roundtables. For general conference information, see https://www.thegsa.org/conference.

Over the past decade or so, graduate programs across the country have contracted. Fewer graduate students now encounter fewer regular graduate courses that have often also become more general in content in order to produce satisfactory enrollment. As a result, much of the specialized but crucial field training has moved into one-on-one tutorials and directed readings. The ESW seeks to give the up-and-coming cohort of scholars access to the leading faculty in their field, increase the advice and mentoring they receive, and allow them to come together for sustained professional conversations. The goal is to enable the next generation of Germanists to produce their best possible work, be competitive across fields, and contribute to the... Read more

GSA Winter Newsletter

Dear Friends and Members of the GSA,

Our Winter 2022 newsletter has been published and is available on our website. You can read about our GSA 2022 prize winners, the 2022-23 Berlin Program Fellows cohort, our upcoming GSA 2023 conference in Montréal, and more. We look forward to seeing you in Canada next October!

With all good wishes for 2023,

  • Margaret E. Menninger, Executive Director
  • Jennifer L. Jenkins, Operations Director
  • Nina Mondré Schweppe, Communications and Strategic Initiatives Manager

 


Read more

CfP: GSA 47th Annual Conference

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: GERMAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE

The German Studies Association (GSA) will hold its 47th Annual Conference from 5-8 October, 2023 at Le Centre Sheraton Montreal in Montréal, Quebec.

The Program Committee cordially invites proposals on any aspect of DACHL (German, Austrian, Swiss, Liechtenstein) studies, including (but not limited to) history, Germanistik, film, art history, political science, anthropology, musicology, religious studies, sociology, and cultural studies.   

Proposals for entire sessions, for interdisciplinary presentations, and for series of panels are strongly encouraged (a series is limited to no more than four panels). Individual paper proposals are also welcome – though experienced scholars are encouraged to develop full session submissions that can help build scholarly networks. The call for seminar proposals has been distributed separately.  

Please see the submissions guidelines for ‘traditional’ papers, sessions, and roundtables, for which the submission portal will open on 2 January 2023. The deadline for proposals will be Monday, 27 March at 11:59pm PDT. 

Please note that all proposed presenters must be members of the German Studies Association. Information on membership is available here. The GSA submission system will not allow... Read more

Call for Seminar Proposals GSA 2023

The 47th German Studies Association Conference, to be held in Montréal, Canada from October 5-8, 2023 will continue to host a series of seminars in addition to regular panel sessions and roundtables (for general conference information see https://www.thegsa.org/conference/current-conference). 

Seminars meet for all three days of the conference (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). They explore new avenues of academic exchange and foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual debate, and intensified networking. Seminars are typically proposed and led by two to three conveners and must consist of a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 20 participants, including the conveners themselves. Seminars must be open to applications from interested participants, and conveners are expected to make every effort to aim for broad diversity and include scholars from different disciplines and at different career stages, including graduate students. Seminars may enable

  • extended discussion of a recent academic publication;
  • exploration of a promising new research topic;
  • engagement with pre-circulated papers;
  • a debate among scholars with different approaches; or
  • in-depth discussion of a political or public policy issue, novel, film, poem, musical piece, painting, or other artwork.

Conveners are strongly encouraged to structure their seminars around creative and engaging forms of intellectual exchange;... Read more

GSA 2022 "Food for Thought" videos

Interested in finding out where German Studies scholarship is headed these days? Curious about new topics that you didn't have time to explore in panel and seminar sessions in Houston? Eager to engage with different presentation formats? Then check out the videos from the GSA 2022 conference plenary session “Food for Thought.” 

We asked nine colleagues to offer a “lightning round” of rapid, condensed, broadly accessible and informative presentations of their work. In soliciting speaker nominations from board members and network coordinators, we asked them to focus on emerging and early career scholars, from the post-doctoral level through recently promoted associate professors, whose work covers the range of disciplines represented in the Association. 

The presenters are, in alphabetical order:

  • Andrea Bryant, Appalachian State University 
  • Kimberly Cheng, New York University
  • Tiarra Cooper, University of Massachusetts Amherst 
  • Richmond Masitsa Embeywa, University of Arizona 
  • Zach Fitzpatrick, Wesleyan University
  • Susan Grunewald, Louisiana State University 
  • Jeannette Oholi, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen 
  • Thorsten Ries, University of Texas at Austin 
  • Jessica Resvick, Oklahoma State University

Read more

GSA 2022 Conference Program

Forty-Sixth Annual Conference, Sept. 15-18 2022, Houston, TX

#thegsa2022

Conference program

 


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DAAD/AvH Cuts: German Studies Advocacy Letter

The GSA joins our colleagues world-wide in urging the

German Minister of Foreign Affairs and the members of the Bundestag

to reconsider the proposed cuts to the DAAD and AvH:


Arts Night at GSA 2022!

GSA 2022 Arts Night

Thursday, September 15 and Saturday, September 17

After two years of virtual events, Arts Night returns to the GSA in person. In collaboration with the DAAD, the DEFA Film Library, and the Black German Heritage and Research Association (BGHRA), this year’s Arts Night Committee is thrilled to present three events to kick off this year’s conference - a photography exhibit, a literary reading, and a film screening. Here’s an overview of the schedule, with descriptions linked below. We hope you will join us.

Thursday, September 15

Saturday, September 17



   


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GSA Elections July 1-31; Vice President "Meet the Candidates" Webinar Recording

Elections for GSA offices will take place online between Friday, July 1 (12:00 am EDT), and Sunday, July 31, (11:59 pm EDT).  All current GSA members are eligible to vote using their GSA log-in credentials to access the ballot via an email sent to the address associated with their membership at 12:00 am EDT on July 1. You will vote for a new Vice President, who will take office on 1 January 2023 and serve for two years, at that point succeeding to the presidency for another two-year term; and four new members of the Board, whose three-year terms (two years in the case of the graduate student member) will also begin on 1 January 2023. Please refer to the biographies of the candidates here.

A recording of the Vice President "Meet the Candidates" Webinar, which took place on June 29, is available here. Read more

GSA Distinguished Lecture, July 6, 2022 4-6pm CEDT (Freie Universität Berlin)

GSA Distinguished Lecture, "Normality as a Serious Matter and True Joy"

Dr. Margaret E. Menninger (Texas State University/GSA)

(Registration deadline July 1)

What can the nineteenth century have to say about what is normal in the twenty-first? What is normal in the first place; how will we know when we have returned there? Or, perhaps more aptly put, how does society arrive at consensus about what constitutes “normal?” Remember, normality, too, has a history. What we now perceive as normal has not always been so, as the histories of our now-familiar institutions of high culture can show. There was a time when the public museum did not exist, and it was by no means normal to visit a city and spend time in a building dedicated to art or archaeology. These institutions and their histories also remind us that we will know when normal has returned or been established because it will feel right; it will have an emotional component. Indeed, perhaps finding joy is the best first step back, and art culture is a time-tested pathway. As museums, concert houses, and other cultural nexus points reopen around the globe, we can understand how the... Read more

GSA Spring/Summer Newsletter

Dear Friends and Members of the GSA,

Our Spring/Summer 2022 newsletter has been published and may be accessed here. In it you may meet the new GSA team, find advance information about our upcoming elections, and review details about the conference. More information about both the elections and the conference will be coming soon.

With all good wishes,

Margaret E. Menninger, Executive Director

Jennifer L. Jenkins, Operations Director

Nina Mondré Schweppe, Communications and Strategic Initiatives Manager Read more

GSA Preliminary Schedule, 46th Annual Conference

Dear Friends and Colleagues of the GSA:

Here is a *preliminary schedule with the times*, and names of panels/seminars/roundtables and the names of the participants. Please check it carefully and let us know of corrections on this *change form* by June 30. The final program is due shortly thereafter and we will be unable to make changes to the printed program after that point.

As you check this, we ask that you note the following:

  • The full listings for the seminars are on a second page, you may click on that at the bottom of the spreadsheet.
  • We have worked hard to accommodate all accumulated requests regarding scheduling, placement in rooms with sound equipment, and honoring the order of panels in series.
  • If you made a scheduling request because of religious or family obligations and it is not reflected in the preliminary program, please let us know on the *change form*.
  • If you have changed affiliations and/or email addresses from the ones we have on file, please let us know and make the correction on your GSA account (this last item is not something we can do) under “*member services*.”
  • *
  • ... Read more

2 June 2022: 46th Annual GSA Conference updates: registration open, preliminary program

Dear colleagues,

You can now register for the conference under the "member services">>"conference registration" menu.

Notes:

  • After registering, you will receive an email confirmation from our partners at Johns Hopkins UP with the conference hotel registration link. Check your spam folder if you don't see it.
  • When you reserve the dates for your hotel room, you will see more information on the next page, including the option to reserve an accessible room.

We will post the preliminary schedule on our website on Monday, June 6. Look for an email soon after with further information!

Margaret Menninger, Executive Director

Kevin Amidon, Program Director

Jennifer L. Jenkins, Operations Director Read more

GSA Call for Nominations

Dear members of the GSA,

I write to you on behalf of this year’s nominating committee to seek your input and involvement as we prepare for our next round of GSA elections.

Have you ever asked yourself how to become more involved in the GSA? Are there other members whose voices you’d like to see amplified? This year, as per our bylaws, we are seeking to fill a total of five positions, including our next Vice President and four board members. The Vice President serves for two years, after which they become President for another two-year term (followed by two years as Immediate Past President). Board members serve three-year terms. For details, please refer to the GSA Bylaws.

As nominating committee, we are charged with generating separate slates with two candidates for each open position (for reasons to do with the pandemic, the slate for the graduate student board member is already set and carries over from last year).

This is where you come in: please use this form to let the nominating committee know of anyone you would like to suggest for an open position – including yourself! We... Read more

GSA Statement on Ukraine

Febr 25, 2022

The German Studies Association and the GSA’s Committee on Institutional Transformation and Social Justice condemn Russia's attack on the sovereign nation of Ukraine. This action is in violation of multiple international treaties that the Russian government itself has signed. We deplore the fabricated historical distortions by President Putin and their use to justify Russia's illegal expansion. We stand in solidarity with all those in Ukraine and the rest of the world in opposing this war, and particularly with the people in Russia protesting this invasion at considerable risk to themselves. And we stand in solidarity with any and all GSA members who are personally affected by this violence.   Read more

CfA: Seminar Participant Applications GSA 2022

GSA SEMINARS 2022

The 46th German Studies Association Conference in Houston, Texas, from September 15 to September 18, 2022, will again host a series of seminars in addition to conference sessions and roundtables (for general conference information see *https://www.thegsa.org/conference*).

Seminars meet for all three days of the conference during the first or second morning slot to foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual exchange, and intensified networking. They are led by two to four conveners and consist of 10 to 20 participants, at least some of whom should be graduate students. In order to reach the goal of extended discussion, seminar organizers and participants are required to participate in all three installments of the seminar.

To apply for a seminar, click here or access the portal through the conference website. Applications ask for an abstract describing the nature of your contribution to the seminar (500 words max), as well as a short biography (300 words max). The deadline for applications to participate in a seminar is Monday, March 14th at 11:59 p.m. EST. 

The 2022 GSA Conference will include a total of 18 seminars selected and approved for enrollment through... Read more

Conference portal update 3 Feb. 2022

3 Feb. 2022

Dear GSA members and friends,

We write to update you with news about our new conference submissions portal for our 46th annual conference in Houston, TX, Sept. 15-18, 2022.

We have finished the first phase of seminar topic proposals submissions, and look forward to posting the available seminars towards the end of February. Thank you to all of you who proposed seminar topics, and thank you to our seminar committee for your work!

The full launch of our submissions portal for individual papers, panels, and roundtables has been delayed while OpenWater’s developers continue to integrate our membership database with the proposal application pages. We hope to be ready for those submissions next week. Please check our GSA conference page for updates.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. We’ll continue to update you via email, our website, and social media. Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Questions? Send us an email!

We hope that you and yours are warm and safe.

Margaret Menninger | Executive Director | director@thegsa.org
... Read more

GSR Graduate Assistant, call for applications

Call for Applications for Graduate Assistant, German Studies Review

The German Studies Review seeks a graduate assistant for the two Book Review Editors (literature and culture; history and art) with a start date of May 1, 2022. The graduate assistant will work closely with the two Book Review Editors on all editorial and managerial work related to the book review section. This includes editing book reviews, managing spreadsheets (with book titles, author names, publication dates, publisher addresses, reviewer names) as well as acquiring copies from presses for reviewers and communicating with reviewers, presses, and the two Book Review Editors and Editor of the journal.

The successful applicant should be familiar with scholarship in German Studies and experience in editing would be an asset but is not required. Other qualifications include, but are not limited to, reading knowledge of German, excellent grammar and punctuation skills in English and German, knowledge of proper MLA citation formats, strong knowledge of Word and Excel, strong organizational skills, attention to detail, ability to get work done in a timely manner, willingness to communicate with reviewers and representatives of presses.

We welcome applications from advanced Ph.D. students, especially from groups who... Read more

GSA Seminar Proposal Deadline Extended to Jan. 31

Have a last-minute idea for a seminar?

Just need a bit more time to pull things together?

Good news! We've extended the deadline for #thegsa2022 seminar proposals to 11:59 p.m. EST on Monday, 31 January!

You can find more information here:

Information on submissions for individual panels/panels/roundtables coming soon. Read more

46th Annual GSA Conference Submissions Portal Open

Dear GSA Members and Friends,

Happy New Year! While 2022 has gotten off to a bumpy start, we hope that you enjoyed the holidays and are staying safe and healthy. We are writing with some reminders and updates about the 2022 Annual Conference (#thegsa2022).

The OpenWater submission portal for the conference is now open for seminar proposals. The portal will be open for individual papers, panels, and roundtables in the next days.

  • Follow this link to submit your proposal, then click on the login sign in the upper right corner.
  • You may also find a link to the portal and other information on the conference website
  • To submit a proposal, you must be an active 2022 member of the GSA. You will use the same username and password to log into the OpenWater portal as you use to log into your GSA profile. Contact Mrs. Ursula Sykes (
  • ... Read more

GSA Winter Newsletter

Dear Members and Friends of GSA,

As we near the end of the year, we would like to thank you for your engagement with the GSA. It has been a long and challenging year, and we would like to thank you for the support of our community.

Please take a moment to browse our *winter newsletter.* There is much to celebrate, and to look forward to – especially #gsa2022.

We hope you all get a chance for some much-deserved rest in the next weeks, and we look forward to seeing you all in 2022!

From the officers, board, and staff of the GSA -

Guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr! Read more

Portal open, CfP: 46th Annual GSA Conference

The German Studies Association (GSA) will hold its 46th Annual Conference from 15-18 September at the Hilton Americas Hotel in Houston, TX.

2/23/2022 Updates:

  • Thank you for your patience as we developed our new conference submission interface. This process took longer than we had anticipated, but we are excited about our new partnership with OpenWater. We are now ready to accept submissions for Seminar Applications, as well as Individual Papers, Panels and Roundtables.
  • The direct link for the submissions portal is here: *46th GSA Annual Conference Submissions*
    • Please note that in order to log in to the submissions system, you must be a current GSA member. If you need to update your membership, please do so under *member services*.
    • If you experience any technical problems with the submission website, please contact Operations Director Dr. Benita Blessing (operations@thegsa.org). Because we are working with a new system, please inform us of any issues so that we can correct them. Thank you so much!
    • If you have any questions about your membership, please contact our partners at Johns Hopkins University Press (jrnlcirc@press.jhu.edu).
  • Seminar descriptions can be found
  • ... Read more

Call for Seminar Proposals GSA 2022

The 46th German Studies Association Conference in Houston, Texas, from September 15 to September 18, 2022 will continue to host a series of seminars in addition to conference sessions and roundtables (for general conference information see https://www.thegsa.org/conference). 

Seminars meet for all three days of the conference. They explore new avenues of academic exchange and foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual debate, and intensified networking. Seminars are typically proposed and led by two to three conveners (in special cases, there may be four conveners) and must consist of a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 20 participants, including the conveners themselves. Seminars must be open to applications from interested participants, and conveners are expected to make every effort to aim for broad diversity and include scholars from different disciplines and at different career stages, including graduate students. Seminars may enable extended discussion of a recent academic publication; the exploration of a promising new research topic; engagement with pre-circulated papers; an opportunity to debate the work of scholars with different approaches; or the in-depth discussion of a political or public policy issue, novel, film, poem, musical piece, painting, or other artwork.... Read more

CfA GSA Emerging Scholars Workshop 2022

Call for Applicants

GSA Emerging Scholars Workshop (ESW)

We are excited to issue this call for the Emerging Scholars Workshop (ESW) to be hosted for the third time at the 46th German Studies Association Conference in Houston, Texas from September 15-18, 2022. This workshop is exclusively for graduate students. The Emerging Scholars Workshop (ESW) will run parallel to the established seminars and in addition to regular conference sessions and roundtables (for general conference information see https://www.thegsa.org/conference).Over the past decade or so, graduate programs across the country have contracted. Fewer graduate students now encounter fewer regular graduate courses that have often also become more general in content in order to produce satisfactory enrollment. As a result, much of the specialized but crucial field training has moved into one-on-one tutorials and directed readings. The new Emerging Scholars Workshop seeks to give the up-and-coming cohort of scholars access to the leading faculty in their field, increase the advice and mentoring they receive, and allow them to come together for sustained professional conversations. The goal is to enable the next generation of Germanists and Historians to produce their best possible work, be competitive across fields, and contribute to the vitality, relevance,... Read more

"Give to the Max" with GSA!

Dear colleagues,

Thursday Nov. 18 is “Give to the Max” Day!

Your contribution allows the GSA to further support the study of the German language and culture across North America and the globe.

Support the GSA and its members by donating to one of many worthwhile initiatives, such as the Barclay Book Prize, the GSA Endowment Fund, or The GSA Community Fund.

https://thegsa.org/members/donate

Also consider a graduate institutional membership which includes up to six free memberships for graduate students: another way to help out future scholars with limited resources.

The GSA is a non-profit organization under 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Service of the United States of America. Accordingly, your contribution is tax deductible to the extent allowed by law.

Thanks in advance for your support of the German Studies Association.

Thomas Haakenson

Treasurer



  Read more

Nov. 18 noon-1:30pm EST: Debates On Holocaust Memory: Coloniality, Black Lives, and Multidirectionality”

Dear colleagues,

Please join us on Nov. 18, noon-1:30pm EST, for this exciting webinar:

“Debates On Holocaust Memory: Coloniality, Black Lives, and Multidirectionality” 

The translations of Michael Rothberg’s Multidirectional Memory and Esra Özyürek’s Being German, Becoming Muslim into German have become part of ongoing national debates about the relationship between the Holocaust and colonialism. You are invited to join Michael Rothberg (UCLA) and Esra Özyürek (University of Cambridge, UK) in conversation about new developments in these debates. The webinar will be moderated by Damani Partridge (University of Michigan).

** Advance registration via Zooom required ** (see below; registering early helps us admit attendees on time)



Date: Thursday November 18th, 2021 

Time: Noon-1:30pm EST  

Michael Rothberg is the 1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los... Read more

GSA Town Hall Nov. 11 1-3pm ET

Dear GSA members,

Thank you for participating both in-person and virtually at our highly successful Indianapolis meeting! It is now with great pleasure that I invite you to attend our Virtual Town Hall on November 11, 2021, from 1:00pm ET to 3:00pm ET. (Please see this meeting’s **Zoom invitation** below.)

As we move into 2022 there are several topics of organizational evolution that we can best address by providing opportunities for deeper, more sustained membership input that can help guide a first-ever Strategic Plan for the GSA.

One of these topics is the focus of an ad hoc advisory committee to the Board, the Climate Emergency and Technology (CLEAT) committee (formerly the Carbon Footprint and Technology Committee), co-chaired by Christina Gerhardt and Sabine von Mering. Please see the CLEAT committee’s report. This report originated in a members’ petition during 2020. The CLEAT committee has offered a very broad range of possible options which were discussed with the Board during our Indianapolis conference; and the Board would now like the membership to read the report in advance of the Virtual Town Hall and to think about the committee’s recommendations. There... Read more

Berlin Program CfA, deadline Dec. 1

The Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies is soliciting applications for their fellowship competition 2024/25.

Please spread the word about this great opportunity. Application deadline is: December 1



The Berlin Program offers up to one year of dissertation or postdoctoral research support at the Freie Universität Berlin, one of Germany’s leading research universities. It is open to scholars in all social science and humanities disciplines, including historians working on German and European history since the mid-18th century.

The program offers four different fellowships:

For key features and eligibility, check our Fellowships Overview.

Located in one of the densest and most innovative academic regions in Europe, a Berlin Program Fellowship offers extraordinary research opportunities. Each semester, our colloquium led by distinguished scholars, serves as the central meeting point to share, discuss and support... Read more

Post-conference updates (5 Oct.)

Questions about the conference 

  • You can find the PDF of this year's program under the "conference">>previous conferences tabs on our GSA homepage.



Operations (including me) will be taking off a few days to get some rest and catch up on our "other" full-time jobs this week. Please be patient as we work through the many emails, and thanks for understanding that those of who helped organize the conference will be away from email this week. 

We'll post answers to your questions about the conference (recordings etc.) as we work with OpenWater. Some of the updates were new for us, so please be patient while we get the post-conference questions addressed. 

Questions about membership issues (annual/lifetime membership, copies of receipts for conference registration, etc.) should be addressed to JHUP. They only handle those issues, so won't be able to answer other questions. You can contact them under "contact us" on our "about GSA" tab on the homepage.

Please do help amplify scholars' voices by tagging us on Twitter when you tweet about the amazing sessions you attended. 

Thanks,

Benita Blessing, Operations Director Read more

Arts Night 2021: Max Czollek & Sasha Marianna Salzmann

Join us for a virtual GSA Arts Night to kick off this year’s conference with two special guests:

Max Czollek & Sasha Marianna Salzmann

In-yer-face-Germany: From Postmigrant Theater to De-Integration

Reading and Conversation with Johanna Schuster-Craig and Olivia Landry

Tuesday, September 28th, 2pm EDT / 20Uhr MESZ

Veranstaltung in deutscher Sprache, Diskussion deutsch und englisch. 

We gratefully acknowledge support from the DAAD and 1014.

The event will be hosted virtually via this website. Click *here* for the schedule link.

Arts Night Poster 2021

In theater congresses such as the “Radikale jüdische Kulturtage,” in essays such as Desintegriert Euch!, in debates, performances, workshops, lyric poetry, plays and novels, Max Czollek and Sasha Marianna Salzmann have been exploring the continually reconfigured “We” that today characterizes and polarizes German society. They ask how this “we” has been defined in relation to different “others”– after the end of World War II, after the labor recruitment treaty with Turkey in 1961, after reunification in 1990, and after the migrations of post-Soviet Jews to Europe? And how have new voices – Czollek and Salzmann among them... Read more

GSA Program Updates and Errata

Please check back here regulary for updates and corrections to the program. 



  Read more

Call for Auditors, GSA 2021

CALL FOR AUDITORS

Dear Colleagues:

This year’s GSA Conference in Indianapolis will again feature a number of three-day seminars. As in the past, this year’s conference will also allow for a limited number of auditors to attend individual seminar streams. Auditors attend the seminar but are not formal participants, so they may take on other presenting roles at the conference. Please note that the specific roles and rules for auditors will be defined by the respective seminar conveners.

If you are interested in auditing a seminar, please contact and apply to the seminar’s convenors directly. Below you will find a list of seminars available for auditors, including information about whether the seminar is in-person or virtual. Due to space restrictions and other considerations, we must ask convenors not to admit more auditors to their seminars than the number specified. The number of auditors is limited to six regardless of the number of conveners and active participants. 

Sincerely yours,

Margaret Eleanor Menninger, Executive Director of the GSA

Vance Byrd, 2021 GSA Program Director

Elizabeth Drummond, Chair of the GSA Seminar Committee

Richard Langston, GSA Seminar... Read more

Summer newsletter

Dear GSA members and friends,

Our first-ever *Summer Newsletter* has arrived. It will arrive in members' email inboxes shortly, or you can read it *here*. Read more

GSA Preliminary Schedule, 45th Annual Conference

Dear Friends and Colleagues of the GSA:

Here is a *preliminary schedule with the times*, and names of panels/seminars/roundtables and the names of the participants. Please check it carefully and let us know of corrections on this *change form* by August 10. The final program is due shortly thereafter and we will be unable to make changes to the printed program after that point.

As you check this, we ask that you note the following:

  • All session times are parallel. That is to say, there are virtual AND in-person sessions in each time slot because some attendees in Indianapolis are also participating in virtual sessions.
    • All session times are Eastern Daylight Time. You can check what time it will be for you during the conference using a time zone converter such as this one: *Time and Date*
  • We have done our best to comfortably accommodate presenters in as many time zones as possible. It is not possible to avoid all late nights or early mornings. This may also mean that the order of some panel series has changed; this was unavoidable and we will renumber the panels to reflect
  • ... Read more

Exhibitor/Publisher Information, GSA 2021

New! If you are a publisher or exhibitor and have registered for the conference, you should be able to log in to the OpenWater website using these directions; if you used OpenWater before, you might be able to get in without resetting a password.

  • Go to https://thegsa45.secure-platform.com/
  • Click on Login
  • Enter the same email address that you registered with/sent to the Operations Director
  • Click on 'I Don't Have a Password'
  • You'll be emailed a login link
  • If you get an error message, we probably need to re-enter your email; just email the Operations Director (operations@thegsa.org) and we'll take care of that. 

New! email, sent 31 Aug, 2021:

Dear Publishers and Exhibitors,

We thank those of you who have already sent us your materials already. For those of you who have not yet done so, or who are still on the fence, we will have a much smaller conference in Indianapolis than we had hoped. However, the folks there will, I know, be very happy to see their first exhibit... Read more

Conference updates + updated schedule + FAQs: Indianapolis in-person and virtual (28 Sept. 2021)

Sept. 28, 2021

Thank you for your patience as we organize our first hybrid (virtual and in-person sessions) conference, September 30-October 3 2021. You can find the latest conference information on the current conference page.  



GSA Program Schedule, PDF:

  • An archival record of the conference schedule is available under the "conference">>"previous conferences" tabs at the top of our homepage. 
  • Click here to access the *GSA 45th Annual Conference Schedule* as a PDF, updated regularly!
    • Please note: We will continue to make effort to keep this schedule updated within 48 hours. You will see withdrawals, changes in modalities or time, and other edits noted in red next to the session title. Please email Operations Director Dr. Benita Blessing if you need to make a change, or see an error. Thank you for your help and patience!

New

  • ​​You can now log in here to the *Virtual Conference Platform.* Your GSA membership must be current, and you must be registered for the conference for access. (Exhibitors, we will send you access information separately.) The site is still under construction, but take a
  • ... Read more

Reminder: CfA, GSA Community Fund, Round 1 (June 1)

Dear colleagues, 

Please share widely this reminder for the CfA for the first round of *Community Fund applications* (June 1). 

Note: 

The GSA Community Fund seeks to support in particular recent PhDs and precariously employed and contingent faculty – including lecturers, adjuncts, non tenure-track colleagues, and visiting faculty – who are presenting at the annual GSA conference, which this year takes place from 30 September to 3 October 2021. Independent scholars and other educators in financially precarious positions are also eligible to apply. 

However, if funds are available, grants may be made to those individuals simply to attend the conference, with priority given to unaffiliated scholars and to graduate students in German Studies and related fields. 

Please also consider *donating to the fund* to help support GSA members for this year's and future conferences. 

Questions? Please email *community_fund@thegsa.org*.

  Read more

Letter of Concern to Georgia Convention and Visitor Bureaus

April 26, 2021

William Pate, President and CEO (wpate@atlanta.net) Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau

Joseph Marinelli, President (jmarinelli@visitsavannah.com) Visit Savannah

Jay Markwalter, Executive Director (Jay@GACVB.com) Georgia Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus

Dear Mr. Pate, Mr. Marinelli, and Mr. Markwalter:

The leaders of the undersigned learned societies and associations wish to register our alarm and disappointment about the passage of SB 202. Our organizations are planning to hold, have recently held, or will be considering holding conventions in Atlanta, Savannah, and other cities in Georgia. These conventions bring thousands of attendees to the state, along with millions of dollars in local revenue. However, the grave concerns we share about this legislation force us to reconsider whether we can in good conscience bring our meetings to your state.

The many scholars and teachers who participate in our professional conferences include experts who have made a life’s work of the study of democracies, elections, and social justice. Moreover, all of us are personal stakeholders in the American democratic process, and thus are affected by this legislation. One thing all of us have learned from the ongoing movement... Read more

Statement in Support of Faculty Members at William & Mary

Dear Provost Agouris, Dean Donoghue Velleca, Vice Provost Stock, Dean Longo, Dean Donohue, Dean Zeman, Dean Torczon, 

We were appalled to learn that Dean Maria Donoghue Veneca has informed at least twelve non-tenured faculty members from the Government, Modern Languages, Theatre, and other departments that the school is unwilling to commit to offering a contract for the next academic year. These departments, and the subjects they teach, are a core part of a strong liberal arts education; their faculty are key to the strong reputation William & Mary enjoys as an institution of excellence in undergraduate teaching. 

We stand in solidarity with the many members of the William & Mary student body, faculty, staff, alumni, and others who have called on the administration to issue contracts for these valued members of the William & Mary faculty. Delaying contracts increases the already serious employment and life insecurity for these workers, prohibits them from preparing adequately for their future employment, and harms instruction at the college by either eliminating courses or restricting the ability to prepare for courses. Moreover, these departments employ faculty who rely on visas to continue their work - and these visas are endangered... Read more

The GSA Spring Newsletter is here!

Dear colleagues, 

Please click to read or download our *Spring 2021 newsletter.* It includes information about the 2021 conference, elections, and other important news. We hope you enjoy the new format!

Sincerely,

David Imhoof        Margaret Menninger

GSA Secretary       GSA Executive Director Read more

Standing in Solidarity with the Faculty and Staff of the University of Kansas



This letter was recently sent to the Chancellor of the University of Kansas, and was written by the new joint Vision & Advocacy Working Group, composed of appointed representatives from the AATG, BGHRA, CAUTG, Coalition of WiG, DDGC, and the GSA, combined.

Dear Chancellor Girod, 

In solidarity with the faculty and staff at the University of Kansas, we urge you to decline to follow the new KBOR policy on suspension, termination, and dismissal, which would violate core academic principles of shared governance and academic freedom. We support KU faculty and staff in their demand to “recommit in word and action to existing KU policies pertaining to shared governance, especially in matters of tenure, dismissal and financial transparency, as well as the long-established national standards that are their basis.” The erosion of the principles of academic freedom and faculty governance would be a tremendous blow to the reputation and future of KU. We join allied organizations and the American Council of Learned Societies – of which KU is an Associate Member – in their call to respect and uphold the principles of academic freedom and tenure first articulated by the American Association of University Professors... Read more

Conference update: deadline extended + member survey

Feb. 9, 2021

Dear Members and Friends of the GSA,

I hope all of you are settling in to the new year. We have heard from many of you with questions about this year’s conference. And we hear your concerns about the safety, logistics, and equity issues involved in meeting in Indianapolis as planned. Although the situation remains fluid and it remains too soon to make final decisions, we want to share the information below, and ask for your help as we consider our options. 

Submission Deadline: Extended

Based on your feedback, we’ve decided to extend the submission deadline for panels, papers, and roundtables to March 1. We hope that the extra two weeks will encourage you to take part in our annual conference and give those of you interested in submitting abstracts adequate time to do so.

Conference Planning: Survey

In order to help us to plan for this fall, we need to know more concretely how all of you as of right now envision your participation in the conference. The options open to us in terms of format vary widely in complexity and cost both to the wider membership and... Read more

Ann: Barclay Book Prize

Dear colleagues, 

The GSA is pleased to announce the establishment of the David Barclay Book Prize and welcomes nominations. 

The David Barclay Book Prize was inaugurated in 2020 to mark the occasion of Dr. David E. Barclay’s retirement from the German Studies Association’s Executive Directorship, a position he held for fifteen years. This annual prize recognizes both Dr. Barclay’s service to the Association and his scholarship as Professor Emeritus of History at Kalamazoo College. The award will be given to the best monograph (in English or German and published in 2019 or 2020) on the social, cultural, economic, political, or labor history of nineteenth-century and twentieth-century Germany or central Europe. Translations, edited collections, anthologies, memoirs, and books that have been previously published are ineligible for consideration for the Barclay Book Prize. Applicants may be non-US citizens as well as non-US residents. Applicants may apply for both the Barclay Book Prize and another GSA book prize in any given year, although no submission may ultimately receive more than one award.  

Nominations (as PDFs, or links to e-copies) and inquiries should be sent to the committee chair by 20 March, 2021. Note: Because of the pandemic, we request that books be sent to the committee chair as a PDF or a URL (e-book, shared... Read more

CfP Berlin Program Summer Workshop

CfP: Ninth Berlin Program Summer Workshop: June 30–July 2, 2021 ( Apply by March 17)                                                                                                                                                       



 

We are, maybe we have always been, “alone together.” And while the challenges of being “alone” and “together” have existed historically in various, often complex ways, the current moment of cultural extremism, of Brexit, of American unilateralism, and of a global pandemic, have given the challenge a new urgency. 

In her last New Year’s address to the nation on December 31, 2020, Chancellor Angela Merkel touched on the need to be “together” and “alone” simultaneously while urging the German public to cooperate with pandemic measures: “To me, this is an expression of what makes it possible to... Read more

Extension 30 Jan, seminar application deadline

Dear Colleagues,

We will be extending the deadline for seminar enrollments to 11:59 PST on Saturday, January 30, 2021. Given all the COVID uncertainty and general state of universal exhaustion amidst the beginning of a new term, we hope that this extension will allow all members interested in seminars to submit an application.

Please see:

The Seminar Committee will make every effort to notify applicants of acceptance status by 11:59 PST on February 5. You may email our Operations Director Dr. Benita Blessing if you need any help in the application process (operations@thegsa.org)

With thanks for your continued support of GSA,

GSA Seminar Committee

Elizabeth Drummond | Loyola Marymount University | elizabeth.drummond@lmu.edu (chair)

Richard Langston | University of North Carolina |  relangst@email.unc.edu

 ... Read more

ANN: Dissertations in German Studies

List, Dissertations in German Studies

(x-posted from H-Net)

Dear colleagues, 



The German Studies Association (https://www.thegsa.org) will post information in its spring newsletter about dissertations completed in any area of German (i.e., Austrian, German, Swiss, German diasporic) Studies (any discipline or interdisciplinary). If you received your Ph.D. in 2019, 2020, or 2021, you may be listed in our newsletter. If you have supervised a dissertation that was completed in 2019, 2020, or 2021 that has not already been listed, please encourage the author to submit a description following the guidelines below. 

Send an email to the GSA President, Dr. Janet Ward (president@thegsa.org) by 30 April, 2021. Please type “GSA dissertation list” in the subject line. Be sure to include, in this order: 

1. Name (last, first) 

2. Title of dissertation 

3. Institution and department in which it was defended 

4. Name of dissertation director(s)

5. Month and year of defense (or degree if no defense) 

6. Abstract of the dissertation of 200 or fewer words in either English or German. (150 words is desired length, 200 words an absolute... Read more

Annual Conference Submissions Now Open

GERMAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE

 

The German Studies Association (GSA) will hold its 45th Annual Conference from 30 September to 3 October 2021. We anticipate meeting in person at the Marriott Indianapolis Downtown in Indianapolis, Indiana. This is a rather long email, but it contains all important links and information about the forthcoming conference.

We look forward to the presentations postponed from 2020 and, in addition, the Program Committee cordially invites new proposals on any aspect of German, Austrian, or Swiss studies, including (but not limited to) history, Germanistik, film and media studies, art history, political science, anthropology, pedagogy scholarship, musicology, economic studies, religious studies, sociology, and cultural studies.

Proposals for entire sessions, for interdisciplinary presentations, and for series of panels are strongly encouraged (though we discourage linked series of more than four panels). Individual paper proposals are also welcome.

The portal for submissions can be accessed *here.*

Important Tip for This Year

General Tips:

Submission Instructions, New and Returning (Postponed) Sessions 2021

Members can submit applications through our conference submissions portal *here* when it opens on January 5th 2021. 

Instructional videos

Due to the pandemic, a number of sessions and individual papers accepted for the 2020 conference later postponed their presentations until 2021 (they are now "returning" sessions). There are separate submissions tracks for "new" and "returning" submissions.

  • If you are submitting a new panel, roundtable, or individual paper for 2021, you will use the "new" track.
  • If you or your session postponed in 2020 in order to present in 2021, you will use the "returning" track. You do not need to resubmit abstracts for anything that was previously accepted, but you will be asked to provide the following information for the Program Committee to review:
    • Names of sessions members and titles of session and/or papers
    • Whether the submission has no changes at all from 2020, or
    • Whether the submission has minor changes, and to note them (changes in commentator/moderator, minor title edits, etc.)
    • Whether the submission has significant changes (not all participants will return, requests for a replacement presenter/paper) and a description of those changes (including titles and abstracts for significant changes or additions)

If... Read more

GSA Seminars 2021

GSA SEMINARS 2021

The 45th German Studies Association Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, from September 30 to October 4, 2021 will again host a series of seminars in addition to conference sessions and roundtables (for general conference information see *https://www.thegsa.org/conference*).

Note: Applications for seminar participation are due by 11:59 pm PST on Saturday, January 30, 2021 (extended deadline).

Log in to the portal *here* and then click "Seminar Participant Application 2021 (new applications only)" to apply for a seminar."

Seminars meet for all three days of the conference during the first or second morning slot to foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual exchange, and intensified networking. They are led by two to four conveners and consist of 10 to 20 participants, at least some of whom should be graduate students. In order to reach the goal of extended discussion, seminar organizers and participants are required to participate in all three installments of the seminar.

This year, the conference will include 13 seminars postponed from the 2020 conference, with many accepting new applications for participants (postponed seminars include information about the number of spots available for new applications; see below), and 15 seminars selected and approved... Read more

GSA Winter Newsletter

Dear Members and Friends of the GSA,

The winter newsletter is now available. You can find it here: Winter Newsletter 2020

It contains updated reports from the President and Executive Director, information on the 45th annual conference of the GSA in October 2021, reports on prize winners for 2020, information on the 2021 prize competitions, a variety of additional reports, and an In memoriam section.

I hope that all of you have a safe and healthy holiday season, and that 2021 will be a better year for all of us!

Best regards,

David E. Barclay

Executive Director Read more

Executive Council sends letter to Dean Falls of UVM

December 10, 2020



Dr. William Falls, Dean

College of Arts and Sciences

University of Vermont

Burlington, VT 05405



Dear Dean Falls,



The Executive Council of the German Studies Association urges the University of Vermont at Burlington to reconsider its recent proposal to close a dozen of the university’s 56 undergraduate majors, including German, along with 11 minors and 4 MA programs. Since the University of Vermont states in its strategic plan that it “benefits from the powerful combination of a liberal arts core and the comprehensive academic resources of a major research institution,” it makes no sense that that same institution would then wish to cut over 17% of the majors in this core. The impacted programs clearly need to be part of the conversation on how to move forward.



If the University of Vermont is like so many nationwide, faculty in the affected disciplines perform valuable teaching not only in their own degree programs but also in the areas of general education, basic languages, writing and composition, and in prerequisite courses for other degree streams, all while their research costs are relatively low. They often provide personalized, humanistically grounded teaching, mentoring, and advising, which has... Read more

CfP: GSA 45th Annual Conference

The German Studies Association (GSA) will hold its 45th Annual Conference from 30 September to 3 October 2021 at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The Program Committee cordially invites proposals on any aspect of German, Austrian, or Swiss studies, including (but not limited to) history, Germanistik, film and media studies, art history, political science, anthropology, pedagogy scholarship, musicology, economic studies, religious studies, sociology, and cultural studies.  

Proposals for entire sessions, for interdisciplinary presentations, and for series of panels are strongly encouraged (although we discourage thematic series of more than four panels). Individual paper proposals are also welcome. The call for seminar proposals has been distributed separately.  

Please see the GSA website (www.thegsa.org) for information about the submission process for ‘traditional’ papers, sessions, and roundtables, which will open on 4 January 2021. The deadline for proposals is 15 February 2021. 

Separate submission tracks have been set up for returning proposals that were postponed from 2020 and new proposals. There is more information about this on the GSA website, and instructions will also be available on the submission interface when it opens.

Please note that all proposed presenters... Read more

GSA Giving Tuesday 2020

Dear members and friends of the GSA,

Tuesday, 1 December, is being observed throughout the United States as Giving Tuesday. Even as we have had to reinvent ourselves from the ground up this year, we’ve heard from many members how important the German Studies Association remains to you as a space for sharing work, for scholarly community and advocacy, and for thinking together about the future of the field. 

This is the work to which the GSA remains committed, and we could not do it without your help. If you are able this year, please consider donating on Giving Tuesday to support our efforts to foster and maintain an open, inclusive, and accessible community of scholarship. Our *donations page* lists the most important funds and initiatives; in this time of need, we would draw your attention in particular to the recently launched GSA Community Fund, which helps defray costs of conference participation for graduate students and precariously employed faculty.

On behalf of the GSA, we are deeply grateful for your support and wish you a peaceful and healthy holiday season.

Sincerely,

David E. Barclay Outgoing... Read more

CfP: GSA 45th Annual Conference

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: GERMAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION ANNUAL CONFERENCE 

The German Studies Association (GSA) will hold its 45th Annual Conference from 30 September to 3 October 2021 at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The Program Committee cordially invites proposals on any aspect of German, Austrian, or Swiss studies, including (but not limited to) history, Germanistik, film and media studies, art history, political science, anthropology, pedagogy scholarship, musicology, economic studies, religious studies, sociology, and cultural studies.  

Proposals for entire sessions, for interdisciplinary presentations, and for series of panels are strongly encouraged (although we discourage thematic series of more than four panels). Individual paper proposals are also welcome. The call for seminar proposals has been distributed separately.  

Please see the GSA website (www.thegsa.org) for information about the submission process for ‘traditional’ papers, sessions, and roundtables, which will open on 4 January 2021. The deadline for proposals is 15 February 2021. 

Separate submission tracks have been set up for returning proposals that were postponed from 2020 and new proposals. There is more information about this on the GSA website, and instructions will also be available on the submission interface when it opens.

Please note that all proposed presenters must be members... Read more

CfA: GSA Emerging Scholars Workshop (ESW) 2021

Nov. 13, 2020 

Call for Applicants

GSA Emerging Scholars Workshop (ESW)

Note: the deadline for the second session only (“Critical European Studies in Practice and Theory,” facilitated by Prof. Randall Halle) has been extended to midnight January 4. 

We are excited to issue this call for the Emerging Scholars Workshop (ESW) to be hosted for the second time at the 45th German Studies Association Conference in Indianapolis, from September 30-October 3, 2021. This workshop is exclusively for graduate students. 

The Emerging Scholars Workshop (ESW) will run parallel to the established seminars and in addition to regular conference sessions and roundtables (for general conference information see https://www.thegsa.org/conference).

Over the past ten years, graduate programs across the country have contracted. Fewer graduate students now encounter fewer regular graduate courses that have often also become more general in content in order to produce satisfactory enrollment. As a result, much of the specialized but crucial field training has moved into one-on-one tutorials and directed readings. The new Emerging Scholars Workshop seeks to give the up-and-coming cohort of scholars access to the leading faculty in their field, increase the advice and mentoring they receive, and allow them to come together for sustained professional conversations. The goal... Read more

CfA: Berlin Program Fellowships, due Dec. 1

The Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies is soliciting applications for our fellowship competition 2021/22. We are now accepting applications. Please spread the word about this great opportunity. 

The Berlin Program offers up to one year of dissertation or postdoctoral research support at the Freie Universität Berlin, one of Germany’s leading research universities. It is open to scholars in all social science and humanities disciplines, including historians working on German and European history since the mid-18th century.

The program accepts applications from nationals, permanent and long-term residents from the U.S. and Canada. Applicants for a dissertation fellowship must be full-time graduate students enrolled at a North American university who have achieved ABD status by the time the proposed research stay in Berlin begins. Also eligible are U.S. and Canadian Ph.D.s who have received their doctorates within the past two calendar years from a North American university.

Located in one of the densest and most innovative academic regions in Europe, a Berlin Program Fellowship offers extraordinary research opportunities. Each semester, our colloquium serves as the central meeting point to share, discuss and support... Read more

GSA Annual General Meeting, 20 November

... Read more

Dear Members and Friends of GSA,

As we announced during our virtual conference, we decided to decouple our annual general meeting from the busy days of the conference itself. Now that we have all had a chance to regroup, we hope you will be able to join us next week Friday, 20 November 20, from 12 noon to 1:30 pm Eastern Standard Time (North America).

We look forward to debriefing you about the conference and to sharing news from the Executive Board, which meets later this week. The general meeting will be conducted as a Zoom webinar. Executive officers and members of the Board will be on hand to report on this year’s activities, as required by our bylaws. As we did last year, we will reserve time for an open session that we’ll conduct as a town hall. This will provide members the opportunity to ask questions and raise issues they would like the Board and Executive Council to

CfA: GSA Seminar Applications 2021

GERMAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION: CALL FOR SEMINAR PROPOSALS

 

The 45th German Studies Association Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, from September 30 to October 4, 2021 will continue to host a series of seminars in addition to conference sessions and roundtables (for general conference information see *https://www.thegsa.org/conference*). With 13 seminars postponed from the 2020 conference (click *here* for those seminar topics), we will have space for approximately 15 new seminars, for a total of about 28 seminars in Indianapolis.

 

Seminars meet for all three days of the conference. They explore new avenues of academic exchange and foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual debate, and intensified networking. Seminars are typically proposed and led by two to three conveners (in special cases, there may be four conveners) and must consist of a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 20 participants, including the conveners themselves. Conveners are expected to make every effort to aim for broad diversity and include scholars from different disciplines and at different career stages, including graduate students. Seminars may enable extended discussion of a recent academic publication; the exploration of a promising new research topic; engagement with pre-circulated papers; an opportunity to debate the work of scholars with... Read more

Book Launch: Beatrice de Graaf, Fighting Terror after Napoleon How Europe Became Secure after 1815 (Cambridge UP)

Start Time: 10/2/2020 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))

Book launch, special event at the GSA Virtual Conference 2020

2 October 2020, 11am EST

Please join us to celebrate the publication of Beatrice de Graaf's book, Fighting Fighting Terror after Napoleon: How Europe Became Secure after 1815, hot off the presses from Cambridge University Press. The author will provide an over view of her work and be available for a Q&A. Bring a beverage and snack for this first-ever GSA Virtual Book Launch! 

Information: After twenty-six years of unprecedented revolutionary upheavals and endless fighting, the victorious powers craved stability after Napoleon's defeat in 1815. With the threat of war and revolutionary terror still looming large, the coalition launched an unprecedented experiment to re-establish European security. With over one million troops remaining in France, they established the Allied Council to mitigate the threat of war and terror and to design and consolidate a system of deterrence. The Council transformed the norm of interstate relations into the first, modern system of collective security in Europe. Drawing on the records of the Council and the correspondence of key figures such as Metternich, Castlereagh, Wellington and Alexander I, Beatrice de Graaf tells the story... Read more

GSA Conference Survey and Election Results

Please note: the survey will close July 3, 2020, 5pm EDT. 

Dear GSA Members,

As promised in our Spring Newsletter, we write to you today in the wake of a special GSA Executive Board meeting: on June 15th, Board members convened on Zoom to discuss various options for our conference in the fall, originally scheduled for October 1-4 in Washington, DC. We realize that many of you are anxious to hear whether, and in what form, that conference will take place. While we are still in discussions with the hotel and with providers of online conferences, we can assure you that we have every intention of holding our conference, even if the exact format is yet to be finalized. For this purpose, we are also seeking your input by way of this brief six-question survey, which we would ask you to complete by the end of June. In return, we plan to provide you with further details of our fall conference planning by the middle of July.

Please contact Dr. Benita Blessing (operations@thegsa.org) if you have any questions about the survey. The survey will also be sent to members' email addresses and made available through social media.... Read more

DEI Committee Statement

June 3, 2020

To: GSA Membership

From:  The newly established Committee for the Initiative on Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI)

This initiative was established by the Executive Board of the GSA in spring 2020. We the undersigned, as its first members, have been meeting to chart a future course for the GSA to assure that it transforms itself into a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive professional organization. Utilizing the diversity of our own scholarly research and teaching and experiences within the profession and the society at large, our first priority has been to open up communication about how differently the organization and its activities are experienced by its members, especially those who come from historically and currently underrepresented and socioeconomically underprivileged backgrounds within German Studies.

The current national situation in the United States illustrates why we each need to commit to understanding societal hierarchies and racial differences around police brutality, the very real dangers of being Black or Brown in America, and the systemic racism that infuses our country.

Genocide, slavery, racism, antisemitism, xenophobia, and many other forms of discriminatory practices saturate the history of the country in which our organization is based.

It is well documented by now that... Read more

GSA - Opportunities to Become Involved

SUBJECT: GSA - Opportunities to Become Involved

FROM: Johannes von Moltke

February 24, 2020

Dear friends and colleagues, members of the GSA,

I write with an invitation to become involved in one of the many roles and committees that make the German Studies Association run. 

Having reached out to many of you in the past with requests to serve on particular committees, I have been humbled by the investment that members show in the GSA and by their readiness to serve. Now we are looking to broaden the base for anyone interested in volunteering by asking you to identify a fellow member or yourself for consideration by the nominating committee. 

You may express your interest in one or more positions and/or nominate another member by navigating to this short form, where we have listed opportunities for involvement.

In particular, I would like to draw your attention to the newly formed committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. This committee, which will be chaired by former President Irene Kacandes and include at least one Board Member and one member at large, will be charged with two primary tasks: to advise the board on ways of making the GSA as diverse, equitable,... Read more

DAAD/GSA Book Prizes, Germanistik/Cultural Studies and History/Social Sciences

It gives us a great deal of pleasure to announce the competition for the TWO 2020 DAAD BOOK PRIZES OF THE GERMAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION.



These extremely prestigious prizes are  funded through the North American office of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and carry an award of $1,000 each.



In 2020 the DAAD/GSA Book Prize for the Best Book in Germanistik or Cultural Studies will be awarded to the best book in those fields published in 2019. Inquiries, nominations, and submissions should be sent to the committee chair, Professor B. Venkat Mani (University of Wisconsin—Madison, bvmani@wisc.edu), by 20 February 2020. The other members of the committee are Professors Claudia Breger (Columbia University) and Paul Fleming (Cornell University). Their addresses are shown below.



In 2020 the DAAD/GSA Book Prize for the Best Book in History or Social Sciences will be awarded to the best book in those fields published in 2019. Inquiries, nominations, and submissions should be sent to the committee chair, Professor James Brophy (University of Delaware, jbrophy@undel.edu), by 20 February 2020. The other members of the committee are Professors Ofer Ashkenazi (Hebrew University) and Belinda Davis (Rutgers University). Their... Read more

Giving Tuesday

Dear Members and Friends of the GSA,

As many of you know, Black Friday and Cyber Monday are now followed by Giving Tuesday, when all of us are urged to contribute to institutions, causes, and charities that we consider important. 

Could we at the German Studies Association ask you to consider a special donation on Giving Tuesday or later in the month of December?

As costs go up and programs expand, we need your generous support in order to continue:

  • providing a dynamic intellectual home and scholarly community to all of our members across the globe--through the conference, publications, seminars, networks, the work of the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, and other activities;
  • offering our early career members a supportive start in the profession;
  • being an increasingly important voice in advocating for German Studies, the humanities, international studies, and transatlantic collaborations in effective ways;
  • maintaining and extending a wide range of partnerships and collaborations with organizations and agencies in North America and abroad that share and support our mission, our activities, and our concerns.

Given rising costs and rising expenses, we can’t be as effective as we need to be in supporting and expanding these... Read more

CfA: GSA Emerging Scholars Workshop (ESW)

Call for Applicants

GSA Emerging Scholars Workshop (ESW)

We are excited to introduce a new conference format exclusively for graduate students, to be hosted for the first time at the 44th German Studies Association Conference in Washington, D.C., from October 1-4, 2020.

The Emerging Scholars Workshop (ESW) will run parallel to the established seminars and in addition to regular conference sessions and roundtables (for general conference information see https://www.thegsa.org/conference).

Over the past ten years, graduate programs across the country have contracted. Fewer graduate students now encounter fewer regular graduate courses that have often also become more general in content in order to produce satisfactory enrollment. As a result, much of the specialized but crucial field training has moved into one-on-one tutorials and directed readings. The new Emerging Scholars Workshop seeks to give the up-and-coming cohort of Germanists and historians access to the leading scholars in their field, increase the advice and mentoring they receive, and allow them to come together for sustained professional conversations. The goal is to enable the next generation of Germanists and Historians to produce their best possible work, be competitive across fields, and contribute to the vitality, relevance, and productivity... Read more

Berlin Program Fellowship Due Dec. 1

 

The Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies offers up to one year of dissertation or postdoctoral research support at the Freie Universität Berlin, one of Germany’s leading research universities. It is open to scholars in all social science and humanities disciplines, including historians working on German and European history since the mid-18th century.

The program accepts applications from U.S. and Canadian nationals, permanent and long-term residents. Applicants for a dissertation fellowship must be full-time graduate students enrolled at a North American university who have achieved ABD status by the time the proposed research stay in Berlin begins. Also eligible are U.S. and Canadian Ph.D.s who have received their doctorates within the past two calendar years from a North American university.

Located in one of the densest and most innovative academic regions in Europe, a Berlin Program Fellowship offers extraordinary research opportunities. Each semester, our colloquium serves as the central meeting point to share, discuss and support each other’s work.

The Berlin Program is administered in close cooperation with our North American partner and co-sponsor, the German Studies Association (GSA), the largest organization of scholars, professionals, and students who focus on the study of German-speaking Europe from all... Read more

GSA Statement on Nobel Prize for Literature

The following statement on Peter Handke and the Nobel Prize for Literature was approved by the GSA Executive Council on 16 October 2019.

In the days since Peter Handke was awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature, much has been written about the decision to reward an author who supported and defended Slobodan Milošević and who denied the genocidal acts of which the Serbian leader and his regime were found guilty.

Handke’s support for Milošević is a matter of historic record. So is the slaughter of thousands of Muslims at Srebrenica, which did not prevent the author from seeking the company of Radovan Karadžić, a convicted war criminal and the main perpetrator of this genocidal act. In view of these facts, the controversy over the Nobel Prize, such as it is, revolves around the question whether it is possible to separate literature and literary value from history and politics. The Swedish Academy certainly appears to think so, rewarding Handke for his “linguistic ingenuity” while remaining silent on his politics. According to its permanent secretary Mats Malm, “it is not in the Academy’s mandate to balance literary quality against political considerations.”

We disagree with the premise of such statements... Read more

GSA Announces New Dues Structure Beginning 1 November 2019

At its meeting on 3 October 2019, the GSA Board approved a revision and updating of the organization’s dues structure beginning on 1 November 2019. This vote followed a detailed discussion of two years. The old dues structure had been in place and unchanged for many years. The following will be the new annual dues structure:

Income below $50,000

$     40.00

Income between $50,001 and $70,000

$   110.00

Income between $70,001 and $90,000

$   130.00

Income between $90,001 and $110,000

$   155.00

Income between $110,001 and $150,000

$   170.00

Income greater than $150,000

$   185.00

Life member (one-time payment)

$ 1000.00

Institutional member

$   500.00

 

Please note that those members who have signed up for recurring payments in the past will need to return to paying their dues on a non-recurring basis until the new system is... Read more

Dr. Margaret Menninger Named New ED of GSA Beginning 2021

At its meeting on 3 October 2019, the GSA Board unanimously approved the appointment of Dr. Margaret Eleanor Menninger, Associate Professor of History at Texas State University, as the GSA’s third Executive Director. She will assume that office on 1 January 2021; the current Executive Director, Prof. David E. Barclay, will remain in that function until the end of 2020. 

Professor Menninger has served as NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities at Texas State, where she has taught in the Department of History since 2001. She received her A.B., M.A., and PhD degrees at Harvard University, where she studied with David Blackbourn. She is an accomplished chamber musician and is currently completing a manuscript on  A Serious Matter and True Joy: Philanthropy, the Arts, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Leipzig. Among other things, she has published on the idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk. 

She brings a wealth of experience in the GSA to her new duties. She has served with distinction as Program Director and as chair of the Seminar Committee, and she is currently the GSA Secretary. We are confident that the GSA will thrive under Margaret Menninger’s leadership.  Read more

Dr. Benita Blessing Named New GSA Operations Director

The GSA is pleased to announce that Dr. Benita Blessing has agreed to serve as its second Operations Director, succeeding Elizabeth Fulton, who was honored at the Portland conferences for her immense contributions to the GSA over the past 11 years.  Dr. Blessing teaches in the World Languages and Cultures program at Oregon State University.  She has taught at a number of other institutions, including the University of Vienna.  Dr. Blessing received a BA at Trinity University, an MA at the Monterey Institute of International Affairs, and a PhD in history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.  She has numerous publications and an impressive record of scholarship, especially in the history of education.  Please welcome Dr. Blessing as the new GSA Operations Director! Read more

Moderators and Commentators Wanted!

Every year, the Program Committee looks for volunteers who are willing to step in as moderators and commentators for incomplete panels. This year, we have a form to fill out on the submission site!

Please click here: Moderator and Commentator Application (xcdsystem.com/gsa)

You'll need to be a 2019 member to apply.

There are two important rules to remember:

  1. You can only have two roles in the conference. This includes moderating, commenting, and any kind of presentation. If you've already applied for two roles in the conference, please don't fill out this application.
  2. Graduate students can't be commentators. This applies to people who will be students at the time of the conference. If you're a student now but you'll have your degree in October, you're welcome to comment!

The official form will be available until 1 May 2019 at midnight Eastern Standard Time, though we hope you'll apply as soon as possible -- the sooner you apply, the more chance you'll have of being included. If you aren't selected as part of the program initially, however, we may still ask you to substitute for a late withdrawal.

Thanks so much for your help, and we'll see you in October! Read more

Berlin Program Summer Workshop - Deadline April 1

 

DISORIENTATIONS/DESORIENTIERUNGEN

 

Once again, Europe and Germany are dealing with extraordinary political, economic, cultural, and administrative crises. Britain is leaving Europe. Other countries are also considering their own exit. There is potentially another global financial crisis on the horizon. Nationalism is on the rise throughout the region. The largest minority party in Germany’s parliament is now the neo-nationalist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). The #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements have galvanized attention around sexual assault and racial violence.

And if these issues are not disorienting enough, there are the overarching challenges of global warming and immigration, and the European project itself is seriously at risk of disintegration. This list, by no means comprehensive, identifies some of the most important issues facing Germany and Europe politically, culturally or economically in the present moment.

Yet periods of cultural, social, political, and personal confusion often lead to opportunities for substantive reflection and even radical interventions into prevailing assumptions and norms. How do moments of upheaval create spaces for political and cultural engagement? How do disruptions, social anxieties, cultural conflicts, gender troubles, racial reflections, calls of conscience, transformations in technologies, and the indeterminacy of language allow for restructuring, aesthetic evolutions, even transformations in collective sensibilities?... Read more

Conference Submissions Now Open

The GSA is now accepting submissions of panels, papers, and roundtables from January 5 to February 15. Seminar participant applications will be accepted until January 26. You can also volunteer to be a moderator or commentator on an as-needed basis.

The submission site is at https://www.xcdsystem.com/gsa. You will use your thegsa.org username and password. Submitters must be current (2019) members.

For more information on submissions, check the links below. If you have any technical difficulties, or you can't find the answer to your question, you can contact Elizabeth Fulton at helpdesk@thegsa.org. We look forward to your submissions!

Call for Seminar Applications

The 43rd GSA Conference in Portland, Oregon from October 3-6, 2019 will again host a series of seminars in addition to its regular conference sessions and roundtables.

Seminars meet for all three days of the conference during the first or second morning slot to foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual exchange, and intensified networking. They are led by two to four conveners and consist of 10 to 20 participants, at least some of whom should be graduate students. In order to reach the goal of extended discussion, seminar organizers and participants are required to participate in all three installments of the seminar.

The submission site is at https://www.xcdsystem.com/gsa. You will use your thegsa.org username and password. Submitters must be current (2019) members. Please apply to only one seminar at a time. The deadline is January 26, 2019, at midnight Eastern Standard Time. For more information, visit our current conference page.

The following seminars have been selected and approved for enrollment at the 2019 GSA Conference:

01 Asian German Studies

02 Beyond the Racial State: New Perspectives on Race in Nazi Germany

03 Beyond Versailles: From Brest-Litovsk to the End of the World War in East Central Europe (co-sponsored by the... Read more

Call for Papers: German History Society Annual Conference

King’s College London, Tuesday 3 September- Thursday 5 September 2019

The German History Society in the UK and Ireland, which publishes the journal German History, is inviting proposals for its twelfth Annual Conference. The 2019 conference will be hosted by King’s College London. The keynote speakers will be Felicitas Schmieder (Hagen), Rebekka von Mallinckrodt (Bremen) and Johannes Paulmann (Mainz).

The Society invites historians of Germany from all parts of the world to submit panel proposals on their research topics in German history broadly conceived, including the history of German-speaking people within and beyond Europe, from the medieval period to the present day. Panels will last for 90 minutes and should have three speakers and a chair. Each paper should be no longer than 20 minutes.

Proposals for round table format panels, and for panels that address specific methodological problems, problems of source criticism, or problems of public history and education in the field of German history, are also welcome. These, too, should involve three speakers and a chair, and should last 90 minutes, with each paper 20 minutes in duration.

Proposals for individual papers will also be accepted, with the proviso that the conference organisers will seek to group individual papers into groups of three for the purposes... Read more

Call for 2019 Proposals

The GSA will hold its 43rd Annual Conference from 3 to 6 October 2019 at the Hilton Portland Downtown in Portland, Oregon (USA).

The Program Committee cordially invites proposals on any aspect of German, Austrian, or Swiss studies, including (but not limited to) history, Germanistik, film, art history, political science, anthropology, musicology, religious studies, sociology, and cultural studies.

Proposals for entire sessions, for interdisciplinary presentations, and for series of panels are strongly encouraged (though we discourage thematic series of more than four panels). Individual paper proposals are also welcome. The call for seminar proposals has been distributed separately.

Please see the conference page for information about the submission process for "traditional" papers, sessions, and roundtables, which will open on 5 January 2019. The deadline for proposals is 15 February 2019.

Please note that all proposed presenters must be members of the German Studies Association. Information on membership is available here.

In order to avoid complications later, the Program Committee would like to reiterate two extremely important guidelines here:

1.  No individual at the GSA conference may give more than one paper or appear on the program in more than two separate roles. Participating in a seminar counts as delivering a paper.

2.  If... Read more

GSA Statement on Pittsburgh Shootings

The German Studies Association is horrified and saddened beyond words by the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue, and expresses its deepest sympathy to all those affected by this atrocity.  Our annual conference took place in Pittsburgh just a few weeks ago, and we feel a special attachment to that city. As scholars of German Studies and as human beings, we have a special obligation, given the history of the German-speaking world, to resist all forms of antisemitism. Read more

Call for Seminar Proposals, 2019

The 43rd German Studies Association Conference in Portland, OR from October 3-6, 2019 will continue to host a series of seminars in addition to conference sessions and roundtables.

Seminars meet for all three days of the conference. They explore new avenues of academic exchange and foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual debate, and intensified networking. Seminars are typically proposed and led by two to three conveners and they consist of a total of 10 to 20 participants, including the conveners themselves. (In special cases there may be four conveners.) Conveners are expected to make every effort to aim for broad diversity and include scholars from different disciplines and at different career stages, including graduate students. Seminars may enable extended discussion of a recent academic publication; the exploration of a promising new research topic; engagement with pre-circulated papers; an opportunity to debate the work of scholars with different approaches; the coming together of scholars seeking to develop an anthology; or the in-depth discussion of a political or public policy issue, novel, film, poem, musical piece, painting, or other artwork.

In order to facilitate extended discussion, seminar conveners and participants are required to participate in all three seminar meetings. Please note that both... Read more

PDF of Print Program Now Online

The printed program is now available in PDF form. You can find it here.

Please note that the online program at https://www.xcdsystem.com/gsa/program will be kept updated with all changes before and during the conference. Read more

Call for Applications: Treasurer

The German Studies Association invites applications for a five-year renewable position of Treasurer, beginning in the fall of 2019. As the GSA’s chief financial officer, the Treasurer is responsible for the funds of the Association. Using QuickBooks, s/he maintains the Association’s financial records, pays bills, supervises grant and fundraising monies, and, in consultation with the Executive Director, prepares the Association’s annual budget for the Board’s approval. The Treasurer chairs the Investment Committee and supervises the Association’s Endowment, managed by TIAA-CREF. The Treasurer serves as a full voting member of the Executive Council and as an ex officio, non-voting member of the Board. Each of these meets once a year: the Board in conjunction with the annual conference, the Executive Council in December at a separate meeting. The GSA offers a modest stipend and covers all necessary travel and attendant expenses. 

The Selection Committee (Christina Gerhardt, Sara Hall, and James Brophy) will vet applications upon receipt and submit its short list to the President who, in consultation with the Board, appoints the Treasurer. The Selection Committee asks applicants to send a c.v., a letter of interest, and contact information for one reference to James Brophy (jbrophy@udel.edu), the committee chair. The application... Read more

2018 Election Results Announced

We are delighted to announce the results of the 2018 German Studies Association election.

  • Vice-President: Janet Ward, Department of History, University of Oklahoma
  • Secretary: Margaret Menninger, Department of History, Texas State University
  • Board Member (History): Ben Marschke, Department of History, Humboldt State University
  • Board Member (German Language, Literature, and Culture): Priscilla Layne, Department of German and Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
  • Board Member (Interdisciplinary): Damani Partridge, Departments of Anthropology and Afroamerican and African Studies, University of Michigan
  • Board Member (Graduate Student Representative): Christy Wahl, Department of Art History, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Herzliche Glückwünsche!

We invite all the members of the Association to join us in thanking those of our colleagues who stood for election and volunteered to donate their time and energy to furthering the many goals and projects of the German Studies Association. We are deeply grateful to them. Read more

Privacy Policy Updated

The Johns Hopkins University Press, which publishes German Studies Review and handles membership and conference registration for the GSA, updated its privacy policy on May 7, 2018.  Read more

2018 Conference Registration Now Open

Online conference registration, meal reservations, and hotel reservations for the 42nd annual conference of the GSA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are now open at www.thegsa.org/members/conference.

When you pay your registration fee, you will be able to purchase meals at the same time. After September 1st, all registrants will pay an additional $10 fee. Please be aware of the refund policy on conference registrations.

You must first register for the conference to be eligible for our special group rate of US $169.00 per night at the Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown. Please note that you can only reserve a hotel room at the conference rate with the link you receive by email after registering.

Once you have registered, you will receive a confirmation e-mail from Johns Hopkins University Press with the link to the special hotel reservation page. Do not discard or lose this email. It will serve as your receipt and provide access to hotel reservations at the conference rate.

Conference Registration Rates (before 1 September)

  • Regular, joint, and emeritus members: $110.00
  • Non-members: $180.00
  • Independent scholars (members): $50.00
  • Independent scholars (non-members): $100.00
  • Students (members): $40.00
  • Students (non-members): $90.00
  • Exhibitors: $200.00 / table

After 1 September, prices for all registration categories will increase... Read more

Conference Highlights

Thursday, September 27: Arts Night

Please book your travel so that you can join us for the GSA Arts Night on Thursday evening, September 27! Inspired by “First Night” celebrations on December 31st in many cities, this will be our fourth annual Arts Night, celebrating the creative and performing arts as an important part of German studies.

This year’s Arts Night will feature DJ İpek İpekçioğlu and the Bühne für Menschenrechte. İpek İpekçioğlu is a music producer, DJ, and curator based in Berlin and Istanbul. She has been a crucial voice in the public discourse pertaining to immigration, exile, diversity, and queer issues. Recently, she curated the festival titled DisPlaced RePlaced: Cultural Transition of Istanbul and Berlin; she participated in the cultural youth project for refugees Faces of Change and Chance, and contributed to panels for Rave Diplomacy: Queer Realities and Diversity and Mädea: Interkulturelles Zentrum für Mädchen und junge Frauen. She is also a patron of the Schule ohne Rassismus – Schule mit Courage initiative in Berlin. DJ Ipek has performed her music at the Glastonbury, Fusion, Sziget, At.tension, Berlin Festival and many more international electronic and world music festivals. She has toured Europe, the US, North Africa, and South Asia, and has... Read more

Austrian Cultural Forum New York (ACFNY) Travel Grants 2018

The Austrian Cultural Forum New York (ACFNY) and the GSA are happy to announce that there will be limited funds available to support selected young Austrian Studies scholars participating in the 2018 GSA conference. Read more

2018 Prize Competitions Announced

In 2018 the DAAD/GSA Book Prizes will be awarded for the best book in Germanistik or cultural studies published in 2016 or 2017 and for the best book in history or social sciences published in 2017.

Under the provision of the DAAD grant, eligibility is restricted to authors who are citizens or permanent residents of the United States and Canada. Translations, editions, anthologies, memoirs, and books that have been previously published are not eligible.

Inquiries, nominations, and submissions for the history and social sciences prize should be sent to the History and Social Sciences Committee chair, Professor Anthony Steinhoff (History, Université du Québec à Montréal, steinhoff.anthony@uqam.ca) by 10 March 2018. The other members of the committee are Professors Carina Johnson (Pitzer College) and Michael Meng (Clemson University).

Inquiries, nominations, and submissions for the Germanistik or cultural studies prize should be sent to the Germanistik and Cultural Studies Committee Chair, Professor Mara Wade (German, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, mwade@illinois.edu), by 10 March 2018. The other members of the committee are Professors Vance Byrd (German, Grinnell College) and Marco Abel (English, University of Nebraska, Lincoln).

The DAAD Article Prize will be awarded in 2018 for the best article in any discipline published in the German Studies Review in 2017. The committee members are Professors Yaïr... Read more

Call for 2018 Panels and Papers

The German Studies Association (GSA) will hold its 42nd Annual Conference from 27 to 30 September 2018 at the Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (USA).

The Program Committee cordially invites proposals on any aspect of German, Austrian, or Swiss studies, including (but not limited to) history, Germanistik, film, art history, political science, anthropology, musicology, religious studies, sociology, and cultural studies.

Proposals for entire sessions, for interdisciplinary presentations, and for series of panels are strongly encouraged (though we discourage thematic series of more than four panels). Individual paper proposals are also welcome. The call for seminar proposals has been distributed separately.

Please see the "current conference" page here for information about the submission process for ‘traditional’ papers, sessions, and roundtables, which will open on 5 January 2018. The deadline for proposals is 15 February 2018.

Please note that all proposed presenters must be members of the German Studies Association. Information on membership is available here.

In order to avoid complications later, the Program Committee would like to reiterate two extremely important guidelines here (the full list of guidelines is available here):

1. No individual at the GSA conference may give more than one paper or appear on the program in more than... Read more

Donate to GSA

The GSA Executive Council would also like GSA members to consider contributing beyond the dues payment. As costs go up and programs expand, we need your generous support in order to continue:

  • providing a dynamic intellectual home and scholarly community to all of our members across the globe--through the conference, publications, seminars, networks, the work of the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies, and other activities;
  • offering our early career members a supportive start in the profession;
  • being an increasingly important voice in advocating for German Studies, the humanities, international studies, and transatlantic collaborations in effective ways;
  • maintaining and extending a wide range of partnerships and collaborations with organizations and agencies in North America and abroad that share and support our mission, our activities, and our concerns.

Given rising costs and rising expenses, we can’t be as effective as we need to be in supporting and expanding these services unless we can count on voluntary member contributions. A growing number of GSA members have stepped up and donated this past year. Can we count on you to do so? Every contribution helps! And please note that the GSA is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

You can donate... Read more

GSA Seminars 2018: Call for Participants

The 42nd GSA Conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 27-30 September 2018, will again host a series of seminars in addition to its regular conference sessions and roundtables.

Seminars meet for all three days of the conference during the first morning slot to foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual exchange, and intensified networking. They are led by two to four conveners and will consist of either 12 to 15 or 16 to 20 participants, at least some of whom should be graduate students. In order to reach the goal of extended discussion, seminar organizers and participants are required to participate in all three installments of the seminar.

The following seminars have been selected and approved for enrollment at the 2018 GSA Conference:

  1. Art Film/Film Art in Contemporary Germany
  2. Asian German Studies
  3. Critical European Culture Studies
  4. Digital Humanities and Pedagogy across the Disciplines (sponsored by the Digital Humanities Network)
  5. Documentary Fiction and Terms of Engagement: (Post) Industrial Worlds of Work and Labor
  6. Feeling beyond the Human: Animals, AI, Machines (sponsored by the Emotion Studies Network)
  7. Fragments of the German Body, 1600-2000
  8. From Empire to
  9. ... Read more

Call for 2018 Seminar Proposals

The 42nd GSA Conference in Pittsburgh, PA (September 27-30, 2018) will continue to host a series of seminars in addition to conference sessions and roundtables.

Seminars meet for all three days of the conference. They explore new avenues of academic exchange and foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual debate, and intensified networking. Seminars are typically proposed and led by two to three conveners and they consist of 12 to 20 participants, including scholars from different disciplines and at different career stages. Seminars may enable extended discussion of a recent academic publication; the exploration of a promising new research topic; engagement with pre-circulated papers; an opportunity to debate the work of scholars with different approaches; the coming together of groups of scholars seeking to develop an anthology; or the in-depth discussion of a political or public policy issue, novel, film, poem, artwork, or musical piece.

In order to facilitate extended discussion, seminar conveners and participants should participate in all three seminar meetings. Please note that seminar conveners and seminar applicants who have been accepted for seminar participation will not be allowed to submit a paper in a regular panel session. However, they may take on one additional role in the conference as... Read more

2017 Prize Winners Announced

The German Studies Association is pleased to announce the following prizes, which were awarded at the Forty-First Anniversary Conference in Atlanta on 6 October 2017:

DAAD Book Prize for best book in History and Social Sciences published in 2015 or 2016:

The winner is Professor Greg Eghigian (Pennsylvania State University), The Corrigible and the Incorrigible: Science, Medicine and the Convict in Twentieth Century Germany (Ann Arbor:  University of Michigan Press, 2015).

Here is the prize committee’s laudatio:

Greg Eghigian’s book, The Corrigible and the Incorrigible: Science, Medicine and the Convict in Twentieth Century Germany, traces scientific, medical, and administrative approaches to criminality, policing, incarceration, efforts at rehabilitation, and therapeutic practices across 20th century Germany. Impeccably researched, fluidly written, beautifully crafted, and measured in tone, this study is driven by a desire to probe the “correctional imagination”—namely, an aspirational project, both punitive and rehabilitative, that mobilized notions of “good and bad, normal and pathological, corrigible and incorrigible” to shape the management of criminal behavior and the fate of offenders. Revising Foucault, Eghigian astutely emphasizes the chronic disparity between ambitions and reality: the plans of those with power always fell short. Nonetheless, the sum of such efforts had a lasting impact and produced “influential visions of crime,

... Read more

Anniversary Podcast Series

The Johns Hopkins University Press has developed a special podcast series to celebrate the German Studies Association's 40th anniversary. The links below will take you to the six episodes in this series, which examines the GSA’s founding, the success of the annual meeting and the organization’s future plans.

Listen or download now at the multimedia page. Read more

2016 Prizes Announced

2016 DAAD Book Prize

The DAAD and the GSA are proud to announce that Professor Matt Erlin, Washington University of St. Louis, is the winner of this year's DAAD Book Prize for the best book in literature or cultural studies published during the years 2014 and 2015. His book Necessary Luxuries: Books, Literature, and the Culture of Consumption in Germany, 1770-1815was published by Signale/Cornell University Press in 2014.

Here is the text of the committee's laudatio:

Matt Erlin's Necessary Luxuries: Books, Literature, and the Culture of Consumption in Germany, 1770-1815(Signale/Cornell University Press, 2014) is an engrossing, elegantly written, and carefully argued work. Erlin approaches 'luxury' as a Foucauldian field of discourse, and combines readings from the period's economists, social theorists, and critics to flesh out the contours of the debate surrounding the term. Close readings of important novels show the ways in which they positioned themselves within this discourse as positive, even necessary, luxuries. The book elucidates an important moment in German culture — the end of the Enlightenment and the rise of consumer culture — with implications for other national cultures, as well as for our understanding of subsequent developments in Germany. As the Digital Age calls the significance of literature into

... Read more

Conference Registration Refund Policy Explained

You may cancel your 2017 conference registration before July 1, 2017 for a full refund. Cancellations between July 1 and October 1 will be refunded, but will incur a 50% cancellation fee. No refunds are available for cancellations after October 1, 2017. For more information, contact helpdesk@thegsa.org. Read more

Arts Night 2017

Please book your conference travel so that you can join us for the GSA Arts Night on Thursday evening, October 5, at the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia! Inspired by “First Night” celebrations on December 31st in many cities, this will be our third annual Arts Night, celebrating the creative and performing arts as an important part of German studies.

The Trey Clegg Singers 

Atlanta’s Premiere Multicultural Chorus

(Sponsored by The Halle Foundation)

Hymns and German Chorales from the Lutheran Tradition

Spirituals and Freedom Songs from the Civil Rights Era

6:30 PM – 8:30 PM Capitol North

The Trey Clegg Singers is a non-profit organization with a mission of spreading peace, hope, and love locally, nationally, and internationally through the expression of multicultural choral music, sacred and secular, from a global perspective.

The talented singers represent a broad spectrum of backgrounds in membership hailing from various church and college choirs, other community choruses, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chorus, and the Atlanta Opera Chorus.

http://www.thetreycleggsingers.org

The DEFA Film Library Presents: 

Isabel on the Stairs (Isabel auf der Treppe)

GDR, 1984, dir.... Read more

FREE SHUTTLES AVAILABLE TO EMORY UNIVERSITY, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5th, 2017 From Wittenberg to Atlanta: The Richard C. Kessler Reformation Collection at 30 Years

The GSA is pleased to offer free shuttles to the Pitts Theology Library at Emory University for their exhibition of Reformation imprints and manuscripts. The schedule is as follows:

  Pickup at Sheraton Atlanta Pickup at Pitts Theology Library
  10:00 AM 12:00 PM
  1:00 PM 3:00 PM
  3:00 PM 5:00 PM

In 1987 Richard and Martha Kessler donated their private collection of Reformation imprints and manuscripts to Emory University. These materials were combined with Reformation holdings at the Pitts Theology Library, and an effort was launched to enlarge and sustain a collection that documents the German Reformation with 16th century publications by Martin Luther, his friends and associates as well as his opponents. 30 years later the Richard C. Kessler Reformation Collection holds over 3,800 works--a mark approximated by only two other libraries in North America--including over 1,000 publications by Martin Luther himself, more than any other library in the United States. This exhibit presents some of the most significant pieces of the collection.

We hope you'll take advantage of this special offer!... Read more

Silent Auditor Applications for Seminars

This year’s GSA Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, will again feature a number of three-day seminars. The full list of seminar topics, conveners, and participants can be found in the GSA Conference Program. This year’s conference will allow for a limited number of silent auditors to attend selected seminar streams. Unlike regular seminar participants, silent auditors will be allowed to present papers in other sections of the conference. They will not be listed in the program as auditors. Please note that the specific roles and rules for silent auditors will be defined by the respective seminar conveners.

If you are interested in auditing one of the seminars, please contact and apply to the seminar’s conveners directly. Below you will find a list of seminars available for silent auditors (not all seminars are accepting auditors). Due to space restrictions and other considerations, we must ask seminar conveners not to admit more auditors to their seminars than the number specified.

(Post)Migrant Theater: Now and Then

Conveners: Ela Gezen (egezen@german.umass.edu); Olivia Landry (olandry@pitt.edu): Damani Partridge (djpartri@umich.edu)

Number of Auditors: 5

Affect and Cognition in Holocaust Culture

Conveners: Erin McGlothlin (mcglothlin@wustl.edu); Katja Garloff (garloffk@reed.edu);... Read more

2017 Conference Registration Now Open

Online conference registration, meal reservations, and hotel reservations for the 41st annual conference of the GSA in Atlanta, Georgia, are now open at www.thegsa.org/members/conference.

When you pay your registration fee, you will be able to purchase meals and pay for A/V expenses at the same time. After September 1st, all registrants will pay an additional $10 fee. Please be aware of the refund policy on conference registrations.

You must first register for the conference to be eligible for our special group rate at the Sheraton Atlanta Hotel. Please note that you can only reserve a hotel room at the conference rate by using the online reservation link.

Once you have registered, you will receive a confirmation e-mail from Johns Hopkins University Press with the link to the special hotel reservation page. Do not discard or lose this email. It will serve as your receipt and provide access to hotel reservations at the conference rate.

Conference Registration Rates (before 1 September)

  • Regular, joint, and emeritus members: $110.00
  • Non-members: $180.00
  • Independent scholars (members): $50.00
  • Independent scholars (non-members): $100.00
  • Students (members): $40.00
  • Students (non-members): $90.00
  • Audiovisual expenses: $20.00 / person
  • Exhibitors: $200.00 / table

After 1 September, prices for all registration categories will increase by $10.... Read more

Austrian Cultural Forum New York: Young Scholars GSA Travel Grants 2017

The Austrian Cultural Forum New York (ACFNY) and the German Studies Association (GSA) are happy to announce that there will be limited funds available to support selected young Austrian Studies scholars who will participate in this year's conference of the German Studies Association which will be held in Atlanta from 5 to 8 October 2017.

Applicants must not be older than 35 years and must not have received any travel grant from the ACFNY in the past. Applicants who receive financial support from other governmental Austrian institutions to cover travel and accommodation costs will not be considered.

The funds are intended for Austrian Studies scholars who are either completing an appropriate advanced degree or who have completed that degree within the past three years. Austrian Studies scholars from North America as well as from outside North America are eligible to apply for these funds. Austrian citizenship or residency in Austria is not necessary. Applications from scholars working in contemporary Austrian Studies (since 1945) will be given preferential treatment.

Depending on the number of accepted applications and budgetary circumstances, the travel grant comprises $350 (for scholars from North America) and $550 (for scholars from outside North America) to offset travel costs.... Read more

Panel, Roundtable, and Paper Submissions Open for 2017

Proposals for individual papers, complete sessions, and roundtables for the 41st annual conference of the German Studies Association (5-8 October 2017) may be submitted after Thursday, 5 January. All proposals must be submitted by 15 February 2017. Only online proposals will be accepted.

Submissions may be made through our new conference interface at https://www.xcdsystem.com/gsa. Please note that one must be a 2017 member to submit. Your login credentials for this site are your GSA website username and password. If you are having difficulties with your password or with membership payments, please contact Ursula Gray (UG@press.jhu.edu) at Johns Hopkins University Press. All other questions or issues can be directed to Elizabeth Fulton (helpdesk@thegsa.org).

Further conference information can be found at https://www.thegsa.org/conference/current.html. There you will see a series of links including our call for papers, conference submission guidelines, information about our interdisciplinary Networks, and descriptions of the 2017 seminars.

Please note that, in conjunction with the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the GSA is seeking proposals that deal with not only with the Reformation itself but also with its legacy over the course of five centuries. To paraphrase Christa Wolf, we are asking the 'Was bleibt?' question about the Reformation and... Read more

Statement by the German Studies Association on the Executive Order Concerning Immigration

The German Studies Association expresses its deep concern about and opposition to the Executive Order on the admission and vetting of non-citizens to the United States, signed by President Donald J. Trump on 27 January 2017.

As it is currently being implemented, this Executive Order presents serious challenges to the freedom of academic movement, academic freedom, and intellectual exchange. The impediments for students are significant. The Executive Order as it stands will seriously impact applications to graduate and undergraduate study at American universities and deny universities the benefit of the scholarly skills and contributions of researchers and visiting faculty members, thereby impoverishing our intellectual and academic institutions. The consequences of the Executive Order for American intellectual, economic, financial, educational, and scientific leadership could be catastrophic.

The German Studies Association feels a particular ethical, moral, and intellectual responsibility to speak out on behalf of refugees. Millions of Americans are directly descended from Germans who had to flee their native land for political or religious reasons, beginning in the eighteenth century and continuing until 1945 and thereafter. The contributions of German refugees to this country have been legion, from Carl Schurz to Albert Einstein. Moreover, since its creation in 1949 the Federal... Read more

Seminar Applications Open January 5th, 2017

The 41st GSA Conference in Atlanta, Georgia (October 5 - 8, 2017) will again host a series of seminars in addition to its regular conference sessions and roundtables.

Seminars meet for all three days of the conference during the first morning slot to foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual exchange, and intensified networking. They are led by 2 to 4 conveners and will consist of either 12 to 15 or 16 to 20 participants, at least some of whom should be graduate students. In order to reach the goal of extended discussion, seminar organizers and participants are expected to participate in all three installments of the seminar.

The following seminars have been selected and approved for enrollment at the 2017 GSA Conference:

  1. Affect and Cognition in Holocaust Culture
  2. Ansichtssache: Deutschsprachige Graphic Novels an der Schnittstelle von Visual Culture Studies und Gendertheorien
  3. Asian-German Studies ' New Approaches
  4. Benjamin's Pedagogy
  5. Communism as Faith
  6. Critical 19th-Century Visual Cultural Studies
  7. Digital Humanities: Concept, Collaboration, and Process
  8. Documentary Fiction and the Terms of Engagement
  9. Events and Routines
  10. Feminist Scholar-Activism and the Politics of Affect
  11. German Life Writing
  12. Jews and Politics in the Post-War Germanies
  13. Not Enough Notes: Exploring the Intersections of Music, History, and Cultural
  14. ... Read more

Call for Papers

The German Studies Association (GSA) will hold its 41st Annual Conference in Atlanta, Georgia (USA), 5-8 October 2017.

The Program Committee cordially invites proposals on any aspect of German, Austrian, or Swiss studies, including (but not limited to) history, Germanistik, film, art history, political science, anthropology, musicology, religious studies, sociology, and cultural studies.

Proposals for entire sessions, for interdisciplinary presentations, and for series of panels are strongly encouraged, though we strongly discourage thematic series of more than four panels. Individual paper proposals are also welcome.

The Call for Seminar Proposals was distributed separately. Please check here for details; the deadline for preliminary seminar proposals was November 21, 2016. The deadline for final proposals is December 8, 2016. Applications for participation in seminars will be opened on January 5, 2017.

Please see the GSA website for information about the submission process for "traditional" papers, sessions, and roundtables, which opens on January 5, 2017.

ALL proposals must be submitted online; paper forms are not used. The deadline for proposals is February 15, 2017.

Please note that presenters must be members of the German Studies Association. Information on membership is available here.

In order to avoid complications later, the Program Committee would like to... Read more

2017 Prize Deadlines Set

2017 DAAD Book Prize

In 2017 the DAAD/GSA Book Prize will be awarded for the best book in history or social sciences that has been published in 2015 or 2016. Inquiries, nominations, and submissions should be sent to the committee chair, Professor'Heide Fehrenbach'(History, Northern Illinois University) by'20 February 2017. The other members of the committee are Professors'David Ciarlo'(University of Colorado ' Boulder) and'Daniel Riches'(University of Alabama).

2017 DAAD Article Prize

The'DAAD Article Prize'will be awarded for the best article in Germanistik or culture studies that appeared in the'German Studies Review'in 2015 or 2016. Inquiries, nominations, and submissions should be sent to the committee chair, Professor'Christina Gerhardt'(University of Hawai'i), by'20 February 2017. The other members of the committee are Professors Tobias Boes (University of Notre Dame) and Sonja Klocke (University of Wisconsin ' Madison).

2017 Graduate Student Paper Prize

The prize for the'Best Essay in German Studies by a Graduate Student'will again be awarded in 2017. The'deadline for nominations and submissions is'15 March 2017. Papers should be 6,000-9,000 words in length, in English or German. Non-US students are eligible. Papers should be nominated by a professor and accompanied by a short letter of recommendation. The winner will... Read more

Call for Seminar Proposals

The 41st GSA Conference in Atlanta, Georgia (5-8 October 2017), will continue to host a series of seminars in addition to its regular conference sessions and roundtables.

Seminars meet for all three days of the conference. They explore new avenues of academic exchange and foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual debate, and intensified networking. Seminars are typically proposed and led by two to three convenors and they consist of approximately 12 to 20 participants, including representation from different disciplines, a representative number of graduate students, and faculty of different ranks. For example, seminars may enable extended discussion of a recent academic publication; the exploration of a promising new research topic; engagement with pre-circulated papers; an opportunity to debate the work of scholars with different approaches; the coming together of groups of scholars seeking to develop an anthology; or the in-depth discussion of a political or public-policy issue, novel, film, poem, art work, or musical piece.

Seminar proposers should design topics that will suit the three-day structure of the conference and also submit a list of potential applicants while providing enough room for other GSA members to participate. The purpose of this list is to show that an outreach effort has been... Read more

Conference Program Available

The 2016 GSA Conference program is now available. Read more

Conference Registration and Hotel Reservation Information

Online conference registration, meal reservations, and hotel reservations for the 40th annual conference of the GSA in San Diego, CA are now open. Please go to http://www.thegsa.org/members/conference to register.

When you pay your registration fee, you will be able to purchase meals and pay for A/V expenses at the same time. After September 1st, all registrants will pay an additional $10 fee. Please be aware of the refund policy on conference registrations.

You can only reserve a hotel room at the conference rate of $195.00 by registering for the conference. You will not be able to reserve a room at the conference rate by calling the hotel or by booking with an online agency. You must first register for the conference to be eligible for the rate.

Hotel reservations at the GSA conference rate will be available until 5 September or until rooms at the hotel sell out. Our primary hotels sell out well before the deadline every year. We may be able to arrange additional capacity at an overflow hotel, but we cannot guarantee that this will be the case. Please reserve your room(s) as soon as possible.

Once you have registered for the conference, you will receive a confirmation e-mail from Johns Hopkins University Press with... Read more

40th Annual Conference Information

The Fortieth Annual Conference of the German Studies Association will take place from September 29 to October 2, 2016, at the Town and Country Resort and Convention Center, 500 Hotel Circle N, San Diego, CA 92108. Many of our members will be familiar with the hotel, as this will be our third meeting here. '

SEMINARS

This year we are offering twenty-five seminars on a wide range of issues in German Studies. As was the case last year, the seminars will run concurrently on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday during the 8:00 a.m. time block.

INTERDISCIPLINARY NETWORKS

As in previous years, many sessions and roundtables in 2016 will be sponsored by the GSA Interdisciplinary Networks. The GSA’s Interdisciplinary Committee coordinates the work of all our Networks, each of which in turn is organized by several hard-working coordinators. Networks sponsoring sessions this year are the Black Diaspora Studies Network, the Environmental Studies Network, the German Socialisms Network, the Law and Legal Cultures Network, the Memory Studies Network, the Music and Sound Studies Network, the Visual Culture Network, and the War and Violence Network.

CONFERENCE SPEAKERS AND SPECIAL EVENTS

Once again we have an exceptional group of luncheon and banquet speakers. We hope that as many... Read more

Conference Registration Refund Policy Explained

You may cancel your 2016 conference registration before 1 July 2016 for a full refund. Cancellations between 1 July and 23 September will be refunded, but will incur a $50 cancellation fee. No refunds are available for cancellations after 23 September 2016. For more information, contact helpdesk@thegsa.org. Read more

2016 GSA Election Information

The ballots for this year's election will be sent out in the week of April 25th, 2016. Members will be asked to elect a new vice-president and three positions on the executive board. Members will also be asked to approve changes to the Association's by-laws. Candidate biographies and an explanation of the by-law changes can be found here. Read more

Three-Session "Thread" Limit Waived for 2016

Our recent announcement that "threads" or "strings" of thematically related conference topics would be limited to three sessions per topic has resulted in concern on the part of some of our members.

Accordingly, we've decided to waive that limitation for this year's conference, and revisit the matter at the next meeting of the Executive Board in late September.

The original decision to limit the number of thematically linked sessions was based on the concern that 'mini-conferences' might develop within the larger conference, and discourage the interdisciplinarity that is one of the hallmarks of our association.

Again, we're waiving the three-session limitation for 2016, and will revisit the issue later. Read more

Call for Papers

The German Studies Association (GSA) will hold its Fortieth Annual Conference in San Diego, California, September 29-October 2, 2016.



The Program Committee cordially invites proposals on any aspect of German, Austrian, or Swiss studies, including (but not limited to) history, Germanistik, film, art history, political science, anthropology, musicology, religious studies, sociology, and cultural studies. Proposals for entire sessions and for interdisciplinary presentations are strongly encouraged. Individual paper proposals and offers to serve as session moderators or commentators are also welcome. The Call for Seminar Proposals is being distributed separately. Please see below for details; that deadline is November 23. Applications for participation in seminars will be opened on January 5.



The submission process for papers, sessions, and roundtables opens on January 5, 2016. ALL proposals must be submitted online; paper forms are not used. The deadline for proposals is February 15, 2016.



Please note that presenters must be members of the German Studies Association. Information on membership is available here.



In order to avoid complications later, the Program Committee would like to reiterate two extremely important guidelines here (the full list... Read more

Call for Seminar Proposals

In response to the success of the last two years' seminar programs, the 40th GSA Conference in San Diego, California (September 29-October 2, 2016), will continue to host a series of seminars in addition to its regular conference sessions and roundtables. 



Seminars to meet for all three days of the conference to explore new avenues of academic exchange and foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual debate, and intensified networking. Seminars are typically proposed and led by two to three conveners and they consist of approximately 12 to 20 participants, including representation from different disciplines, a representative number of graduate students and faculty of different ranks. They may, for instance, enable extended discussion of a recent academic publication; the exploration of a promising new research topic; the engagement with pre-circulated papers; the opportunity to debate the work of two scholars with different approaches; the coming together of groups of scholars seeking to develop an anthology; the in-depth discussion of a political or public-policy issue, novel, film, poem, artwork, or musical piece.



Seminar proposers should design topics that will suit the three-day structure of the conference and also submit a list of potential... Read more

President's Letter and Additional Responses

Dear Members and Friends of the GSA,

The "Letter from the President," written by Professor Irene Kacandes and published in the Winter 2015-16 issue of the GSA Newsletter, has generated a response from a number of colleagues. In the interest of encouraging democratic, open, and timely dialogue among our members, we are publishing the members' response to Professor Kacandes's letter, and Professor Kacandes's reply to it. 

Sincerely,

David E. Barclay

Executive Director, GSA

President's Letter

Member Response

President's Response

Dr. Joyce Mushaben's Response

President's Letter (written November 7, 2015)

GSA Newsletter Winter 2015-16

The President's semi-annual letter is usually a forum for updating members on developments in the GSA. I'll mostly leave that to the Executive Director this time, as I have the privilege of writing to you today from Berlin. You see, my home German Studies Department at Dartmouth College sends me here often to teach in and supervise our study program abroad. Though my primary residence is in New Hampshire, these approximately biannual three-month stays in Berlin (with study trips to Dresden and Vienna), along with my visits to family (by marriage) in Switzerland,... Read more

GSA Arts Night

Crystal Gateway Marriott, 1 October 2015

Many of us are busy making plans to see friends and deciding which panels to attend. Please include in your schedule our new Arts Night Initiative.



Just in case you've missed the new development: we have put together a slate of four events featuring artists or the work of artists for Thursday evening, 1 October. Along the model of First Night celebrations in many cities, the events will run simultaneously and most will be repeated. Held in the main conference hotel, the sessions will run 7-7:50pm and 8-8:50pm.



Where would we be without the arts? Unlike our federal government, the GSA has decided to put more resources into the arts, not less. Please show your support by attending one or both sessions. 



SESSION ONE 7:00-7:50 pm



Session One 7:00-7:50pm, Room: JEFFERSON ROOM


DEFA Film Library DVD release: 'ARTS IN EXILE'

Erich Fried: The Whole World Should Endure (Die ganze Welt soll bleiben: Erich Fried, ein Portrait)

GDR, 1988, Dir. Roland Steiner, 30 min., color



Born... Read more

Conference Program Now Online

The program for the 2015 GSA conference in Washington, DC has been finalized and is now available here. Read more

Conference Registration and Hotel Reservation Information

Online conference registration, meal reservations, and hotel reservations for the 39th annual conference of the GSA in Washington, DC, are now open. Please go to http://www.thegsa.org/members/conference to register.

When you pay your registration fee, you will be able to purchase meals and pay for A/V expenses at the same time. After September 1st, all registrants will pay an additional $10 fee. Please be aware of the refund policy on conference registrations.

You can only reserve a hotel room at the conference rate of $175.00 by registering for the conference. You will not be able to reserve a room at the conference rate by calling the hotel or by booking with an online agency. You must first register for the conference to be eligible for the rate.

Hotel reservations at the GSA conference rate will be available until 1 September or until rooms at the hotel sell out. Our primary hotels sell out well before the deadline every year. We may be able to arrange additional capacity at an overflow hotel, but we cannot guarantee that this will be the case. Please reserve your room(s) as soon as possible.

Once you have registered for the conference, you will receive a confirmation e-mail from Johns Hopkins University Press with the... Read more

Tentative Conference Program Now Online

The tentative program of the 2015 GSA Conference has now been posted at https://www.thegsa.org/conference/documents/GSA_program_15.pdf. This first draft will remain online until 1 June, at which point it will be taken down as we edit the final program for printing and distribution to the membership. In reviewing it, please note the following points:

  1. The program is TENTATIVE. We reserve the right to make changes in the final program.

  2. We have tried to make every effort to accommodate reasonable special requests. However, please bear in mind that organizing an event of this nature is extremely complex, and we occasionally encounter difficulties. Please contact helpdesk@thegsa.org should you have questions or concerns.

  3. Should you encounter any matters that need to be changed, please inform us at helpdesk@thegsa.org'BY 31 MAY. We CANNOT make any changes after that date.

  4. Your name and your institutional affiliation are shown exactly as they appear in your membership profile. If you wish to change them, please do so by going to your profile and changing them there. Then please inform us of these changes by writing to helpdesk@thegsa.org, so that we can ensure they have been incorporated into the final program.

  5. ... Read more

2015 Conference Information

The Thirty-Ninth Annual Conference of the German Studies Association will take place from October 1 to October 4, 2015, at the Crystal Gateway Marriott, 1700 Jefferson Davis Highway. Arlington, Virginia 22202. Many of our members will be familiar with the hotel, as this will be our fourth meeting there since 2001. For those members from outside North America who may be visiting the area for the first time, Arlington is directly across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. The hotel is located on a Metro line that is very convenient both to the Ronald Reagan National Airport and to downtown Washington.

This conference again promises to be one of the larger gatherings in our history. Following two years of successful experiments with a series of intensive, three-day seminars, this year we are offering twenty-five seminars on a wide range of issues in German Studies. As was the case last year, the seminars will run concurrently on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday during the 8:00 a.m. time block. Once again we are scheduling three Sunday time slots in order to accommodate the large number of excellent sessions reviewed by the Program Committee; the entire conference will end by 1:45 p.m. on Sunday.... Read more

Conference Registration Refund Policy Explained

You may cancel your 2015 conference registration before 1 July 2015 for a full refund. Cancellations between 1 July and 24 September will be refunded, but will incur a $25 cancellation fee. No refunds are available for cancellations after 24 September 2015. For more information, contact helpdesk@thegsa.org. Read more

Austrian Cultural Forum New York: Young Scholars Travel Grants

The Austrian Cultural Forum New York (ACFNY) and the German Studies Association (GSA) are happy to announce that there will be limited funds available to support selected young Austrian Studies scholars at this year’s conference of the German Studies Association in Washington, DC from 2 to 4 October 2015.

Only applications from scholars working in Contemporary Austrian Studies (since 1945) will be considered. Applicants must not be older than 35 years and must not have received any travel grant from the ACFNY in the past. Applicants who receive financial support from other institutions to cover travel and accommodation costs will not be considered.

The funds are intended for Austrian Studies scholars who are either completing an appropriate advanced degree or who have completed that degree within the past three years. Austrian Studies scholars from North America (Canada, Mexico, and the United States) as well as from outside North America are eligible to apply for these funds. Austrian citizenship or residency in Austria is not necessary.

Depending on the number of accepted applications and budgetary circumstances, the travel grant comprises $500 (for scholars from North America) and $1,000 (for scholars from outside North America) to offset travel... Read more

2015 Executive Board Elections

Three positions on the GSA Board are up for election this year. Each board member will serve a two-year term. You will receive a ballot at the email address associated with your member account. 

  Read more

Berlin Program Summer Workshop June 18-19, 2015: Call for Papers

Deadline for Proposals: February 15, 2015

Violence, Oppression, and Civil Disobedience: From the Cold War Past to the Neoliberal Present

The year 2015 marks the 25th anniversary of the unification of Germany as well as dramatic moments of civil disobedience across the globe. In the same year, for example, Mandela was freed from prison in South Africa and the Persian Gulf War started. The year 2015 is also the 50th anniversary of the end of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials in West Germany, a year that saw American troops arriving in Vietnam, the Watts Riots in LA, and Malcolm X's assassination. These events signify important transitional moments ' beginnings and endings ' in national and international histories and relations. At the center of each of these moments of civil disobedience are both violence and oppression.



The fourth annual workshop of the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies will look through German eyes at violence, oppression, and civil disobedience on a global scale from the Cold War past to the Neoliberal present. How have Germans'East, West, unified'engaged in or responded to violence and oppression in their own countries/country and abroad since 1945? To... Read more

2015 Conference: Site Now Open for Submissions

The GSA website is open for submissions for the 39th annual conference, which will take place in Washington, D.C., from 1-4 October 2015. For general conference information, visit the conference home page. There you will see a series of links, including our call for papers, conference submission guidelines, GSA Exchange information, 2015's approved seminars, and a link that will allow you to begin the submission process. Non-North American members may wish to inform themselves about the GSA travel fund, described at https://www.thegsa.org/prizes/travel_grants.html.

Please note three major points:

  • You must have paid your 2015 dues before you can submit a proposal.
  • The GSA only accepts online submissions. We do not accept paper submissions.
  • Please note that the deadline for submitting enrollment applications for the seminars is 30 January 2015.

The deadline for submitting all other proposals (individual papers, complete sessions, or roundtables) is 16 February 2015. Seminar applicants will be informed of the results of their applications by 6 February. The Program Committee will review all other proposals after 16 February. The complete, tentative program should be online by late April or early May 2015.

Technical questions about conference submissions should be directed to... Read more

2015 Seminars Now Open for Applications

The 39th GSA Conference in Washington, D.C. (October 1-4, 2015) will again host a series of seminars in addition to its regular conference sessions and roundtables.

Seminars meet for all three days of the conference during the first morning slot to foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual exchange, and intensified networking. They are led by 2 to 4 conveners and will consist of either 12 to 15 or 16 to 20 participants, at least some of whom should be graduate students. In order to reach the goal of extended discussion, seminar organizers and participants are expected to participate in all three installments of the seminar.

The following seminars have been selected and approved for enrollment at the 2015 GSA Conference:

1. The Berlin School and Its Global Contexts

2. (Re)tracing Cosmopolitanism: Weltliteratur, Weltb'rgertum, Weltgesellschaft in Modern Germanophone Cultures, ca. 1800 to the Global Present

3. Making Democratic Subjectivities

4. East German Cinema and TV in a Global Context: Before and after 1990

5. Imagining Europe: Assessing the 'Eastern Turn' in Literature

6. The Epic Side of Truth: Narration and Knowledge-Formation (Sponsored by the DAAD)

7. Experience and Cultural Practice: Rewriting the

... Read more

Call for Papers: German Studies Association Thirty-Ninth Annual Conference

The German Studies Association (GSA) will hold its Thirty-Ninth Annual Conference in Washington, DC, October 1-4, 2015.

The Program Committee cordially invites proposals on any aspect of German, Austrian, or Swiss studies, including (but not limited to) history, Germanistik, film, art history, political science, anthropology, musicology, religious studies, sociology, and cultural studies. Proposals for entire sessions and for interdisciplinary presentations are strongly encouraged. Individual paper proposals and offers to serve as session moderators or commentators are also welcome.

The call for seminar topics went out in mid-October. That deadline is December 10. Applications for participation in seminars will be opened on January 6, 2015.

Learn about the submission process for 'traditional' papers, sessions, and roundtables, which opens on January 5, 2014. All proposals must be submitted online; paper forms are not accepted. The deadline for proposals is February 16, 2015.

Please note that presenters must be members of the German Studies Association. Get more information on membership.

In order to avoid complications later, the Program Committee would like to reiterate two extremely important guidelines here:

  • No individual at the GSA Conference may give more than one paper or participate in more than
  • ... Read more

Call For Seminar Proposals

In response to the success of the last two years' seminar programs, the 39th GSA Conference in Washington, D. C. (October 1-4, 2015) will continue to host a series of seminars in addition to its regular conference sessions and roundtables.

Seminars are meant to meet for all three days of the conference during the first morning slot to explore new avenues of academic exchange and foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual debate, and intensified networking. Seminars are typically proposed and led by two to three conveners and they consist of approximately 10 to 20 participants, including a representative number of graduate students.

Seminars may, for instance, enable extended discussions about an important recent academic publication; the exploration of a promising new research topic in a setting that is at once focused and interdisciplinary; the engagement with pre-circulated papers; the opportunity to meet and debate the work of two scholars with different approaches to a given subject; the coming together of groups of scholars seeking to develop an anthology and using the seminar as a platform to coordinate their research and writing; the in-depth discussion of a recent or not-so-recent political or public-policy issue, novel, film, poem, artwork, or... Read more

2015 GSA Prize Competitions

In 2015, the GSA will again make a number of awards. We hope that as many members as possible will make nominations and submissions. For the membership of the various prize committees for 2015, please see the committee appointments listed below.

In 2015, the DAAD/GSA Book Prize will be awarded for the best book in history or social sciences that has been published in 2013 or 2014. Inquiries, nominations, and submissions should be sent to the committee chair, Professor Will Gray(Purdue University), by 20 February 2015. The other members of the committee are Professors Jonathan Strom (Emory University) and Helga Welsh (Wake Forest University).

The DAAD Article Prize will be awarded for the best article in Germanistik or culture studies that appeared in the German Studies Review in 2013 or 2014. Inquiries, nominations, and submissions should be sent to the committee chair, Professor Peter McIsaac (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), by 20 February 2015. The other members of the committee are Professors Priscilla Dionne Layne-Kopf (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and Andrew Piper (McGill University)

The Sybil Halpern Milton Book Prize is awarded every other year, and will again be awarded in 2015 for the best book in Holocaust Studies... Read more

Report from Kansas City: The 39th Annual Conference of the GSA

The GSA Conference in Kansas City (September 18-21, 2014) was both intellectually stimulating and a great success. Over 1,300 German Studies scholars and advanced students participated in this year's annual conference, held in Kansas City, just down the street from the National World War I Museum, an appropriate location on the centennial of that conflict's outbreak. There were 326 sessions, panels, roundtables, and seminars held in the rooms of the Westin Kansas City Crown Center.

The conference opened with an especially thought-provoking plenary lecture on Thursday evening by historian Christopher Clark, author of the widely heralded study The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. And a number of panels and sessions focused on World War I, such as those on 'Austria-Hungary 1914-1918,' 'Beyond the Schlieffen Plan,' 'Visualizing the Great War,' and 'Archive und der Erste Weltkrieg.' But since 2014 also marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, that more recent historic event was also well represented. One of the luncheon presentations was given by (then) Mayor of Berlin, Walter Momper, who held the crowd spellbound as he recalled the little known, behind-the-scenes communications between leading politicians in the East and West about an imminent lifting... Read more

GSA Announces 2014 Prizes

The German Studies Association is pleased to announce the winners of this year's prize competitions. Marco Abel(University of Nebraska'Lincoln) is the winner of the DAAD/GSA Book Prize for the best book published in Germanistik/culture studies in 2012 and 2013. Kira Thurman (University of Akron) is the winner of the DAAD/GSA Article Prize for the best article in history or social sciences published in the German Studies Review in 2012 and 2013. Amanda Randall is the winner of the Graduate Student Essay Prize for the best essay submitted in 2014. Her article will be published in the German Studies Review.

Heartiest congratulations to our three prize winners for their outstanding accomplishments! More details, including texts of the laudationes from the respective prize committees, are available at the Grants & Prizes page Read more

Welcome to Kansas City!

Welcome to Kansas City for the 38th annual conference of the GSA! We hope that you will find your stay here to be both intellectually and personally rewarding. I'd just like to mention a few highlights here, in addition to those described in the first part of the printed conference program. More information will also be provided in the welcome packet that you'll receive at the conference registration desk in the Westin.

TRANSPORTATION: Let's begin with transport to the conference hotel, the Westin Kansas City at Crown Center (1 East Pershing Road, Kansas City, MO 64108), and our overflow hotel, the Sheraton, located very close to it. Most of you will be arriving by plane, and we've arranged a discounted shuttle rate to the hotels. The GSA has made arrangements with Super Shuttle for reduced round-trip tickets from the airport to the hotel and back. Reservations can be placed by calling 1-800-BLUE VAN (258-3826) and providing the code 8T9US. Reservations can be made online. Three Super Shuttle kiosks are located in each terminal at Kansas City International Airport. They are staffed by Customer Service Representatives at each pick-up location.

The Westin and the Sheraton are located in the... Read more

GSA Election Results Announced

The German Studies Association is pleased to announce the results of the recent elections to the Vice Presidency and the Board. The Vice President will serve for two years in that office (2015-16), after which she will automatically serve as President for the following two years. The newly elected Board members will serve for three years (2015-17).

Our Vice President-elect is Professor Mary Lindemann (History, University of Miami). The newly elected Board members are:

German Literature and Culture: Professor Jennifer Kapczynski (Washington University in St. Louis)

History and Social Sciences: Professor H. Glenn Penny (University of Iowa)

History and Social Sciences: Professor Jared Poley (Georgia State University)

In addition, the members approved a bylaws change that establishes the Fundraising Committee as a standing committee of the Association.

Our deep appreciation and gratitude go out to all those who agreed to serve as candidates in these elections. Without each of you, the German Studies Association simply could not function! We are very much in your debt! Read more

Berlin Program GSA Distinguished Lecture 2014

Orientalism and the Classical Tradition in Germany

Suzanne Marchand, President, German Studies Association; Boyd Professor of History, Louisiana State University

It was a particular pleasure this year to have Suzanne Marchand, President of the German Studies Association and Boyd Professor of History at LSU, deliver the annual Berlin Program Distinguished Lecture. Her visit to Berlin underscores the transatlantic cooperation between the GSA and the Freie Universit't that the Berlin Program is founded on, and is also felicitous given the seminal role that research groups at the FU have played in her field of intellectual history or Wissenschaftsgeschichte.

In her talk, Professor Marchand described the formation of Orientalistik in the German-speaking world and its close relationship with the ever-popular study of ancient Greece. Critical of disciplinary histories that cull off one field and focus only on its internal debates, Marchand emphasized the importance of seeing Oriental philology in relation to larger cultural movements and the histories of other academic areas. As she puts it, Orientalism, like Classical Studies, was the child of Christian humanism, but one that was left behind when Classicism became secular around 1790. Her argument centered on two flowerings of the discipline that book-ended... Read more

Conference Registration Refund Policy Explained

Any registrations for the 2014 conference cancelled between July 1 and September 11 will be refunded, but will incur a $25 cancellation fee. No refunds are available for cancellations after September 11. For more information, contact helpdesk@thegsa.org. Read more

Learn More About the Conference Hotel and Kansas City Attractions

The Thirty-Eighth Annual Conference of the German Studies Association will take place from September 18 to September 21, 2014, at the Westin Kansas City at Crown Center, 1 East Pershing Road, Kansas City, Missouri 64108. For those members from overseas who may be visiting the area for the first time, Kansas City is located on the state line between Missouri and Kansas. We are meeting on the Missouri side.

The Westin is located in downtown Kansas City, and is immediately adjacent to Hallmark's 85-acre Crown Center, a complex of stores, shops, and restaurants. (Kansas City is the headquarters of Hallmark Cards.) It is also adjacent to the beautifully restored Union Station, which this year is commemorating its own centennial.

And, as we all know, this year witnesses the centennial as well of the First World War, and thus it is especially appropriate that the German Studies Association is meeting in Kansas City. The Liberty Memorial, dedicated in 1926, is on a hill close to the hotel, and on the Memorial's grounds is the National World War I Museum, with which the German Studies Association has been cooperating in preparing for this year's conference. The museum is the... Read more

Austrian Prize for Innovative Research Call for Papers

In collaboration with the German Studies Association, the Austrian Cultural Forum New York and the Austrian Cultural Forum Washington D.C. will, for the first time, jointly award the newly established Austrian Prize for the Most Innovative Research Paper in Austrian Studies.

The prize of $1,500.00 will be granted to the most innovative research paper dedicated to Austrian Studies and presented at the GSA's 2014 Annual Conference. This year's thematic focus will be the World War I centennial and the 2014 year of commemoration (Gedenkjahr).

Research papers should make reference to any of the historic key dates in Austrian contemporary history (e.g., 1914, 1934, 1938, 1939, 1955, 1989).

Papers shall be submitted to the GSA (to the e-mail address below) no later than 1 July 2014. An independent jury from the GSA, in cooperation with the ACFNY/ACFDC, will select that paper which demonstrates the most innovative academic research from all disciplines.

Applicants should not be older than 35 years and must not have received a travel grant or any other stipend from Austrian cultural institutions in the US within the past five years.

A formal award ceremony will take place at the GSA's annual banquet to be held in Kansas City... Read more

Austrian Cultural Forum New York: Young Scholars Travel Grants

The Austrian Cultural Forum New York (ACFNY) and the German Studies Association (GSA) are happy to announce that there will be limited funds available to support selected young Austrian Studies scholars who will participate in this year's conference of the German Studies Association in Kansas City from 18-21 September.

Only applications from scholars working in Contemporary Austrian Studies (since 1945) will be considered. Applicants must not be older than 35 years and must not have received any travel grant from the ACFNY in the past.

The funds are intended for Austrian Studies scholars who are either completing an appropriate advanced degree or who have completed that degree within the past three years. Austrian Studies scholars from North America (Canada, Mexico, and the United States) as well as from outside North America are eligible to apply for these funds.

Depending on the number of accepted applications and budgetary circumstances, the travel grant comprises $500 (for scholars from North America) and $1,000 (for scholars from outside North America) to offset travel costs.

Travel grants are for one person only and cannot be split among several applicants. Applications must be submitted to the Austrian Cultural Forum New York/ACFNY (desk@acfny.org), no later than... Read more

GHI Conference Travel Grants for GSA Participants

The German Historical Institute (GHI) in Washington, D.C., is delighted to announce eight travel grants for young scholars (four from European and four from American institutions) in the field of German Studies for the 2014 German Studies Association (GSA) conference. Preference will be given to fellows whose projects fit into the GHI's research foci. We especially invite applications from doctoral students and postdoctoral scholars who will not receive funding from their home institutions.

The travel grant aims to improve the professional opportunities for outstanding, internationally orientated humanities scholars by enabling them to participate in the 2014 GSA conference in Kansas City, MO. Recipients will have to present their work at the 2014 GSA convention.

Successful applicants from European universities will receive a travel grant of 1,700.00 Euro. Successful applicants from US institutions will receive a travel grant of 1,200.00 USD.

The travel grant is open to all highly qualified, internationally orientated European and American scholars (must possess at least an M.A. degree or equivalent state examination). Successful paper contributions must have been accepted by the GSA review committee. Applicants should have already completed some research towards the project and Ph.D. holders must have finished their degree no more than... Read more

GSA Exchange Now Open for Conference Planning

The German Studies Association is pleased to announce a pilot program for the 2014 Conference: The GSA Exchange. The Exchange is an online forum for prospective participants to discuss the creation of sessions. It is specifically targeted at participants who have a paper proposal but are not already part of a formal panel or session. We hope that the Exchange will make it easier for scholars with similar interests to find their 'family' before the deadline for submissions to the 2014 conference (February 17).

The Exchange and its forums can be accessed at http://germanstudiesassociation.org/exchange/. Before accessing it, you will need to register an account. It is not possible at this time to link your Exchange account with your regular GSA online profile, but please register with the same e-mail address you use there. This will help speed up our verification process; we do want to limit access to the Exchange to those interested in participating in the GSA Annual Conference. If you are not currently a member of the GSA, please sign up at the main GSA website. Please bear in mind that only paid members of the GSA may submit proposals for the GSA conference.

... Read more

GSA Seminars Now Open for Enrollment

The 38th GSA Conference in Kansas City (September 18-21, 2014) will again host a series of seminars in addition to its regular conference sessions and roundtables.

Seminars meet for all three days of the conference during the first morning slot to foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual exchange, and intensified networking. They are led by 2 to 4 conveners and will consist of either 12 to 15 or 16 to 20 participants, at least some of whom should be graduate students. In order to reach the goal of extended discussion, seminar organizers and participants are expected to participate in all three installments of the seminar.

  Read more

Call for Papers: Thirty-Eighth Annual Conference

The German Studies Association (GSA) will hold its Thirty-Eighth Annual Conference in Kansas City, Missouri, September 18-21, 2014. 

The Program Committee cordially invites proposals on any aspect of German, Austrian, or Swiss studies, including (but not limited to) history, Germanistik, film, art history, political science, anthropology, musicology, religious studies, sociology, and cultural studies. Proposals for entire sessions and for interdisciplinary presentations are strongly encouraged. Individual paper proposals and offers to serve as session moderators or commentators are also welcome. Applications for seminar topics went out a few weeks ago; that deadline is December 15. Applications for participation in seminars will be opened on January 6. 

Please see information about the submission process for "traditional" papers, sessions, and roundtables, which opens on January 5, 2014. ALL proposals must be submitted online; paper forms are not used. The deadline for proposals is February 17, 2014. 

Please note that presenters must be members of the German Studies Association. Information on membership is available on the GSA website.

In order to avoid complications later, the Program Committee would like to reiterate two extremely important guidelines here:

  • No individual at the GSA Conference may give more than one paper or participate in more than two
  • ... Read more

Executive Director Interviewed on Trojanow Visa Denial

On October 6, 2013, as the Denver conference of the German Studies Association was winding to a close, GSA Executive Director Professor David E. Barclay was interviewed on Deutschlandradio Kultur concerning the denial of a US entry visa to Ilija Trojanow. For reasons that have still not been revealed, Mr. Trojanow - who had been invited as a special guest to the GSA - was not allowed to enter the US on Monday September 30.

  Read more

2013 GSA Prize Winners Announced

The GSA is pleased to announce the results of the 2013 prize competitions. They include the GSA/DAAD book and article prizes, the Sybil Halpern Milton Book Prize, and the Graduate Student Prize.

  • The DAAD and the GSA are proud to announce that Professor David Ciarlo (University of Colorado, Boulder) is the winner of this year's DAAD Book Prize for the best book in history or social sciences published during the years 2011 and 2012 for Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany.
  • The DAAD and the GSA are proud to announce that Professor Ari Joskowicz (Vanderbilt University) is the winner of this year's DAAD Article Prize for the best article in Germanistik or cultural studies published in the German Studies Review during the years 2011 and 2012. His article, "Heinrich Heine's Transparent Masks: Denominational Politics and the Poetics of Emancipation in Nineteenth Century Germany and France," appeared in the GSR, volume 34, no. 1 (February 2011).
  • The GSA is pleased to announce that, for the first time, two books and three authors are sharing the 2013 Sybil Halpern Milton Prize, awarded every other year, and this year for the best book or books on the Holocaust published in 2011 or 2012. The co-winners
  • ... Read more

2014 Prize Competitions

In 2014 the GSA will again make a number of awards. We hope that as many members as possible will make nominations and submissions.

  • In 2013 the DAAD/GSA Book Prize will be awarded for the best book in Germanistik or culture studies that has been published in 2012 or 2013. The members of the selection committee will be announced soon in an e-mail to the members. Inquiries, nominations, and submissions should be sent to the committee members by 20 February 2014.
  • The DAAD Article Prize will be awarded for the best article in history or social sciences that appeared in the German Studies Review in 2012 or 2013. The members of the selection committee will be announced soon in an e-mail to the members. Inquiries, nominations, and submissions should be sent to the committee members by 20 February 2014.
  • The prize for the Best Essay in German Studies by a Graduate Student will again be awarded in 2014. The deadline for nominations and submissions is 20 March 2014. Papers should be 6,000-9,000 words in length. The winner will be published in the German Studies Review. The members of the selection committee will soon be announced soon in an e-mail
  • ... Read more

Douglas H. Shantz on the movement that changed Protestantism

Arising in late 17th century Germany, Pietism indelibly altered the Protestant Reformation. Not only did it inspire John Wesley's Methodist movement and Alexander Mack's Brethren movement, its tenets lie at the core of modern-day Evangelicalism.

But as University of Calgary Professor Douglas H. Shantz relates in his latest book, An Introduction to German Pietism, the history, roots, and impact of this reaction to Lutheranism are much broader, more nuanced, and darker than is generally understood.

JHU Press Journals Public Relations and Advertising Coordinator Brian Shea caught up with Professor Shantz at the German Studies Association annual meeting in Denver earlier this month to find out more about why he wrote the book and what he hopes it will accomplish.

Read more

Call for Seminar Proposals

In response to the success of this year's pilot program, the 38th conference of the German Studies Association in Kansas City (September 18-21, 2014) will again host a series of seminars in addition to its regular conference sessions and roundtables.

Seminars are meant to meet for all three days of the conference during the first morning slot to explore new avenues of academic exchange and foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual debate, and intensified networking. Seminars are typically proposed and led by two to three conveners and they consist of either 12 to 15 or 16 to 20 participants, including a representative number of graduate students.

Seminars may, for instance, enable extended discussions about an important recent academic publication; the exploration of a promising new research topic in a setting that is at once focused and interdisciplinary; the engagement with pre-circulated papers; the opportunity to meet and debate the work of two scholars with different approaches to a given subject; the coming together of groups of scholars seeking to develop an anthology and using the seminar as a platform to coordinate their research and writing; the in-depth discussion of a recent or not-so-recent political or public-policy issue, novel,... Read more

Welcome to Denver!

Welcome to Denver, site of the 37th annual conference of the German Studies Association from October 3-6, 2013. As we all know, the greater Denver area and much of Colorado have recently suffered grievous losses as a result of devastating floods. The GSA extends its wishes for a speedy recovery to all who have been affected by this catastrophe.

The conference will take place at the Denver Marriott Tech Center, 4900 South Syracuse Street, Denver, Colorado 80237. The Tech Center is located in the southern part of Denver, close to Cherry Creek State Park and Interstate 25. It is also very close to the inexpensive Denver light rail (Belleview Station), which takes 20-25 minutes to reach downtown. For schedules and other information, please visit http://rtd-denver.com.

We look forward to returning to the Rocky Mountains for the first time in many years. Famed as the 'Mile-High City' (or 1,609 meters for our non-US members!), Denver is, of course, a prime tourist destination, given its location close to the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. A vibrant city in its own right, with a lively city center, Denver is also the gateway to such attractions as Rocky Mountain National Park,... Read more

Planning for the Next GSA Conference

The thirty-eighth annual conference of the GSA will take place September 18-21, 2014, at The Westin Kansas City at Crown Center, 1 East Pershing Road, Kansas City, MO 64108.

This will be our first meeting ever in Kansas City, and our first in the state of Missouri in over a quarter of a century. Renowned for barbecue, steak, jazz, Harry S Truman, Hallmark Cards, the country=s first modern shopping center, and much else besides, Kansas City is a thriving, dynamic city with a vibrant cultural and artistic life.

Our conference will take place close to the Liberty Memorial, dedicated in 1923 in the presence of General John J. Pershing and Marshal Ferdinand Foch. Adjacent to the Liberty Memorial is the extraordinary National World War I Museum, one of the largest collections of its kind in the world. We will be observing the centennial of the outbreak of the First World War in 2014, and we hope that our members will take advantage of the opportunity to visit the museum.

The Call for Seminar Proposals can be found on this website. In response to our overwhelmingly successful pilot program of seminars at the October 2013 conference in Denver,... Read more

Visa Denied to Speaker

On Monday, Sept. 30, we received word that United States authorities have refused a visa to our Saturday luncheon speaker, Mr. Ilija Trojanow. According to the German press, he was in Brazil on Monday and was trying to board a plane to this country when he was informed that he could not enter the US. Mr. Trojanow and his colleagues in Germany, among them Juli Zeh, believe that his visa denial is directly related to his public opposition to the surveillance activities of the US National Security Agency (NSA) in Europe and elsewhere.

As soon as we know the details of what exactly happened, the German Studies Association will take appropriate and vigorous action in response to this situation. Certainly it will be discussed at our Board meeting on Thursday, and we'll proceed from there.

In the meantime, we have to formulate a practical response for those of you who have purchased lunch tickets for Saturday's luncheon, at which Mr. Trojanow was going to perform part of his most recent work.

In view of what has happened, we are organizing a panel of experts to lead a discussion, at the end of lunch, concerning the NSA's... Read more

List of Receptions at GSA

As usual, we are pleased to announce that a number of cash bars and receptions will take place at the 37th annual conference of the German Studies Association in Denver, Colorado. A list of scheduled cash bars and receptions (as of September 26, 2013) follows below, including sponsor, time and location. All events are scheduled to take place at the Denver Marriott Tech Center. We hope you can make it to as many as possible!

THURSDAY, 3 OCTOBER

 

6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

DAAD reception (Please RSVP to DAAD if planning to attend. See email from DAAD for address.)

Evergreen A/B

FRIDAY, 4 OCTOBER

 

... Read more

5 p.m.

Join Professor Konrad Jarausch to mark the publication of the new book, United Germany

Berghahn Books Exhibit Stand

6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

GSA Cash Bar

Outdoor Patio, Rocky Mountain Event Center

Immediately after banquet to 10:30 p.m.

American Friends of Marbach

Larkspur

Special GSA Reception/Cash Bar to Highlight Interdisciplinary Networks

In addition to its usual cash bar just before the annual banquet of the German Studies Association on Friday, October 4, the GSA is also sponsoring a SECOND cash bar reception on Saturday, October 5, from 6:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. to call attention to our interdisciplinary activities. This occasion will give GSA members a chance to network with our networks! The coordinators of the GSA's twelve interdisciplinary networks will be introduced at this reception. You will get a chance to start thinking about interdisciplinary initiatives for the 2014 conference in Kansas City.

The cash bar/reception will take place in the Private Dining Room at the Denver Marriott Tech Center. Despite its name, the room will be open to GSA members! It is located west of the Summit Tower entrance and elevators on the north end of the building. We look forward to seeing many of you there! Read more

Transportation to and within Denver

As we've noted in several places, the Denver International Airport is quite far from downtown Denver, and twenty-five miles from the Tech Center. You'll need to take account of that distance in planning your transportation to and from the hotel.

We noted in the printed conference program that Super Shuttle is providing a group discount for GSA members. PLEASE NOTE: That information has now been corrected and updated with a new link. Super Shuttle is providing a discount of $3.00 per ride for advance reservations. For information and reservations, go to http://www.supershuttle.com/?gc=GER13&port=DEN&Property=5198&Direction=RF&aType=M

The Discount Coded to enter is GER13.

Airport taxis charge a flat rate of $61.15 from the airport to the Tech Center.

Once you are at the Denver Marriott Tech Center, downtown can easily be reached by using Denver's outstanding and reasonably priced light rail system. The Belleview Station is an easy walk from the hotel. It will be indicated on the map that we distribute at the conference registration desk. Depending on the day and time of day, and the line you take, downtown can be reached in twenty to twenty-five minutes. For information and schedules, go to http://rtd-denver.com.

We look forward to seeing you in... Read more

GSA Celebrates Cooperation with Berlin Program: Event on July 3

Any GSA member who is in Berlin on Wednesday, July 3, is invited to attend an event in celebration of the Association's many years of cooperation with the Free University of Berlin and especially the Berlin Program for Advanced German and European Studies. It will also take place in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's memorable visit to Berlin.

Professor David E. Barclay, GSA Executive Director, will speak at 6:00 p.m. in Room L 115 (Seminarzentrum) in the "Silberlaube" of the Free University on "Old Glory und Berliner B'r. Die USA und West-Berlin 1948-1994." The talk will be introduced by Professor Harald Wenzel, Free University of Berlin, and moderated by Professor Andreas Etges, University of Munich. It includes commentaries by Walter Momper, former mayor of Berlin; Professor Dorothee Brantz, Technical University of Berlin; and Dr. Klaus Dettmer, Landesarchiv Berlin.

A reception will follow. Please reply to Karin Goihl (bprogram@zedat.fu-berlin.de) if you plan to attend. Read more

Conference Program Now Available for Denver 2013

The tentative program of the 37th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association has now been prepared. The conference will take place October 3-6, 2013, at the Denver Marriott Tech Center in Denver, Colorado.

We have uploaded four files:

The TENTATIVE program will be posted on the GSA website until 1 June, at which point it will be taken down as we edit the final program for printing and distribution to the membership. In reviewing the TENTATIVE program, please note the following points:

  1. The program is TENTATIVE. We reserve the right to make changes in the final program.
  2. We have tried to make every effort to accommodate reasonable special requests. However, please bear in mind that organizing an event of this nature is extremely complex. We make every effort to avoid thematic overlaps and to avoid inadvertent “double-bookings,” but this is not always possible in this first draft of the program. Please contact helpdesk@thegsa.org should you have questions or concerns.
  3. Please note that our software
  4. ... Read more

Conference Registration Now Open for 2013

Online conference registration, meal reservations, and hotel reservations for the 37th annual conference of the GSA in Denver, Colorado, are now open. Please visit the Member Services section and select Conference Registration in the left column to proceed.

The online conference registration and hotel reservation link will be available until 10 SEPTEMBER or until rooms at the hotel sell out. Anyone who registers for the conference after 10 September will be required to pay an additional $10 fee.

Please note that you can ONLY reserve a hotel room at the conference rate of $169.00 AFTER you have registered for the conference itself. You will NOT be able to reserve a room at the conference rate by calling the hotel or by booking with an online agency. You must first register for the conference to be eligible for the rate. Once you have registered for the conference, you will receive a confirmation e-mail from Johns Hopkins University Press that will contain the link to the special hotel reservation page. DO NOT DISCARD OR LOSE THIS E-MAIL, AS IT WILL CONTAIN THE HOTEL RESERVATION LINK.

Please note as well that you can make meal reservations at the same time that you register for the... Read more

2013 Conference Speakers Announced

The 2013 German Studies Association Conference will have another lineup of outstanding luncheon and banquet speakers. We hope that as many of you as possible can attend these important events. Each luncheon will cost $29, and the banquet costs $42. Tickets can be reserved at the same time that you register for the conference.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4: LUNCHEON SPEAKER: Professor David Blackbourn, "Honey, I Shrunk German History"

We are pleased to welcome Professor David Blackbourn as our Friday luncheon speaker. The topic of his talk is “Honey, I Shrunk German History.” On the faculty of Harvard University for many years, he is now Cornelius Vanderbilt Distinguished Chair of History at Vanderbilt University, where he teaches a variety of courses in modern German and European History. Among Professor Blackbourn’s many books are Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Nineteenth-Century Germany (1994), The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918 (1997), and The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany (2006). He is currently completing a book on Germany in the world.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4: BANQUET SPEAKER: Professor Ruth Kl'ger , "The Future of Holocaust Literature"

Our distinguished banquet speaker is Professor Ruth Kl'ger, who will speak on “The Future of Holocaust... Read more

GSA Dissertation List: Submissions Requested

The GSA posts information in the spring newsletter about dissertations completed in any area of German (Austrian, Swiss, German diasporic) Studies (any discipline or interdisciplinary). If you received your Ph.D. in 2011 or 2012 or have already defended in 2013, you may be listed in this year’s Spring newsletter. (No repeats, however!) If you have supervised a dissertation that was completed in 2011 or 2012 that has not already been described here, please encourage the author to submit a description following the guidelines below.

Send an email to GSA Vice President, Irene Kacandes, by March 25 at Irene.kacandes@dartmouth.edu Please type “GSA dissertation list” in the subject line. Please forward this notice to any institutions or individuals for whom you believe it is relevant. In your submission, be sure to include:

  1. Name
  2. Title of Dissertation
  3. Institution and department in which it was defended
  4. Date of defense
  5. Name of dissertation director
  6. 150-word abstract of the dissertation in either English or German. (Longer abstracts will be shortened, so please get it the way you want it at the right length!)
  7. Read more

Travel Grants in Austrian Studies to Attend GSA

The Austrian Cultural Forum New York (ACFNY), the Austrian Federal Ministry for Science and Research (BMWF), and the German Studies Association (GSA) are happy to announce this year's special travel fund in Austrian Studies for scholars who will participate in this year's conference of the German Studies Association in Denver, Colorado from 3 to 6 October.

Preference will be shown to applications from scholars working in Contemporary Austrian Studies (since 1945). The funds are intended exclusively for scholars who are either completing an appropriate advanced degree or who have completed that degree within the past five years. Scholars from North America (Canada, Mexico, and the United States) as well as from outside North America are eligible to apply for these funds. North Americans are eligible to receive US $500 to offset travel costs (within the United States) to attend the GSA. Participants from outside North America are eligible to receive a stipend of US $1,000 for the same purpose.

Travel grants are for one person only and cannot be split among several applicants. Applications from Austria and elsewhere are encouraged, and must be submitted to Mag. Andreas Stadler, Director of the ACFNY, no later than May 31, 2013.... Read more

German Studies Review Redesign Honored by Editor's Group

The redesign of the German Studies Review recently received the 2012 Best Journal Design award from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. The award honors a journal that launched a new design between 2010 and 2012. The Johns Hopkins University Press, which began publishing the journal with the 2012 volume, worked collaboratively with Editor Sabine Hake on the new design.

“This award marks yet another milestone in the brief partnership between the Press and the GSA,” says JHUP Journals Publisher Bill Breichner. The new website for the association was recognized by The MARCOM Awards in late 2012. “We’re happy the CELJ recognized this impressive transformation for GSR.

Designer Laura Lindgren used a sans serif type font inspired by typographer and designer Jan Tschichold and created a cover which allows for changing colors (yellows for 2012, blues for 2013), an homage to the rainbow colors of the edition Suhrkamp books, the most famous book series of postwar West German publishing.

“The stylish new contemporary design was chosen to reflect better the forward-looking disciplinary orientation of the association and its commitment to cultural studies,” says Hake, Texas Chair of German Literature and Culture at the University of Texas at Austin. “More specifically, key elements were chosen based... Read more

12 GSA Conference Seminars Ready for Enrollment (Deadline: Feb. 1)

We are excited to announce a pilot project adding twelve seminars to the program structure of the GSA Conference in Denver 2013. Seminars meet for all three days of the conference during the first morning slot to foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual exchange, and intensified networking. They are led by 2 to 3 organizers and will consist of 15 to 20 participants, at least some of whom should be graduate students. In order to reach the goal of extended discussion, seminar organizers and participants are expected to participate in all three installments of the seminar.



The following seminars have been selected for the pilot program. Download extended descriptions and participation requirements



Seminar 1: Global History, Literature, and Culture from a German Base

Seminar 2: Transnationalisms: Sexualities, Fantasies, and the World Beyond

Seminar 3: What Was Politics in "1968"?

Seminar 4: Why We Read (German) Fiction - And How: Cognitive Studies and German Studies

Seminar 5: Germany or Europe? The European Union and the German Question

Seminar 6: The Challenge of Ethnography in German Studies

Seminar 7: Revisiting the... Read more

2013 Award Programs Announced

In 2013 the GSA will again make a number of awards. We hope that as many members as possible will make nominations and submissions.

The DAAD/GSA Book Prize will be awarded for the best book in history or social sciences that has been published in 2011 or 2012. Inquiries, nominations, and submissions should be sent to the committee chair, Professor Carl Caldwell, Rice University, by 15 February 2013. The other members of the committee are Professors Monica Black (University of Tennessee, Knoxville) and Ben Marschke (Humboldt State University).

The DAAD Article Prize will be awarded for the best article in Germanistik or culture studies that appeared in the German Studies Review in 2011 or 2012. Inquiries, nominations, and submissions should be sent to the committee chair, Professor Jennifer Kapczynski, Washington University in St. Louis, by 15 February 2013. The other members of the committee are Professors William Collins Donahue (Duke University) and John Pizer (Louisiana State University).

The Sybil Halpern Milton Book Prize is awarded every other year, and will again be awarded in 2013 for the best book in Holocaust Studies published in 2011 and 2012. Submissions should be sent to the committee chair, Professor Jeffrey Herf, University of Maryland at College Park, by 15 February... Read more

Seminars to be Added to 2013 GSA Conference

We are excited to announce a pilot project adding a small number of seminar modules to the program structure of the GSA Conference in Denver 2013.

Seminars are meant to meet for all three days of the conference during the first morning slot to foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual exchange, and intensified networking. Seminars should be proposed and led by 2 to 3 organizers and consist of 15 to 20 participants, at least some of whom should be graduate students. In order to reach the goal of extended discussion, seminar organizers and participants are expected to participate in all three installments of the seminar.

We assume these participants will submit some form of written communication to the seminar ahead of the conference, which will count as the equivalent of an ordinary paper presentation. That is to say, those who are accepted as seminar participants (or organizers) will be listed in the program as such and will not be allowed to present another paper at the conference. However, any participant or organizer may also serve as moderator or commentator for normal sessions. We envision making it possible for others to sit in on seminars; such persons would not be counted as... Read more

Honoring Prof. Friedlander

The GSA has lost a close friend. Professor Henry Friedlander (President 2001-02) died Thursday, Oct. 18. Some years ago, he created the Sybil Milton Book Prize in honor of his late wife. To honor his memory, the GSA would like members and friends to consider a donation to the Milton Prize fund to ensure the financial footing of the honor. (The $1,000 prize is awarded every other year.)

Visit our Contribute page to support the Milton Prize in honor of the late Henry Friedlander and the late Sybil Milton.

Donations may also be sent as paper checks to Professor Gerald Fetz, GSA Secretary/Treasurer, Dean Emeritus, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812. Read more

GSA Website Recognized

The re-design of the GSA website recently won honorable mention in the Website/Association category of the 2012 MarCom awards. The JHU Press Journals Marketing Department submitted the site for the award in this international competition which recognizes outstanding creative achievement by marketing and communication professionals. There were over 6,000 entries from throughout the United States, Canada, and several other countries in the 2012 competition, which featured a number of categories.

  Read more

Election Results Announced

Elections recently took place for the GSA Vice Presidency and for three positions on the GSA Board. The new Vice President will assume of?ce on 1 January 2013 and will become President on 1 January 2015. The Board positions are for three-year terms and will begin on 1 January 2013.

The Vice President-elect is:

  • Irene Kacandes, Dartmouth College.

The new Board members are:

  • German Literature and Culture (one position): Elizabeth Ametsbichler, University of Montana
  • History (one position): Janet Ward, University of Oklahoma
  • Political and Other Social Science (one position): Alice H. Cooper, University of Mississippi

The membership also approved the proposed change to the GSA bylaws, concerning the Interdisciplinarity Committee.

As always, the GSA is deeply grateful to all members who volunteer to be candidates for elective of?ce and who volunteer or agree to serve on our various committees. Without you, the GSA would simply cease to exist. Read more

Central European History Editorship

The current Editor of Central European History, published by Cambridge University Press for its owner, the Central European History Society [formerly the Conference Group for Central European History] of the American Historical Association, has announced his intention not to serve beyond his second five-year term, which ends on June 30, 2014. The Society invites applications and nominations of outstanding scholars for the position of Editor.

Applicants should be members of the Society resident in North America, who are accomplished historians of German-speaking Central Europe, have the intellectual range to work with manuscripts from different periods and regions in the history of German-speaking Central Europe, and who are conversant with the wide range of historical methodologies and topics currently represented among scholars of the history of German-speaking Central Europe. The institutional support required for the position is subject to discussion.

The Editor's responsibilities include soliciting manuscripts in all fields of the history of German-speaking Central Europe, shepherding submitted manuscripts through the peer review and editorial processes, working with the journal's print and electronic publisher, Cambridge University Press, working with the Executive Secretary/Treasurer of the Society, and maintaining collaborative relations with the Board of Editors of the journal and... Read more

Dissertation List Planned

The German Studies Association plans to post a list of dissertations completed in 2011 in its Spring 2012 newsletter, to be posted on the new website. The lists for 2009 and 2010 give a good overview of trends in German Studies and are available online within the Spring newsletters for those years. Brief abstracts are invited in all German Studies fields, from literature, history, and political science to musicology, art history, visual studies. Abstracts should include:

  • Name of the author
  • Title of the dissertation
  • Institution where the dissertation was written and approved
  • Name of dissertator supervisor
  • Year the dissertation was approved
  • A very brief abstract of no more than 150 words, in English or German

Any institutions that missed being included in the Spring 2011 newsletter may add dissertations from 2009-2010. Abstracts should be sent to Suzanne Marchand and should arrive no later than March 10, 2012. Read more

2012 Prize Competitions Announced

In 2012 the German Studies Association will award three prizes: the DAAD/GSA Book Prize, the DAAD/GSA Article Prizeand the GSA Graduate Student Essay Prize. Information on submission requirements are available on the individual prize pages. All entries must be received no later than February 20, 2012. Please note that the Sybil Halpern Milton Prize will not be awarded in 2012. It will be awarded again in 2013. Questions may be directed to GSA Executive Director Professor David E. Barclay. Read more

Dues Increase for 2012

At its meeting in Louisville in September 2011, the GSA Board approved a modest dues increase for 2012, our first in seven years. Regular dues for North American members will increase from $50 to $70 annually, while dues for non-North American members will increase from $65 to $80 a year. Joint memberships will increase from $80 to $90. All other dues will remain unchanged, and conference registration fees are not being increased. Please visit the Member Services section for information on the new rates. Read more

2011 Prize Winners Named

Winners of annual prizes sponsored by the GSA were announced at the annual conference in October 2011. Ann Goldberg (University of California, Riverside) received the DAAD Book Prize for her publication Honor, Politics, and the Law in Imperial Germany. The DAAD Article Prize went to Jennifer M. Kapczynski (Washington University in St. Louis) for “Postwar Ghosts: Heimatfilm and the Specter of Male Violence. Returning to the Scene of the Crime?,” which appeared in the German Studies Review, volume 33, no. 2, in May 2010. Jeffrey Herf (University of Maryland, College Park) is the recipient of the 2011 Sybil Halpern Milton Prize, awarded for the best book in Holocaust Studies published in 2009 or 2010 for Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World. The final award, the Graduate Student Paper Prize for the best paper in German Studies written in 2010-11, went to Kira Thurman (University of Rochester), for her paper on “Black Venus, White Bayreuth: Race, Sexuality, and the De-Politicization of Wagner in Post-War West Germany.” The paper will be published in a future issue of the German Studies Review. Read more

New Editor Announced for German Studies Review

The German Studies Association is pleased to announce that Professor Sabine Hake has agreed to serve as editor of the German Studies Review beginning with the February 2012 issue. Professor Hake (pictured at right with GSA Executive Director Prof. David E. Barclay) is a truly distinguished scholar of German Studies with wide-ranging, interdisciplinary interests and a deservedly international reputation. She will bring exceptional credentials to her new task.

She is Texas Chair of German Literature and Culture in the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and is the author of five monographs, including German National Cinema (2008, second revised edition) and Topographies of Class: Modern Architecture and Mass Society in Weimar Berlin (2008). She has also published numerous articles and edited volumes on German film and Weimar culture. Her current book project is titled Political Affects and deals with the fascist imaginary in postfascist cinema.

GSR also has new book review editors: Professor Carl Niekerk, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Professor Andrew I. Port, Department of History, Wayne State University. Special thanks goes to outgoing Book Review Editor Liz Ametsbichler, Department of Modern and

... Read more