Keynote Speaker and Workshop Leader:
Katherine Arens, University of Texas at Austin
Katherine Arens is Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches a wide range of courses in literary-historical studies, intellectual history (Geistesgeschichte), theory and cultural studies. Her work has offered new ways of approaching how culture, identity and the politics of cultural identity can be researched and taught. Arens’ multivalenced research crosses philosophical and cultural traditions and places her at the intersection of three academic programs – Germanic Studies, Comparative Literature and Women’s and Gender Studies -- and several disciplines, including intellectual and cultural history, the history and philosophy of science, traditional literary studies, and contemporary theory. Her 2005 Remapping the Foreign Language Curriculum: A Multi-Literacies Approach (with Janet Swaffar) offers innovative models for thinking about integrated, text-based approaches to foreign language instruction and to content-based instruction across the humanities curriculum, both inside and outside the foreign languages. In her research, teaching and mentoring, Arens bridges the gap between the “masterpieces” we teach in upper level courses and the teaching we do at the introductory level. A prolific scholar of German and Austrian Studies, she has published extensively on Austrian literature and cultural history – from Grillparzer to Mauthner to Freud, Handke and H.C. Artmann -- and on German Idealism and its legacies (in European philosophy, literature, transnational theory, and in the philosophy of science). One of her current projects, Building the Graduate Curriculum, takes up the structure of the humanities after the demise of the canon by addressing the cognitive and professional demands of the current generation of literary and cultural studies in terms of how and what graduate programs must teach their students, as we move into post-disciplinary and post-national-literary studies.
Keynote: The Fifth Annual Larry Wells Memorial Lecture
Friday, April 29, 2011
5:00 p.m.
Anderson Center Reception Room
Katherine Arens, German Studies' Lehrjahre:
Masterpieces as Cognitive Apprenticeships in Cultural Studies
Professor Arens’ title consciously echoes Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship) in order to use this paradigmatic Bildungsroman (educational novel) as an introduction to the education politics of mastery in today's literary and cultural studies. For the survival of literary and cultural studies in the university, Arens argues for a necessary return to the original idea of a masterpiece: a work produced by an apprentice or journeymen who wished to join a guild as a master craftsman, and retained by the guild as a record of successful craft. In insisting upon a framework of cultural communication that is taught to students in a ‘learning to learn’ perspective, she reconceptualizes how curricula are conceived, how research by ‘masters’ in various cultural studies disciplines is configured, and what claims to relevance we can advance for our student-journeymen within a guild or disciplinary culture of mastery rather than the current culture of critique that turns mastery into a culture of performativity rather than of knowledge production.
Colloquium Workshop
Saturday, April 30, 2011
1:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m.
Anderson Center Reception Room
“Following on my keynote speech, the workshop will address in theory and practice what it means to set literacy goals for curricula, furthering the goals of cultural studies. I will introduce ACTFL's Standards for Foreign Language Learning as a framework within which new curricula can be developed, sequenced in reference to cognitive difficulty and proposed domains of cultural knowledge to be presented to the students. The goal of this presentation is to exemplify what is at stake in new course and curricular design, and to argue for the urgent need to reconceive what we teach and how students learn.”
- Katherine Arens
Colloquium Speakers and Presentation Abstracts
Mary Boldt received her B.A. from Wilson College and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Brown University. For twelve years she taught in the Modern and Classical Languages Department at Hartwick College, where she co-authored the book Learning Interdependence: A Case Study of the International/Intercultural Education of First-Year College Students. She currently is Associate Professor of German at York College of Pennsylvania, teaching courses in German language, literature, and culture. Her most recent publication was the jointly authored “Text Translation: Approaching Otherness” in Language in the Real World. She has delivered talks in the United States and Austria on special-needs learners in the second-language classroom and is also engaged in research on screen translation. Additionally, she maintains an ongoing interest in Foreign Language Across the Curriculum. Email: mboldt@ycp.edu
“Translation, Special Needs, and Language Mastery”
The quest toward language mastery, central to the work of German language educators, is seemingly defined by two parameters: the level of mastery we want our students to achieve; and the means to achieving that mastery. As we explore these two seemingly straightforward aims, though, we see that student language “mastery” is an elusive quality, because of both the dynamic, effervescent nature of language itself, and the disparate nature of our student body and the courses we teach. While the ACTFL proficiency scale is widely used and respected in North America, it is by no means ubiquitous even on this continent, let alone worldwide. Furthermore, the plethora of English Composition courses at any American college or university highlights the fact that even native speakers cannot automatically lay claim to “mastery” of their mother tongue. Meanwhile, many German educators, particularly in smaller institutions, find themselves teaching two completely different sets of students: beginners, who often comprise the majority of the German-language student body, and who may be taking German to “get rid of” a language requirement; and the smaller group of students in upper-level courses who are closer to, and perhaps highly motivated to achieve, “mastery” of German. Layered on top of this dichotomy is the growing presence of special-needs students in foreign language classrooms. German educators are more likely now than ever before to have one or more dyslexic students who have decided that the rewards of engaging with the German language and Germanophone culture significantly outweigh the difficulties of such an endeavor. What sort of mastery should we expect of such a diverse student population, and what, if any, teaching tools can help bridge the needs of our multifaceted learners? This presentation will suggest that an unlikely answer to both questions lies in the field of text translation.
Andrea Dortmann teaches all levels of German from Elementary to Advanced Writing and Culture classes on the college level at New York University, where she also directs the German Language Program. She received her PhD in German from NYU in 2003 and holds a Master’s degree in Comparative and French Literature from the Freie Universität Berlin. In addition to her teaching, advising, and TA training responsibilities, she also continues to translate mostly scholarly work from English to German. Her translation of John Hamilton’s book Music, Madness, and the Unworking of Language (Musik, Wahnsinn und das Außerkraftsetzen der Sprache) is just being published with Wallstein Verlag. Email: andrea.dortmann@nyu.edu
“M stands for murderous masterpieces: E.T.A. Hoffmann’s René Cardillac encounters Fritz Lang’s Hans Becker”
In my paper, I wish to confront E.T.A. Hoffmann’s jeweler/murderer René Cardillac (Das Fräulein von Scuderi, 1819) and Fritz Lang’s girl molester/murderer Hans Becker in Fritz Lang’s M – eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931) in order to investigate the darker, unfathomable sides of Meisterwerke. Both texts are regarded as masterpieces in their own right. Hoffmann’s tale as one of the first detective stories in German Literature, Lang’s first talking picture as an artistic depiction of life in the complex fabric of a modern metropolis. Yet, both also thematize masterpieces on the plot level. In my confrontation of these two extremely different, yet also related narratives, I hope to provide some insight in the contradictory, complex nature of what constitutes a masterpiece.
Annemarie Fischer is a Ph.D. candidate and an Adjunct Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature at Binghamton University and has also taught in the German Studies program there. She holds an M.A. in Political Science from Binghamton University, a magistra atrium degree in German Studies, Journalism and Eastern European Studies, and a postgraduate certificate in German as a Foreign Language from the University of Leipzig. Her research interests include twentieth-century and contemporary German literature and film, transnational writing, narratology, global communications/media studies, and popular culture. Her dissertation, situated in the cyber, explores the pathways and dead-ends of global news. Email: annemarie.fischer@binghamton.edu
“The Storyteller's Politics and the Pursuit of Literacy. Bernhard Schlink's Der Vorleser/The Reader“
Part of our task as teachers in a trans-lingual and trans-cultural context is to render students “literate” towards narrative readings. While Bernhard Schlink’s Der Vorleser/The Reader enjoys worldwide appeal, the narrative also raises global controversies: the depiction of the post-Holocaust/Shoah “crime and punishment” within the unbearable lightness of a “boy narrative,” kept under a framework of fetish literacy, and the compelling perpetrator profile of a female, illiterate SS-guard. Both the novel and its film adaptation raise questions about the “politics” of storytelling, and address taboos: the original novel on the Holocaust/Shoah discourse; the cinematic adaptation on the global post-Holocaust generation and the depiction of “body-ness” in global cinema. The issue arises if a “boy-storyteller” as a Nachgeborener, post-born, is able to “master” the past adequately. The visual translation disrupts different “politics”: The cinematic adaptation incorporates bodily codes and introduces the aesthetics of a Neue Körperlichkeit – not only pleasures and functions, but also pains and mal-functions. The focus lies on the aesthetics and politics of storytelling within a German and U.S.-American context in order to foster cultural literacy in the classroom.
Sarah Goeth unterrichtet derzeit im Zuge einer des DAAD geförderten Sprachassistenz an der Binghamton University deutsche Sprache und Literatur. Sie schloss ihr Magisterstudium der Neueren deutschen Literatur, Philosophie und Kunstgeschichte 2010 an der LMU-München ab. Email: sgoeth@binghamton.edu
“Visuelle Metaphern in den Gedichten Rilkes”:
Im ausgehenden 19. Jh. sahen sich die Literaten in Deutschland in eine tiefe Krise gestürzt, die in Hugo von Hofmannsthals berühmten „Chandos-Brief“ als eine allgemeine „Sprachkrise“ diagnostiziert wird. Diese Entwicklung kann als Folge von transzendentalen philosophischen Überlegungen seit Ende des 18. Jh. gesehen werden, welche konstatieren, dass man keinen gesicherten Zugang zur äußeren Wirklichkeit mehr hat. Das Entbehren der vorher gesicherten Referenz der äußeren Wirklichkeit geht einher mit einer Krise ihrer Repräsentation. Die Sprache verliert demnach ihren privilegierten Status Wirklichkeit erfassen und ausdrücken zu können.
Mein Vortrag soll sich der Frage widmen, inwieweit Literaten einen Ausweg aus dieser Krise beschreiten. Ich möchte mich vor allem mit den Gedichten Rainer Maria Rilkes beschäftigen, wobei Rilkes Überwindung der verstummten Sprache als exemplarisch für viele weitere Literaten jener Zeit gelten kann.
Thomas Kerth is Professor of German and Stony Brook University, where he teaches courses in German literature and medieval studies. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Indiana University, and his Ph.D. from Yale. He has edited texts for the Altdeutsche Textbibliothek and the Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, and written scholarly articles on a variety of medieval subjects. He also edited, along with Robert M. Browning and George C. Schoolfield, a series of literary anthologies for the German classroom. His latest book-length publications are a translation of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven’s Lanzelet (2005) and a monograph, King Rother and His Bride (2010). Email: tkerth@notes.cc.sunysb.edu
“König Rother: A Structural Masterpiece”
König Rother (ca. 1150-60) is the earliest of the works that comprise the genre traditionally designated as the Minstrel Epic. It achieves masterpiece status because of its importance in literary history, for it introduces into German literature the structure, derived from a Middle-Eastern model, that comes to define the perilous bridal quest, elements of which can be found in many subsequent and major master pieces of medieval literature, and from genres as diverse as the heroic epic and the courtly romance.
Eckhard Kuhn-Osius is Associate Professor of German at Hunter College, CUNY. He is widely recognized for his scholarship on theory and practice of foreign language teaching. He has taught at the University of Colorado, Vassar, Princeton, and Columbia University. His research focuses on developing the proficiency of students in foreign languages. As Chair of the Testing Commission of the American Association of Teachers of German he has been active in assessment and standardized testing. His literary interests span the theoretical (theory of understanding, diaries) and practical (research on the impact of World War I on German literature, Heinrich Böll). Email: ekuhnos@hunter.cuny.edu
“Why a Masterwork? Goethe’s “Erlkönig” and His Brothers"
Like all aesthetic judgments, claims to masterwork status are determined by culture and history. In our hyperbolic times, the word may just be an empty generic term of praise. To fill it with concrete meaning, I will distinguish between the “Meisterstück” status of a well-wrought language artifact, which exhibits successful interplay among the poem’s language and content form and its meaning, and a “Meisterwerk”, which is anchored in the canon for centuries. A “Meisterwerk” is a “Meisterstück” that interacts with the reader through the structures of its “Leerstellen” so that, even when the work is read on its own terms, the work eludes readings that would permit conclusive assimilation into the prevalent interpretive schemata of the day. The differences between “Meisterwerk” and “Meisterstücke” will be discussed using poems by Goethe, Herder, Bürger, and Rammstein.
Julia Ludewig is a teaching assistant for the Department of German and Russian Studies at the University of Binghamton where she teaches German to beginners. She is also a PhD candidate at the Department of Comparative Literature. She holds a B.A. degree in Cultural Studies (University of Frankfurt/Oder) and an M.A. degree in European Linguistics (University of Freiburg). Her research interests include literature and linguistics. Email: jludewi1@binghamton.edu
“Metaphern aus linguistischer Sicht”
Mein Vortrag wird eine kurze Einführung in die Metapherntheorie geben. Dabei werde ich mich auf Ansätze konzentrieren, die aus der kognitiven Linguistik stammen. Anhand von Beispielen sollen Metaphern als ein alltägliches Phänomen sprachlicher Kreativität gewürdigt und ihre Grundmechanismen erläutert werden.
Elena Mancini received her Ph.D. in German Studies from Rutgers University. Her biography of Magnus Hirschfeld, Magnus Hirschfeld and the Quest for Sexual Freedom: A History of the First International Sexual Freedom Movement, was recently published by Palgrave. She has taught at Hunter College, Montclair University and Rutgers, and is the Culture Editor of Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture. She is also working on several German-English translation projects including a work by Hirschfeld, and is active as an Information Officer at DAAD New York. Email: elemancini@aol.com
“Magnus Hirschfeld’s The Homosexuality of Men and Women: An Unrecognized Masterpiece”: At a time in which German national identity and nationalist political ambitions were deeply invested in the expression of Aryan and Hellenic paragons of masculinity and the retrenchment of patriarchal gender roles as they were in Wilhelmine Germany, sexologist and social activist Magnus Hirschfeld thwarted prevailing notions concerning the basic tenets of human sexual identity and launched a vigorous and unprecedented campaign to decriminalize homosexuality and to emancipate sexually marginalized groups. Avid researcher, clinician, activist and sexual ethnographer, Hirschfeld composed over 1,000 works on the topic of sexuality. This paper will discuss his 1914 opus, The Homosexuality of Men and Women, as an unrecognized masterpiece in the cultural, historical and scientific study of human sexuality. The first leader of an international campaign to repeal anti-homosexual legislation, Hirschfeld’s sexual theories were no less pioneering. His theory of sexual intermediaries overturned the fixed dual gender model of male and female, maintaining that absolute conformity to either one of these two genders was a fiction, and that these categories failed to represent the complexity of human sexual identity. A truer reflection of the truth, according to this theory, was that each individual manifested varying degrees of maleness and femaleness on a male-female continuum.
Imke Meyer is Professor and Co-Chair of the Bryn Mawr-Haverford Bi-College Department of German. At Bryn Mawr, she teaches courses on German and Austrian literature, culture, and film. She has published widely on authors and filmmakers such as Ludwig Tieck, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, Franz Kafka, Ingeborg Bachmann, Elfriede Jelinek, Michael Haneke, and Barbara Albert. Her most recent monograph, Männlichkeit und Melodram: Arthur Schnitzlers erzählende Schriften appeared with Königshausen & Neumann in 2010. Email: ixmeyer@brynmawr.edu
“Three Masterpieces and the Anti-Semitic Imagination: Schnitzler’s Leutnant Gustl, Wagner’s Lohengrin, and Mendelssohn’s Paulus-Oratorium"
Arthur Schnitzler, who often assumed a rather critical stance towards his own works, referred to his novella Leutnant Gustl shortly after its completion in July 1900 as a probable “Meisterwerk.” In his literary portrait of a Habsburg military officer, Schnitzler famously critiques turn-of-the-century Vienna’s anti-Semitic climate. Schnitzler’s merciless dissection of anti-Semitism and bourgeois hypocrisy is enacted not just through a critique of military culture, but likewise, I argue, through a juxtaposition of two other Meisterwerke: Felix Mendelssohn’s Paulus-Oratorium and Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin.
Rosmarie T. Morewedge teaches German language, literature and cultural studies at Binghamton University. Deeply interested in problems of narration, she works with both medieval historical “minstrel” epics, but also the modern short story and Märchen. Other scholarly interests are poetry and pedagogy. She has published on Wolfram von Eschenbach, medieval poetry, medieval folktales, Märchen and on a number of modern authors, most recently on Ruth Klüger. Her publications in pedagogy include a textbook for students of German on intermediate and advanced levels that develops integrated language/culture skills as well as close reading and literary interpretation. Email: rmorewed@binghamton.edu
“Herzog Ernst: a Masterpiece of Medieval Narration”
Duke Ernest B (~1150-1180), a pre-courtly historical MHG epic, does not rank among the best known works of medieval literature, yet it deserves to be ranked among masterpieces of narration, and I should like to take the opportunity to show why this is so. With a large corpus of extant manuscripts that attest to its narrative impact and the high regard accorded it even in the late Middle Ages, Herzog Ernst tells the story of a Bavarian duke who suddenly finds himself raised to the top of the medieval social/political hierarchy when he becomes the adopted son of the emperor Otto. But as quickly as royal favor is gained, it is also lost through betrayal. As in later Arthurian romances, the bipartite structure of the epic requires the protagonist to come to terms with his loss and to seek restoration, which he attempts to accomplish in exile as a crusader. This paper explores how narration itself has contributed to the epic’s status as a masterwork that has been retold since the early Middle Ages in so many versions in verse and prose that it can be identified as an iconic unstable text. I shall show how the contestations in the text are solved through sacred ritual, but shall point out that the narrative reaches closure only when Duke Ernest is finally granted his desire to tell his story as first person narrator.
Neil Christian Pages teaches at Binghamton University. His research interests include Austrian, German and Scandinavian cultural productions, commemorative practices, translation and the history of criticism. Publications include essays on Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Georg Brandes, W.G. Sebald, Adalbert Stifter, on Rachel Whiteread’s Shoah memorial in Vienna and Michael Haneke’s film Caché. He is co-editor (with Mary Rhiel and Ingeborg Majer-O’Sickey) of Riefenstahl Screened: An Anthology of New Criticism. Email: npages@binghamton.edu
“’Effi geht voll ab’: Teaching Cultural Competency through the German Novel”
This presentation seeks to explore the kinds of intercultural compentencies can we discover in literary texts and how can we teach students of German to read for and recognize these competencies. Building on Sarah Schackert’s presentation, my remarks will address a course I currently teach, German Lit’s Greatest Hits: The Modern Novel, and its attempts to teach cultural history and cultural competency through literature. In particular, I will focus on Theodor Fontane’s ‘masterpiece’, Effi Briest, in order to explore the problems and possibilities of reading through the lens of intercultural competency and to ask what we gain and what we lose when we rely on literary texts as tools for developing cultural competency.
Kerstin Petersen teaches Elementary German at Binghamton University. She earned an M.A. in English Literature, History, and Philosophy from the Philipps-Universität in Marburg and an M.A. in German as a Foreign Language. She is currently working on her PhD in Comparative Literature. Email: kpeters7@binghamton.edu
“Metaphern bei Rainer Maria Rilke - Vorschläge zur Vermittlung im DaF-Unterricht”
Die Vermittlung von Literatur und speziell von Metaphern im DaF-Unterricht ist vielfach diskutiert worden. Auf der einen Seite stellt die oft komplexe literarische Sprache ein Problem dar. Auf der anderen aber ermöglichen die Lektüre der Zielsprachen-Literatur und die Arbeit mit Metaphern dem Lerner einen subjektiven Zugang zur Kultur der Zielsprache. Zusätzlich kann der Umgang mit literarischen Texten die eigene Kreativität fördern und durch sinnvolle Einbettung in den DaF-Unterricht kann die Fertigkeit Schreiben geschult und verbessert werden. Rainer Maria Rilke gehört zu den herausragenden Dichtern im deutschsprachigen Raum und seine Lyrik sicherlich zu den Meisterwerken der deutschsprachigen Literatur. Dementsprechend wird die Vermittlung von Metaphern mithilfe ausgewählter Gedichte von Rilke diskutiert und ein entsprechender Unterrichtsentwurf vorgestellt werden.
Rachael A. Salyer completed a B.A. in English and German and earned an M.A. in German Studies from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She spent a year studying at Ruprecht-Karls Universität in Heidelberg before continuing on with the PhD in German Studies at UMass. While working on her Ph.D. she earned a second Master's degree, an M.S. in Library and Information Science from Simmons College. She has taught numerous German, literature, and writing courses, and has also worked as an archivist. Currently, she is at work on a dissertation that focuses on the portrayal of different aspects of identity (e.g., gender, ethnicity, and religion) in the Middle High German "Spielmannsepen." Email: rasalyer@gmail.com
“keiner slahte minne: A Quest Fulfilled and a Love Unconsumated in the MHG ‘Spielmannsepik’ Orendel”
The literature of the Middle Ages, in general, and the Middle High German Spielmannsepen, in particular, abound with heroes who embark on journeys in order to win themselves brides. Many such bride quests function as formulaic plot devices that provide each hero with the opportunity to find a suitable wife who will bear his children and ensure the continuation of his line. The bride quest in König Rother, for example, results not only in the birth of an heir for Rother as a man, but also, more importantly, as a king. This emphasis on heredity and succession is not, however, the focus of the bride quest in Orendel. In fact, although Orendel woos and wins the favor of Bride, thus ostensibly completing his quest, he and his wife are denied the opportunity to consummate their relationship. Each time Orendel and Bride retire to her chambers, an angel appears and informs Orendel that he “keiner slahte minne / mit frouw Briden salt beginnen” (lines 3914-3915). Such angelic intervention is commonplace in Orendel, and in each other occurrence, divine messengers offer the hero aid of some sort; therefore, it follows that this interference also serves some positive purpose. In the case of Orendel, then, that which on the surface appears to be a typical bride quest turns out, on closer examination, to be something a little different. I argue that the poet uses the bride quest in this text as a structural device that gives the hero and his bride a reason—and the freedom—to undertake various journeys throughout the text. Under the guise of winning, guarding, and rescuing one another, Orendel and Bride are actually defending the Holy Sepulchre and protecting the Holy Robe. In this paper, then, I will examine how the superficial appearance of Orendel’s bride quest actually belies a much deeper subtext.
Sarah Schackert ist wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin der Professur für Interkulturelle Erziehung, Institut für Schulpädagogik, an der Philipps-Universität Marburg. Sie erwarb ihr erstes Staatsexamen in den Fächern Deutsch, Ethik und Deutsch als Fremdsprache an der Philipps-Universität Marburg. Neben der Arbeit an ihrer Dissertation zum Thema "Bildungserfolgreiche Migration in Deutschland und den USA" leitet sie im Moment ein Forschungsprojekt zur Dokumentation und Evaluation von interkulturellem Kompetenzerwerb durch schulische Austauschprojekte und hat eine Kurzzeitdozentur an der Adam-Mickiewicz-Universität in Poznan, Polen inne.
Kontakt: Sarah.Schackert@staff.uni-marburg.de
“Literatur und interkulturelle Kompetenz – Ein Beitrag zur Kanondebatte im FSU“
Interkulturelle Kompetenz gilt in Zeiten der Globalisierung und der Migration als eine der wichtigsten Schlüsselkompetenzen, deren Vermittlung, Förderung und Schulung insbesondere im FSU immer wieder diskutiert und eingefordert wird und deren Chancen und Probleme seit längerer Zeit Fachliteratur und Konferenzbetrieb dominieren. Der Vortrag beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, welche Bedeutung Literatur in diesem Zusammenhang zukommt. Was können literarische Meisterwerke zur Vermittlung von interkultureller Kompetenz beitragen? Und welche textorientierten Methoden sind zu diesem Zweck einzusetzen?
Karl Ivan Solibakke is an Associate Research Professor for Modern German Literature and Culture at Syracuse University, where he is completing two volumes on cultural memory in visual and textual contexts. Since the release of his monograph on Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard in 2005, Solibakke has edited ten volumes and published more than 35 articles on Benjamin, Jelinek, Heine, Uwe Johnson, Goethe, Schiller, Kafka, and Gustav Mahler. Solibakke was appointed Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for Budget and Long-Range Planning in June 2009. Email: ksolibak@syr.edu
“Meisterwerke: Jelinek (über-)trifft Velazquez”:
Der Vortrag setzt sich zum Ziel, Bilder auf ihre literalen Sinnverweisungen und Texte auf ihre Bildlichkeit hin zu untersuchen, indem die Konvergenzen zwischen einem klassischen Meisterwerk des spanischen Hofmalers Velazquez und den Zext-Bild-Verhältnissen in Elfriede Jelineks preisgekröntes Hörspiel Jackie erörtert werden. In der Nachfolge des Attentats im November 1963 ist die Witwe Kennedys zur Pathosformel einer traumatisierten Weltöffentlichkeit avanciert, die in der Folge eines ‚demokratischen Regizids’ nach Halt und Trost rang. In bleibender Erinnerung sind die Bilder von Kennedys rosafarbenem Kostüm, das Jelinek als Sinnbild für eine kollektive Wunde markiert und dessen Abbild noch heute den Anspruch auf Kultcharakter besitzt. Der Reliquienstatus des Kleidungsstücks rührt nicht zuletzt daher, dass Kennedy das blutverschmierte Kostüm nach dem Attentat nicht auszog, weder für die Amtseinführung Johnsons auf dem Rollfeld in Dallas und den anschließenden Flug nach Washington mit dem Leichnam des ermordeten Präsidenten, noch während der Aufbahrung des toten Staatsoberhaupts in der Rotunde des Kapitolgebäudes. Das Objekt und dessen Bedeutung für die kollektive Wahrnehmung bilden einen Schwellenraum für die Souveränität des Blicks, wie Foucault ihn in seiner Analyse von Las Meninas in Die Ordnung der Dinge darlegt. Dieser Schwellenraum hält eine Schaubühne für das unendliche Vexierspiel von Fragen nach der Souveränität allseits anerkannter Meisterwerke bereit – nach der des Künstlers bzw. des Darstellers, sowie nach der des Modells, des Bildbetrachters und des im Bildhintergrund widergespiegelten Regentenpaars.
Nicholas Theis is a third-year PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the interactions between literature, philosophy, aesthetics, and anthropology in the long eighteenth century. Email: ntheis@sas.upenn.edu
“Groundwork for the Meisterwerk: Bodmer’s Design for Klopstock’s Messias”
In 1749 Johann Jakob Bodmer knew precisely what would be required to create a German masterpiece: a trained yet natural-born poet (“poetisches Naturell”), a culturally and religiously relevant work (preferably a Biblical epic), and carefully argued criticism that demonstrated the poet’s genius and the work’s superiority. His model was John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Joseph Addison’s critical popularization of the epic in The Spectator. Bodmer had already done his best to extend Paradise Lost’s status as a masterpiece in the German-speaking regions: He published six different translations of the work over a period of fifty years, a point-by-point defense of Milton’s aesthetics (against Voltaire and others) in a treatise on wonder, and countless letters in periodicals. This paper examines Bodmer’s framing fiction and considers how the critic establishes the genius of the poet, the sublime nature of the work, and an English cultural event as a German one through the invocation of German cultural idols and the pacification of objections on grounds of “mere” translation, cultural impropriety, and heretical appropriation of Scripture. Klopstock’s masterpiece is unthinkable in its context without the groundwork laid by Bodmer as its master critic.
Astrid Weigert has been a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of German at Georgetown University since 1999. Her research interests include issues of gender and genre, particularly in German Romanticism. She is currently preparing a monograph on Dorothea Veit-Schlegel’s contributions to German Romantic theory and practice. Astrid is the Book Review Editor for The German Quarterly and the incoming German Area Director for NeMLA. She teaches courses on all undergraduate levels at Georgetown, from Basic German to German Business Culture and courses on German literature and culture. Email: weigerta@georgetown.edu
“Isn’t It Romantic? – gender and canonicity on the undergraduate level” My presentation addresses issues of gender and canonicity in the context of teaching an upper-level undergraduate course (in German) on German Romanticism. In conceptualizing and teaching several iterations of such a course, entitled “Isn’t It Romantic?”, I have struggled to include works by female writers of the period. The reasons for this difficulty are manifold: on a practical level, issues of access to the works - including price, availability in modern German print, length, and linguistic appropriateness – present considerable stumbling blocks. On an intellectual level, the question arises as to how students can access the merits and distinctive features of female-authored works if they are not sufficiently familiar with those male-authored works that constitute the “Romantic canon.” In speaking to these questions, I will reflect on experiences in the specific course mentioned above, present my current syllabus, and investigate what changes might be possible and how they could be implemented. As such, my presentation aims to raise questions rather than answer them.
Harald Zils (Dr. phil. Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg) teaches German Studies at Binghamton University. His research interests include anthropological perspectives on literature, the German essay during the Kaiserreich and aesthetic theories of production and reception. His Tradition und Autonomie. Innovativer Konservatismus bei Rudolf Borchardt, Harold Bloom und Botho Strauß appeared in 2009. Email: hzils@binghamton.edu
“Meister des Augenblicks“
Traditionell haben Meisterwerke „groß“ zu sein. Fragmente und Prosaskizzen seit der Romantik und mehr noch in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts entsprechen aber weder in Umfang noch Gestus einem bürgerlichen Anspruch auf sichtbare Leistung. Anhand von Prosa-Epiphanien aus Ernst Jüngers Das Abenteuerliche Herz soll gezeigt werden, wie ein konservativer Autor den Gedanken der Meisterschaft in die literarische Moderne rettet und dabei Walter Benjamins Denkbildern aus Berliner Kindheit um 1900 und Einbahnstraße merkwürdig nahekommt.
For questions, please contact Neil Christian Pages or Harald Zils.