German Studies Workshop Program
German Studies Workshop
3/31 and 4/1/2006, Garrison 100, UT Austin
The Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin is happy to announce the first German Studies Workshop organized with the support of the Texas Chair Endowment. Beginning in 2006, these bi-annual workshops will bring together 15-20 German studies scholars from the United States, Canada, and Europe to discuss key issues of modern German culture and society.
The theme of the first German Studies Workshop is
History Lessons: German Films about the Third Reich and the Holocaust
With the recent release of Der Untergang, Der neunte Tag, and Napola, a new phase in the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) has begun. Some refer to this phase as a normalization (or banalization) of German history. Others see it as part of larger trends in a contemporary film and media culture obsessed with virtual histories and nostalgic reconstructions. And yet others see close connections between the recent wave of Nazi heritage films and the public culture of commemoration, memorialization, and historicization in the New Berlin Republic. Sixty years after the release of Die Mörder sind unter uns, we propose to revisit the various political frameworks, institutional contexts, cultural movements, and historiographical debates and to take stock of the changing narrative, visual, and generic conventions that have defined the filmic confrontation with the Third Reich and the Holocaust since 1946. Topics to be discussed during the workshop include: the rubble film and the cinema of reconstruction; antifascism in the DEFA film, Holocaust documentaries made in Germany; German-Jewish encounters and reconciliations; feminist perspectives and women’s stories; post-unification and the return of genre cinema; documentary and avant-garde traditions; nostalgia and the heritage film; the Third Reich as cinematic spectacle and media event.
THIS WORKSHOP IS BY INVITATION ONLY; IT IS NOT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.
Friday March 31st, 2006
9:00 – 9:30 AM
Welcome by Sabine Hake and David Crew, conference organizers
Welcome by John Hoberman, Chair of Germanic Studies
Panel I: 9:30-11:45AM
Moderator: Robert Shandley (Texas A&M)
Gerd Gemünden (Dartmouth College): “Amidst the Ruins of Berlin: A Foreign Affair”
Eric Rentschler (Harvard University): “The Place of Rubble in the Trümmerfilm”
Stefan Soldovieri (University of Toronto): “Affective Anti-Fascism, the Combat Genre and the Undead in Fünf Patronenhülsen (1960)”
LUNCH12-2PM
Campus Club
Panel II: 2:00-3:30 PM
Moderator: David Crew (UT Austin)
Robert Moeller (UC Irvine): “Victims on the Silver Screen: West German War Movies and the “Unmastered Past”“
Alexander Pollak (Universität Wien): “Was vom Zweiten Weltkrieg übrig blieb: Stalingrad und Wehrmachtsmythos im Fernsehdokumentarfilm”
COFFEE BREAK 3:30-3:45PM
Panel III: 3:45-5:15PM
Moderator: Larson Powell (Texas A&M)
John Davidson (Ohio State University): “Aesthetic Confrontations with the Past? Coming to Germans with Documentaries of Social Representation in the Age of the New German Cinema”
Pascale Bos (University of Texas at Austin): “Germany is a Woman, and She is a Victim. Helke Sander’s BeFreier, Befreite and Contested Feminist Readings of Mass Rape”
7:30 PM-10PM DINNER at the Clay Pit
Saturday April 1, 2006
Panel IV: 9-11:45 AM
Moderator: Hans-Bernd Moeller (UT Austin)
David Brenner (Kent State University): “Taking On Schindler’s List: Affects and Effects of Identification in Michael Verhoeven’s Film Adaptation of George Tabori’s Mutters Courage”
Rick McCormick (University of Minnesota): “Feminist Cinema and the German Past: The Case of Margarethe von Trotta—From Marianne & Juliane (1981) to Rosenstrasse (2003)”
Muriel Cormican (University of West Georgia): “Redemptive Moments: Vilsmaier’s Comedian Harmonists and Leo und Claire”
12-2PM LUNCH
O’s Private Dining Room (ACE 2.222)
Panel V: 2:00-3:30PM
Moderator: Kit Belgum (UT Austin)
Paul Cooke (University of Leeds): “The Continually Suffering Nation? Cinematic Representations of German Victimhood”
Detlef Kannapin (Berlin): “Divided Memory in German Cinema
The Nazi Past in Movies from East and West before 1989. A Comparative Approach”
3:30-3:45 PM COFFEE BREAK
Panel VI: 3:45-5:15PM
Moderator: Joan Neuberger (UT Austin)
David Bathrick (Cornell University): “Whose History is it: The Reception of the Der Untergang in the USA”
Johannes von Moltke (University of Michigan): “Sympathy for the Devil: Cinema, History and the Politics of Emotion”
7:30-10PM Buffet-style dinner for workshop participants at Sabine Hake’s residence