Looking Forward, Looking Back: Image, Imagination, and Media
5^th Biennial Graduate Student Conference

Department of Germanic Studies

Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana

February 18-20, 2005

Keynote Address by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young

 

The term “image” bears various meanings, literal and figurative, receptive and productive.  In a literal sense, images are pictures or other visual representations.  These images are either created reproductively and constitute memory and identity or they are constructed productively to generate fantasies of something new.  “Image,” on the other hand, can also be defined as reputation or outward presentation of identity, that is, how an individual or group is perceived or would like to be perceived either by observers or constituents.  In light of recent debates on such issues as the representation and reception of collective memory, monuments and commemoration, and national identity, as well as linguistic discussions on the derivation of form and meaning, this conference will engage in examinations of images and their roles in imagination and media as they are relevant to the field of Germanic Studies. 

 

This conference aims to consider questions such as the following:  What mechanisms of imagination are involved in literary and other aesthetic production, as well as in language competence?  What roles do image, imagination, and media play in the processes of identity formation and community building?  How is imagination represented and/or steered by the media?  In linguistics, what can a limited access to media, such as older Germanic texts, still convey about a language or dialect?  How can views of history such as nostalgia, collective memory, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, etc. be explored using the concepts of image, imagination, and media?  What role do national memories and/or fantasies play in international and domestic decision-making? 

Call for Papers

We invite contributions that explore image, imagination, and media in all their manifestations.  The conference welcomes papers from all areas of Germanic Studies that investigate these issues, and encourages interdisciplinary and comparative scholarship that places German and Germanic Studies in a larger context. 

 

Possible topics include, but are not limited to: