The Class of Literature at the Graduate School Language & Literature Munich, in partnership with the Amerikahaus Munich and Bavarian American Academy, cordially invites you to the interdisciplinary and international Conference "Narrating and Constructing the Beach".

The beach confronts us with crucial issues of our times: migration, postcolonial relations and mass tourism, climate change and pollution, as well as gender and burkini swimwear controversies are among the numerous conflicts, discourses, and practices that manifest within this liminal zone and that find their focal point there. The international and interdisciplinary conference examines how the experience of the beach and its complex imaginaries are constructed through art, society, and culture and goes on to ask if and how ‘the beach’ shapes poetics and aesthetics. It aims at a systematic analysis of the global varieties of the beach, viewed as a (border) phenomenon in its own right, at once in historical depth and in relation to contemporary debates.

Dates: Thursday 14 – Saturday 16 June 2018
Venue: Amerikahaus Munich (Barer Straße 19a)

Talks will be given in English or German by 20 scholars and professors from different disciplines, with two poetry performances. Our two keynote speakers are:

Michael T. Taussig, Professor of Anthropology from Columbia University, New York: The Disappearance of the Sea and its Phantasmatic Return (Thursday, 14 June at 7 p.m. followed by a reception). Please register via: www.tinyurl.com/TheSea-Amerikahaus

Virginia Richter, Professor of Modern English Literature from the University of Bern: Stranded. The Beach as Ultimate Destination (Friday, 15 June at 9.30 a.m.).

For more information, please visit our website: www.prolit.uni-muenchen.de/projekte/konferenz/

PROGRAM

Thursday, 14 June 2018

9:30 Conference Introduction
10:00 Barbara Vinken (Munich): Stoff und Strand: Weniger ist mehr?
11:15 Anna Maria Mullally (Dublin): Taking the Plunge: Irish Women, the Beach and Emancipation (1870–1936)
12:00 Carol Bunch Davis (Galveston): Building a Black Sense of Place: Galveston’s African American Beaches and Lifeguards 1930–1970
14:30 Jeannot Moukouri Ekobe (Munich): Raum der Machtlosigkeit, Ort der Übergangslosigkeit: Der Strand als Abweichungsheterotopie in der Literatur von ‘Afropäern’
15:15 Ursula Kluwick (Bern): Bodies Arriving on the Beach
16:30 Nadja Grasselli / Federico Robol (Leipzig):
S h o r e l i n e s & S p a c e s (Reading & Sounds)
16:45 Florian Auerochs (Vechta): Müll/spill. Litorale ‘Petro-Topien’ in der Umweltfotografie
17:30 On Barak (Tel Aviv / Berlin): On Heat: Cultural Vibrancy and Environmental Crisis in the Middle Eastern Beach
19:00 KEYNOTE: Michael T. Taussig (New York): The Disappearance of the Sea and its Phantasmatic Return
We ask you to please register for the keynote lecture by Michael Taussig via this link: www.tinyurl.com/TheSea-Amerikahaus

Friday, 15 June 2018

9:30 KEYNOTE: Virginia Richter (Bern): Stranded. The Beach as Ultimate Destination
11:30 Carmen Ulrich (Wuppertal): Strandbekanntschaften in Georg Forsters "Reise um die Welt" und das europäische Projekt ‘Zivilisation’
12:15 Robert Bauernfeind (Augsburg): Der Strand als Bühne der Wunder. Das exotische Litoral in der flämischen Malerei des 17. Jahrhunderts
14:45 Konstantin Butz (Cologne): Surfing the Asphalted Beach: Maritime Voyages through Spaces of American Concrete
15:30 Dietrich Erben (Munich): Spuren und Bauten. Zur gebauten Ökologie des Strandes
16:45 Mark Olival-Bartley (Munich): The Prelude of "Oneawa" (Poetry Reading)
17:00 Roxanne Phillips (Munich): Time and Tide again. Permeable Spaces and Sensory Perceptions of the Beach in Theodor Storm’s "Aquis submersus" and David E. Kelley’s "Big Little Lies"
17:45 Christian Begemann (Munich): Stimmen über der Tiefe, gärender Schlamm, Wasserleichen: Strandzonen als Räume ‘transzendentaler Obdachlosigkeit’ bei Theodor Storm

Saturday, 16 June 2018

9:30 Myrto Stenou (Athens): Constructed Heterotopias by the Sea
10:30 Désirée Mangard / Miriam Strieder (Innsbruck): Wechselnde Gezeiten: Der Strand als Schauplatz für Wendepunkte in Heldendichtung und höfischer Literatur des Mittelalters
11:15 Thérèse De Raedt (Salt Lake City): Figuring the Intertidal Zones of Senegalese Beaches
12:15 Jack Parlett (Cambridge): Sex on the Beach: Gay Bodies on ‘70s Fire Island
13:00 Alberto Napoli (Bern): ‘Stile Balneare’: Narrating Summer on the Beach in Italian Popular Songs, 1960s–1980s
13:45 Concluding Discussion

We are looking forward to seeing you at the conference and the keynote lectures. Please also feel free to forward the invitation to those who are interested. Please contact us for further questions via: beach.conferencelmu.de

Admission is free.

Organizing Team: Carina Breidenbach, Stefan Brückl, Jeannot Moukouri Ekobe, Tamara Fröhler, Ines Ghalleb, Dominik Pensel, Roxanne Phillips, Katharina Simon, Florian Telsnig, and Martin Wittmann

Graduate School Language & Literature Munich – Class of Literature
In cooperation with: The Bavarian American Academy and Amerikahaus München
Sponsored by: The GraduateCenterLMU and Brillen Schneider