15, 2008

"Thinking Urban Space"

University of Pennsylvania
Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures
Graduate Student Conference
Friday, February 15, 2008

Deadline: December 31, 2007

A fictional Metropolis for Fritz Lang. New York for Kafka's Karl Roßmann.
Dresden for Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. From the fin de siècle to the Wende,
urban spaces have played and continue to play a fundamental role in modern
German literary and visual culture. This conference seeks to illuminate the
alleys and shadows of the metonymic "city" in German society. How do we
construct space in an urban landscape and, more specifically, how do we
perceive it through, for example, literature, film, and photography? How
have urban spaces formally affected various media, and reciprocally, how
have various media affected the city? How exactly do we see (or sometimes
even choose to ignore) the city? Or conversely, as Kafka's Roßmann observes,
how does urban space perceive us?

We welcome submissions in the fields of German culture, literature, film,
photography, architecture, art history, history, philosophy, or from
scholars engaging with any of the following or other topics relating to
urban space:

Urban vs. suburban or rural space
Past, present, and future of cities
Land and water
Mobility, transportation
Migration, immigration
Cultural, racial, or class conflict in the city
Threats of/to urban space
Construction, evolution, destruction of space
Effects of religion and ideologies
Urban sprawl
Eastern vs. Western spaces
Origins of the German city
The city in artistic movements
Gendered spaces; gender in the city
Characteristics of "German" space
Urban space under National Socialism
Public art, graffiti
City parks, concealment of the urban
Cosmopolitan culture
Spatial dimensions

Deadline for submission of abstracts (one page, in English):

December 31, 2007

Submit abstracts to: malczyksas.upenn.edu