Photobooks, Photo Essays, and the Body.
This panel series explores the status of the body within, and in relation to, German-language photobooks and photo essays in magazines and newspapers from the 19th century to the present. Focusing on discourse about the body as well as techniques of depicting and engaging the bodies of photographer, subject, and viewer, we ask how the genres of the photobook and photo essay generate new knowledge about corporeality. For example, how did these genres take up and transform physiognomic discourse? What role did medical and criminological photography play in the development of these genres? How did depictions of the mutilated body in works published after World War I and World War II affect the representation of the (often male) body? What kinds of ideologies and aesthetic experiences are promoted or generated by forms like the stereoscopic photobook?

We invite papers that examine these ideas from the perspectives of literary studies, art history, media history, the history of science, and related disciplines.

Topics might include, but are not limited to:
- Depictions of the body, encompassing, e.g., portraiture, body image, body modifications, wounds, trauma
- Gender, sexuality, race, class, disability, and the body
- The body and politics
- Human and/vs. animal bodies
- The body and technology
- The medicalized body (healthy and ill bodies, aging bodies, reproducing bodies)
- Viewers’ corporeal interactions with photobooks/photo essays
- The body of the photographer

Please submit a 250-word proposal and a short bio to the panel organizers Verena Kick (vk275georgetown.edu) and Jessica Resvick (jresvickoberlin.edu) by February 28th.