News
Women in German Studies association conference
From 4-6 July 2024, CACSSS hosted the annual Women in German Studies association conference. Organized by Rachel MagShamhráin, senior lecturer and Head of the Department of German, with the support of the Association committee, the three-day event’s banner topic was Barriers and Boundaries: interrogating ideas and practices of demarcation in German Studies.
Several papers and discussions examined issues of equality, access, diversification of student and staff bodies, and related questions of inclusion and solidarity. The keynote address, delivered by Prof. Eva Geulen director of the Centre for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL), Professor at the Department for Cultural History and Theory at the Humboldt University Berlin, entitled “Barriers Unbound,” reflected on the current state of our profession when viewed from the perspective of borders, barriers and boundaries. A plenary address by Prof. Margaret Menninger (Texas State University), executive director of the German Studies Association considered “German Studies as a Team Sport: Inclusion as a Method and Talking Point within the North American GSA.” Other speakers from universities around the globe, from the University of Sydney to Ohio State, Cornell, Leeds, Oxford, Louvain, presented their recent research projects on a broad range of topics from German translation (the first translation into German of Don Quixote), sociolinguistics (recent German state bans on the use of gender inclusive language), literary and cultural history (from Rahel Varnhagen’s art criticism to Ingeborg Bachmann’s poetry), cinema (post-Wall film) and music (1970s German feminist rock), as well as on academic policies and practices at their intersections with the discipline. Bringing together 37 people from around the world, the conference culminated in the AGM of the Women in German Studies Association, in which the organization committed to several concrete activities aimed at supporting vulnerable and marginalized members of our subject community and wider stakeholder population, including a change in the name of the association to reflect better this commitment to inclusion.
Full details of the programme are available here:
https://www.ucc.ie/en/german/news/wigs-2024-conference-programme-available.html
