Writing East German History: What Difference Does the Cultural Turn Make?
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
December 5-6, 2008
In recent years, research on the GDR has profoundly changed. Junior scholars in the US and in Europe have begun to analyze popular experience and daily life to gain a deeper understanding of the East German polity. This cultural turn might have a special impact on the historiography of a society in which "culture" in all senses of the term was deeply influenced by the state's understanding of socialism. The question whether there is any viable distinction between "culture" and "politics" in the analysis of the GDR challenges our understanding of state, society, and culture of the GDR.
In North America, scholarship on the GDR has been marked by an openness to interdisciplinary approaches drawing on the social sciences and cultural studies. A parallel development has taken place in Europe, where GDR researchers have employed insights and approaches from media studies, discourse analysis, and transnational history.
This workshop seeks to illuminate these questions and to foster, a transatlantic dialogue on the cultural turn in GDR history. The conference aims to distinguish the different schools in GDR history on both sides of the Atlantic as well as to overcome national historiographical boundaries. Papers dealing with gender, race, sexuality, material or corporate culture, spatiality, visual culture, transnationality, semiotics, education, the body and sports, the making of collective memory, are welcomed. The conveners are seeking for papers with outstanding theoretical and methodological reflections. This event will be a one-day workshop with pre-circulated position papers.
Abstracts (1 page max.) should be submitted via e-mail along with a short C.V. by April 15, 2008 to [mailto]eli.rubin@wmich.edu[/mailto] or [mailto]balbier@ghi-dc.org[/mailto]
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Uta A. Balbier
German Historical Institute, Washington D.C.
1607 New Hampshire Ave. NW,
Washington DC 20009
USA
[mailto]balbier@ghi-dc.org[/mailto]