Re: Conference: From Aachen to Zwölfkinder . Germany 14-16 June 2002

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

I knew that I had something in my archives...

Thema:   International Pynchon Conference, Call for Papers
Datum:  24.04.01 17:14:27 (MEZ) - Mitteleurop. Sommerzeit
From:   krafftjm at muohio.edu (John M. Krafft)
Sender: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org
To: pynchon-l at waste.org

                          Call for Papers

             Site-Specific: From Aachen to Zwölfkinder
                          Pynchon:Germany

                    An International Conference
   Centered around the many German contexts into which Pynchon's
   work is--and, so rumor has it, will be once more--inscribed.

                Hosted by the University of Cologne
          Organized by Hanjo Berressem and John M. Krafft

      Friday afternoon to Sunday afternoon, June 14-16, 2002

It is symptomatic of the German connections in Pynchon's work that
the Pynchon Notes index to Gravity's Rainbow--which
lists terms ranging from the real "Aachen" to the imaginary
"Zwölfkinder"--is framed by two German references. Its connotations
ranging from dark spectre of the Western soul to Deleuzian Zone,
Germany has been continually and relentlessly coded and overcoded
in Pynchon's work. The German landscape has been a text to decipher
and redecipher, a glyph to read and reread, a discursive as well as
a real space to walk, drive or ride through, to fly across, to
dissect and to traverse from the height of the Brocken to the depth
of the Mittelwerke.

Germany has spawned filmmakers such as der Springer, witches such
as Geli Tripping, victims such as Bianca, engineers such as Kurt
Mondaugen, impresarios such as Thanatz and G. M. B. Haftung, and
Verbindungsmenschen such as Wimpe. German references span Wagner to
Weber, Rilke to Rathenau, Spengler to Engels, Euler to Einstein, IG
Farben to Ufa, Grimm to Grimmelshausen, Thurn and Taxis to Radio
Cologne, and Bavaria to Peenemünde. Even one of the best jokes in
Gravity's Rainbow (the one about the woman congenitally
unable to pronounce umlauts, so that "Hübsch Räuber" comes out
"Hubschrauber"), steeped as it is in a German context, indicates
the depths of Pynchon's interest in and knowledge of Germany.

Some of these German connections have been investigated (in the
summer of 2000, a dozen Pynchon scholars even visited several
German sites featured in Gravity's Rainbow), but an effort
is long overdue to provide a general context for these references.

For this purpose, we invite scholars--from Germany and
elsewhere--to contribute to a mapping of Germany onto any of
Pynchon's texts and v.v. These contributions can be micro- as well
as macromappings. Possible subjects include German allusions and
references in the texts (historical, political, philosophical,
cultural, artistic), German references brought to the texts
(reader-response theory, systems theory, the theory of
Aufschreibsysteme, German philosophy, etc.), the reception
of the texts in Germany, the translations into German, among many
others.

Each speaker will be allotted 30 minutes for a presentation or a
presentation plus Q and A. All papers will be presented in plenary
session.

Selected proceedings of the conference will be published as a
special issue of Pynchon Notes: Pynchon:Germany.

Deadline for submission of 300-500-word abstracts, November 15,
2001. Decisions by January 1, 2002.

E-mail abstracts to either
Hanjo Berressem, Universit„t zu Köln,
   hanjo.berressem at uni-koeln.de, or
John M. Krafft, Miami University-Hamilton,
   krafftjm at muohio.edu.


John M. Krafft, English               | Miami University/Hamilton
Tel: (513) 785-3258 or 868-2330  | 1601 Peck Boulevard
Fax: (513) 785-3145                    | Hamilton, OH  45011-3399
E-mail: krafftjm at muohio.edu
WWW: http://www.ham.muohio.edu/~krafftjm

 
Kurt-Werner Pörtner
 
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