Call for Papers for GSA session “Women and the Transition from the Third Reich to the Postwar Period”
41st German Studies Association Conference in Atlanta, Georgia (October 5 - 8, 2017)
DEADLINE 5 February
Women played a crucial role in both the processes of national reconstruction during the Third Reich and in the aftermath. Yet, the subject is often overlooked by the existing historiography on the postwar period. This panel asks: in what ways did women as cultural/political actors, and "women" as sites of anxiety and subjects of policing shape the transition to the postwar period? How do such studies help to challenge existing chronologies and assumptions about the postwar period and its relationship to the Third Reich, including the concept of “Stunde Null.” Most literature on German-speaking countries in the twentieth century is either written from a pre- or post-1945 vantage point, and the panel aims to bridge this divide.
In addition to interrogating the 1945 paradigm, the panel seeks to stimulate dialogue among historians about the Allied occupation in both East and West Germany--especially the immediate postwar period of direct Allied control--and in other countries occupied by the Third Reich during the Second World War. For this purpose, we invite papers from both young and established scholars that could address, but are not limited, to the following topics:
Legal and/or cultural representations of women during and after the Nazi period
Women in divided Germany and Austria
Jewish women in postwar German-speaking Europe
Women as subjects of policing or nation building
Interactions between women and occupying forces
Inter-zonal and/or inter-continental comparisons of the role women and gender played in strategies of denazification
Papers should not exceed 20 minutes in length. Please send your proposal (title and abstract, max. 500 words) and a one-page CV by February 5 to:
Chrissy Matzen (chrissy.matzen@mail.utoronto.ca) and Frances Tanzer (frances_tanzer@brown.edu)
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