CFP: Siegfried Kracauer as Novelist, AGS Annual Conference, Trinity College, Dublin (April 15, 2023)

Hans Lind Announcement
Location
Ireland
Subject Fields
German History / Studies, Jewish History / Studies, Literature, Sociology, Film and Film History

CFP Panel: Siegfried Kracauer as Novelist

Association for German Studies in Great Britain and Ireland: Annual Conference at Trinity College Dublin, August 29-31, 2023

Siegfried Kracauer is well-known for his seminal works in film psychology and sociology. Less well-known are Kracauer’s contributions to German literature. Apart from several short stories, two novels were written by Kracauer. Ginster (1928) has been called “an obstinate anti-war novel” which pairs a “stubborn pacifism” with Kracauer’s own “gift of careful observation.” Georg (1934), Kracauer’s second autobiographical novel, posthumously published in 1973, features a protagonist “compelled to write” since the war “did not end the persecution of the Jews,” but instead “made things worse,” with “the death toll doubling every day” (Kracauer).

The panel aims at making Kracauer’s literary oeuvre more visible within German Studies. We welcome a broad variety of perspectives and topics on Kracauer as a novelist and as a writer of short stories (e.g., autofictionality, otherness, trauma theory, pacifism, queer theory, etc.). Also welcome are investigations that analyze Kracauer’s literary work as a prefiguration of his later observations in his long-thought-lost book Die totalitäre Propaganda, which was published only recently following the rediscovery of a barely legible shorthand manuscript.  

Please send proposals for a twenty-minute presentation to hans.lind[at]aya.yale.edu until April 15, 2023.

Contact Email
hans.lind@aya.yale.edu