CFP: Writing in Crisis: The Literature of the 1920s (NeMLA Philadelphia; March 11-14, 2021)

Leonie Ettinger Announcement
Location
Pennsylvania, United States
Subject Fields
German History / Studies, Literature, Cultural History / Studies, Composition & Rhetoric, Humanities

CFP: Writing in Crisis: The Literature of the 1920s

Submission deadline: September 30, 2020
Northeast Modern Language Association, NeMLA
March 11-14, 2021, Philadelphia

The 1920s was a decade of widespread crisis. In the aftermath of the First World War, the Western World saw the rise of nativism and protectionism, the fissuring and crumbling of colonial empires, violent clashes between labor and capital, communists and fascists, and changes in traditional authority and governmental structures. Benjamin Ziemann has noted that, despite this turmoil––and because of it––contemporary observers believed that the interwar years were bound to become a “threshold to a new era.” This panel will focus on the 1920s as a period in which the very pervasiveness and permanence of crisis in every sphere of life challenged literature to develop new modes of representation and action across political, social, aesthetic, and communicative systems.

Drawing on Reinhardt Koselleck’s notion of crisis as a moment of judgment or decision, we will focus on the role that literature in this decade across national and aesthetic traditions played in diagnosing crises and envisioning alternative futures. Are, for instance, newly innovated formal techniques (like montage, journalistic reportage, or stream of consciousness) better suited to encountering certain types or aspects of crisis? Is it more productive to grasp crisis by analogy, by stressing its continuity with the problems of the past, or by insisting on its singularity? And how do textual depictions of crisis addressed to a mass audience transform reception and response? We invite submissions across language disciplines, with the goal of reinvigorating our understanding of the crises of the 1920s, as well as examine their relevance and relation to the present.

Please submit an abstract of 150-300 words and a brief bio through the NeMLA website: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/18930

For inquiries about the panel, please contact:
Michael Lipkin, Visiting Assistant Professor, Germanic Studies, University of Maryland, mlipkin@umd.edu
Leonie Ettinger, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of German, NYU, leonie.ettinger@nyu.edu

 

Contact Information

For inquiries about the panel, please contact:
Michael Lipkin, Visiting Assistant Professor, Germanic Studies, University of Maryland, mlipkin@umd.edu
Leonie Ettinger, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of German, NYU, leonie.ettinger@nyu.edu