CFP: MLA Conference Panel: "Non-Human Animals in 19th-Century German Literature", San Francisco (18.3.22)

Call for Papers

Non-Human Animals in 19^th-Century German Literature

19^th- and Early-20^th-Century Forum on German LLC Panel

MLA Convention in San Francisco, CA (January 5–8, 2023)

Submission deadline: March 18, 2022

The 19^th-century canon of German-language literature has received significantly less attention by Literary Animal Studies than the 20^th-century canon. This is the case, despite the 19^th century witnessing a palpable shift in the representation of non-human animals from primarily anthropomorphized fantastical beings to more realistic creatures with whom we share the world. We invite papers that investigate any aspect of non-human animals as depicted or discussed in the literature of this period. We welcome approaches from any number of critical frameworks that could enrich or challenge our conceptions of animals and their literary representability, including post- or decolonial theory, animality studies, ecofeminism, disability studies, and posthumanism. Topics may include but are not limited to: the relation of textuality and animality, the semiotics and materiality of creatureliness, and non-human animals as sites of human ontological uncertainty. Papers might consider how 19^th-century developments in zoology (Oken, Darwin, and even popular zoological works such as Brehms Tierleben) or emerging notions of animal protection/rights left their traces on literary portrayals of the animal world, and vice versa. We encourage papers that explore the work of literary authors who were also zoologists (e.g., Büchner) and any genre of work in which animals play a central and/or peripheral role (e.g., the titular dog of Ebner-Eschenbach’s Krambambuli or the butterflies in Stifter’s Der Waldgänger). Do literary figurations of animals act as “contact zones” (Latour) between human and non-human creatures or as a “material-semiotic” (Haraway) construct at the intersection of human/non-human ontologies? How might 19^th-century German representations of non-human animals help in complexifying, clarifying, or resolving debates in or related to Critical Animal Studies?

Please submit 350-word abstracts and a short bio to Samuel Frederick (smf35@psu.edu) by Friday, March 18, 2022. If your proposal is accepted, you must be an MLA member by April 7, 2022. You may only have two roles at the convention

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Redaktion: Constanze Baum – Lukas Büsse – Mark-Georg Dehrmann – Nils Gelker – Markus Malo – Alexander Nebrig – Johannes Schmidt

Diese Ankündigung wurde von H-GERMANISTIK [Mark-Georg Dehrmann] betreut – editorial-germanistik@mail.h-net.msu.edu