Call for Applications to GSA Seminar "Model Realities: On Simulationstechniken".
German Studies Association Annual Conference in Houston, Texas, September 15-18, 2022.
Abstract: The rapid intrusion of computer simulations into nearly all domains of modern life has lent new urgency to questions concerning the ontology, epistemology, and ethics of “model” realities or fictional worlds. What can humanistic scholars and methods contribute to these discussions? This seminar aims to advance the genealogy of simulation technologies and techniques [Simulationstechniken] developed in recent work by German philosophers, media theorists, and historians of science and technology (e.g., Blumenberg, Kittler, Gramelsberger), who have worked to situate contemporary computer simulations within a much longer historical tradition of world-modeling that dates back to ancient discussions of mimesis and technē. Alongside theoretical debates about the evolution and function of such model realities, we will explore historically- and medially-specific paradigms for modeling or simulating reality, from fields as diverse as historical poetics, cartography, psychoanalysis, and contemporary computer simulation. In so doing, we hope to uncover affinities as well as discontinuities in the history of simulation techniques, while cultivating interdisciplinary networks across German studies, media studies, Digital Humanities, and Science and Technology Studies.
Format: The basis for group discussion will be a pre-circulated reader containing foundational essays on the theory and long history of “simulation techniques” from Blumenberg, Kittler, et al. Participants will also submit for pre-circulation a short exposé of a simulation technique of interest to their research, against which these theoretical models may be tested and elaborated.
Application: Those interested in participating in the seminar must submit an application through the GSA portal by 11:59 PM EST on March 14, 2022. Applicants should submit in addition to a short CV an abstract describing a Simulationstechnik of interest to their own research and its relation to core concerns of the seminar. Applicants must be GSA members in order to submit an abstract.
Please contact the seminar organizers Jake Fraser (frasermj@reed.edu) or Christina Vagt (vagt@ucsb.edu) with any questions.
Redaktion: Constanze Baum – Lukas Büsse – Mark-Georg Dehrmann – Nils Gelker – Markus Malo – Alexander Nebrig – Johannes Schmidt
Diese Ankündigung wurde von H-GERMANISTIK [Johannes Schmidt] betreut – editorial-germanistik@mail.h-net.msu.edu
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