Conference: Literature & Cultural Change

International Conference

Literature and Cultural Change

JLU Giessen/ GCSC (Rauischholzhausen Castle), May 20 – 23, 2015

Conference organizers:     Prof. Dr. Ingo Berensmeyer

                                               Prof. Dr. Herbert Grabes

                                               Prof. Dr. Ansgar Nünning

Funded by the GCSC and the Giessen University Association

Conference programme

Wed., May 20, 2015

(c. 16:15:) Arrival at Rauischholzhausen; coffee, informal opening

17-18 chair: Ingo Berensmeyer

17-18:  Herbert Grabes (Giessen), The Role of Literature in Major Cultural Turns

18  Dinne

19:30-20:15 chair: Herbert Grabes

19:30-20:15 Ingo Berensmeyer (Giessen), Literature in the Jet Age: Technological Change and Literary Inertia in Postwar Britain

Thurs., May 21,  2015

10  Arrival of GCSC participants and guests; coffee

[10:30-12 Chair:   Michael Basseler              

10:30-11:15  Winfried Fluck (Berlin): Narratives about Change in Literary and Cultural Theory

11:15-12:00  Sonja Schillings (Giessen): Hulga, the Punished Philosopher: The Issue of Political Interpretation in Literary Criticism

Lunch

[2-4 chair :   Catharina Löffler

14:00-14:45         Ann Lecercle (Paris): The Sixteenth Century, "Turning Point of European Eroticism" (J. Lacan) and Elizabethan Theatre

14:45-15:30         Martin Spies (Giessen): Who Do You Think You Are, or: Jacobean Genealogical Literature and the Dream of a United Britain

15:30  Coffee

[16:00-18:15  chair :  Martin Spies      

16:00-16:45         Christine Schwanecke (Giessen): Dramatic (Pre-)Figurations of Changing Power Structures? Richard Brome's A Jovial Crew (1641/2) at the Dawn of the English Civil War

16:45-17:30         Elaine Hobby (Loughborough): 'I make a challenge to any person of common sense and reason': Aphra Behn (1640-89) and Cultural Change.

17:30-18:15         Jean-Jacques Lecercle (Paris): Structures of Feeling, Literature and Cultural Change

18:15     Dinner

[19:45-20:30 chair:  Gero Guttzeit

19:45-20:30         Daniel Hartley (Giessen): A Historicist Defence of Transhistoricism: Literature between Raymond Williams and Alain Badiou

Fri., May 22, 2015

[9-10:30   chair: Ansgar Nünning

9:00-9:45              Roy Sommer (Wuppertal): New Things, Old Words: Dave Eggers's The Circle and the Semantics of iCulture

9:45-10:30            Tom Clucas (Giessen):  "The Spirit of Literature and the Spirit of Society": Isaac D'Israeli, Benjamin Disraeli, and the Literary Character

Coffee break

[10:45-12:15 chair:  Sonja Schillings

10:45-11:30         Vera Nünning (Heidelberg): Human Character Changed: Virginia Woolf's Conceptualisation of Literary Change

11:30-12:15         Jed Esty (Philadelphia): Occidentalism 2.0: Cultural Change and the West from Conrad to Nabokov

Lunch

[2-4 chair:  Daniel Hartley

14:00-14:45         Kate Macdonald (Ghent) and Cornelia Wächter (Paderborn): Middlebrow Fiction, Cultural Capital and Social Change

14:45-15:30         Gero Guttzeit (Ghent): The Detection and Instigation of Cultural Change in Popular Narratives of Detection

15:30  Coffee [16:00-18:15  chair: Alexander Scherr          

16:00-16:45         Hubert Zapf (Augsburg): Ecological Transformations of Critical Theory

16:45-17:30         Maria Löschnigg (Graz): "Crumble crumble oil and bumble": The Merits and Limits of Ecopoetry

17:30-18:15         Jens Kugele (Giessen): Writing Sacred Space

18:15 Dinner

[20-20:45 chair :   Ingo Berensmeyer

20:00-20:45         Michael Basseler (Giessen): "We Take Care of Our Own:" Fictions of Resilience in Contemporary US-American Literature and Popular Culture.

Sat., May 23, 2015

[9-12 chair:          Jens Kugele

9:00-9:45              Alexander Scherr (Giessen):  Contemporary Fictions of the 'Book of Life': Epistemological Perspectives on the (Non-)Readability of the Human Genome in Richard Powers' Novel Generosity: An Enhancement (2009)

9:45-10:30            Nora Berning (Giessen): Novelistic Aesthetics of Alterity as an Agent of Literary and Cultural Change: An Interpretation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Novel Americanah (2013)

10:30     Coffee

10:45-11:30         Snežana Vuletič (Giessen): Restoration, Transformation, and the Centrality of Stories: Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart (1958) and Arrow of God (1964)

11:30-12:00         Closing discussion

12:00-13:00         Lunch

Departure