A tropical storm bore down, and water flowed thick and fast in the streets. But inside the conference hotel, the mood was apollonian, speech was level and thoughtful, and the activity was, well, German Studies: the writing, reading, speaking, and learning about the arts, cultures, and histories of German-speaking peoples. It was, that is to say, the German Studies Association’s 48th Annual Conference, held September 26-29 in Atlanta, Georgia. And while Denny Hall lay some 2,600 miles to the northwest, UW German Studies was manifestly present, and not only in spirit.
Having fanned out across the country, recent alums converged on Atlanta to share their scholarship. Jeffrey Jarzomb (PhD, 2024) spoke on a panel with leading thinkers on “French Occupations and Radical Republics in the German Empire and Switzerland around 1800.” In his presentation, “‘Rache und Recht kennt und braucht auch das Weib’: Therese Huber’s Die Familie Seldorf and the Feminine Revolutionary,” Jeff brought excitement and probity to a discussion of this underappreciated author and her politics. Jeff’s cohort-mate Matthew Childs (PhD, 2024) shared insights gained through his doctoral research at the UW in a closed seminar entitled “The Diversities of Care in the Long Nineteenth Century.” We look forward to a publication! And Justin Mohler (PhD, 2022) spoke on “Breaking Bread and Bonds: Interspecies Companionship in Fouqué’s Undine,” on a panel on interspecies relations, commentated by Todd Kontje (UC San Diego).
Of current UW German Studies faculty, Annegret Oehme participated in a roundtable discussion on “Innovative Approaches to Teaching Premodern German Studies,” featuring CJ Jones (Univ. of Notre-Dame) and Adam Oberlin (Princeton Univ.), moderated by James Parente (Univ. of Minnesota). And representing UW PhD students, I (Martin Schwartz) shared a paper titled “Absent Genocide: (Non-)Approaches to the Shoah in New German Cinema.” The feedback session occasioned just enough critical energy to tempt me to make a journal submission out of the talk.
The UW connections did not stop with those who were materially present. At a reception hosted by the Goethe Society of North America, a top raffle prize was Odysseys of Recognition : Performing Intersubjectivity in Homer, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Goethe, and Kleist, authored by our own department chair, Ellwood Wiggins.
All of our concentrated scholarship left a number of participants parched and in need of a popular pick-me-up. Several reports circulated of eminent Germanists taking a break from their learned labors to visit to the World of Coca-Cola. However one defines “culture,” this temple of commerce surely qualifies!
—Martin Schwartz