[URBANTH-L]CFP: Exhibiting Capital(s): Berlin and Beyond (Montreal)

[Angela Jancius]

From: Peter McIsaac <pmisaac(at)yorku.ca>
Subject: CFP: Exhibiting Capital(s): Berlin and Beyond
Date: Monday 6 July 2009

Exhibiting Capital(s): Berlin and Beyond

41st Anniversary Convention, Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)
April 7-11, 2010

Montreal, Quebec - Hilton Bonaventure

Modern German cities, particularly regional and national capitals,
have often been studied in relation to German national identity. For
this reason, cultural displays (for instance, films and exhibitions)
in and of these metropoles are often seen to demonstrate unique
brandings, unique particularizations of space that define major cities
with respect to each other and their national cultures. Much recent
scholarship on post-unification Berlin, for instance, evidences this
kind of perspective and has furthered a unifying comprehension of the
new Republic as it is manifested in the re-made city. Our panel seeks
to unsettle such predominant spatial analysis through focusing more
closely on the heterogeneity of urban branding practices.

We are especially interested in visually based and materially driven
representations of German urban spaces presented in public forums such
as exhibition halls and movie theatres, insofar as their societal
character presupposes that such representational practices have a hand
in shaping civic and community identities. Of these public displays,
we will ask whether and in what ways the "Germanness" of urban space
as metonymy is constituted by that which is not canonically German.
Thus, how have Berlin and other major German cities inflected more
heterodox German national culture and identity through their use of
space than is generally recognized? We also seek to account for
temporality in this exploration inspired by what has been called the
"spatial turn" and therefore welcome studies of German urban space in
the 20th and 21st centuries as a means of fore-fronting the variance
of space in time.

Abstracts of 250-500 words by Sept 15, 2009 to Jennifer Hosek
<jhosek(at)queensu.ca> AND Peter McIsaac <pmcisaac(at)yorku.ca>


____________________
Dr. Peter M. McIsaac
Assistant Professor, German Studies
Languages, Literatures & Linguistics
York University, 4700 Keele St
Toronto ON M3J 1P3
Canada

Tel. 416-736-2100 x88747
email: pmcisaac(at)yorku.ca