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Scholarly Activity

Scholarly Activity

Scandinavian Impulses

German & Scandinavian Studies is offering a series of interdisciplinary cultural events titled "Scandinavian Impulses."  This exciting series is sponsored primarily by the Nordic Council. Please visit the series website for more information, including event schedules.

 

Fifth Biennial East German Summer Film Institute
Rewriting (East) German Cinema: Issues in Film Methodology and Historiography

Our 5th biennial East German Summer Film Institute will take place at Smith College July 12-19, 2009. The weeklong program will focus on media historical and institutional perspectives that until now have been neglected or ignored, due to a continued preference for thematic and textual readings. In part inspired by the 20th anniversary of the end of the Cold War, the Institute will be facilitated by Barton Byg (UMass), Sabine Hake (Univ. of Texas at Austin), and Larson Powell (Univ. of Missouri at Kansas City). Alternating between screenings and discussions, they propose to use the continued provocation of East German cinema to confront a number of historiographical and methodological issues in the study of postwar German cinema, including: questions of periodization, institutional continuities, conceptions of cinema as a public sphere, and film's contribution to the audio-visual legacy of the twentieth century.

For more detailed information, visit http://www.umass.edu/defa/sfi2009/.

W.E.B. Du Bois Lecture Series
Race and the New Europe: Black Europeans

September 2008-April 2009

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) Photo by discoverblackheritage CC, some rights reserved

With funding from the Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts' "Visioning Program," we are honored to present this lecture series (series poster, PDF). Speakers include:

Michelle Wright, University of Minnesota (poster, PDF)
September 25, 2008
4-5:30 p.m.
101 Campus Center, UMass Amherst

Peggy Piesche, Vassar College
October 21, 2008
4-5:30 p.m.
911-15 Campus Center, UMass Amherst

Utz McKnight, University of Alabama
November 19, 2008
4-5:30 p.m.
917 Campus Center, UMass Amherst

Dominic Thomas, UCLA
February 5, 2009
7:30 p.m.
Campus Center room 917, UMass Amherst

Kesha Fikes, University of Chicago
March 5, 2009
7:30 p.m.
Campus Center room 917, UMass Amherst

Donald Carter, Hamilton College
April 6, 2009
Campus Center room TBA, UMass Amherst

EDGE: A New Graduate Journal in German & Scandinavian Studies

The graduate students in German & Scandinavian Studies have founded an online journal for graduate students working within these different yet related fields.  Visit the website for more information and to read issues of the journal.

Wrocław/Breslau: Poles, Germans, Jews and their City

April 11, 2008
German & Scandinavian Studies is proud to sponsor a major conference on the history and culture of this “multi-ethnic” city – from the 1800s though the Holocaust and the postwar – and its legacy in a new Europe. The conference will take place from 9:30 to 5 pm at the National Yiddish Book Center (Hampshire College campus). For more information, contact Prof. Skolnik. View the conference poster (PDF).

MYTH: A Graduate Student Conference in German & Scandinavian Studies

The third biennial graduate student conference hosted by German & Scandinavian Studies at UMass Amherst took place February 15-17, 2008. 

From Weimar to Christiania: German and Scandinavian Studies in Context

This volume is a publication that resulted from a conference held in German and Scandinavian Studies at UMass Amherst in 2006. 

Remapping Black Germany: New Perspectives on Afro-German History, Politics, and Culture

A successful conference in 2006 hosted by German & Scandinavian Studies

Experimentations: A Graduate Student Conference in German & Scandinavian Studies

The second biennial graduate student conference hosted by German & Scandinavian Studies took place February 18-19, 2006.  More information, including the complete schedule, can be found on the conference website.

(Re)Visions: New Ideas in German and European Studies

The first biennial graduate student conference hosted by German & Scandinavian Studies took place March 26-27, 2004. More information, including the complete schedule, can be found on the conference website.

Amherst Colloquia

Starting in 1967, the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures hosted the distinguished Amherst Colloquia on German literature and culture.

National Endowment for the Humanities Institutes

The Department has hosted three NEH institutes (1996 and 1998 as well as 2005) made possible by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities.