Reform & Revolt, Women in German Studies Open Conference

22 June 2017 - 24 June 2017

Woodcut for the pamphlet with Argula von Grumbach's letter to the Theology Faculty at Ingolstadt 1523

St Edmund Hall,
Queen’s Lane,
Oxford OX1 4AR

Women in German Studies is a professional organisation for Germanists in Great Britain and Ireland which was founded in 1988 by Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages. From 22 to 24 June 2017 the conference will come to Oxford for the first time, to explore the topics ‘reform’ and ‘revolt’ across German history, literature and culture.

Germany does not have a strong reputation when it comes to revolution. Neither the ‘Märzrevolution’ of 1848 nor the start of the Weimar Republic have ever acquired the iconic status of the French Revolution, for example. It is different with the term ‘Reformation’, however: the quincentenary of the publication of the 95 theses by Martin Luther is a timely reminder of the potential for change and questioning in German history — and even more in culture and literature. The 2017 Women in German Studies Open Conference aims to explore the broad potential of the two wider concepts linked with the themes of revolution and reformation, by looking at reform and revolt, both as significant aesthetic categories and as thematic ones.

The conference is open to members and non-members, male or female.

More information: https://womeningermanstudies.wordpress.com/2017/05/31/registration-open-reform-revolt-wigs-open-conference-22-24-june-2017-st-edmund-hall-oxford/

Thursday, 22 June, Taylor Institution

14.00 Postgraduate Workshop: Activism & Visibility with wikimedian Martin Poulter
17.00 Henrike Lähnemann (Oxford): What does Reformation mean?
18.00 Drinks Reception and Tour of the Exhibition ‘The Unnatural Life at the Writing Desk. Women’s Writing across the Long Eighteenth Century’

Friday, 23 June, St Edmund Hall

09.00 Print Workshop at the Bodleian Library, Old Schools Quad, Schola Musicae
10.30 Crowdsourcing Translation Workshop in St Edmund Hall
14.00 Poetic Resistance
  1. Janet Pearson: Revolt and Reform in Hermann Broch’s “Mountain Novel”, Die Verzauberung
  2. Rose Simpson (Aberystwyth): ‚mehr als eine Burg aus Stahl und Stein‘. The Reformation as image of a German soul in Ina Seidel’s novel Lennacker (1938).
  3. Alex Lloyd (Oxford): ‘Tobe, Welt, und springe; ich steh hier und singe’: The Subversive Power of the Voice in German Literature
14.00 Queering and countering as modes of resistance
  1. Emma Watson (London): Revolt and reform: the incorporation of Monika Treut’s work into the German queer film canon
  2. Jana Maria Weiss (Oxford): The Middle East writes back – ‘counter-Orientalism’ in contemporary German poetry
  3. Alexandra Sattler (Birmingham): Marlene Streeruwitz’ critique of patriarchal use of language
17.00 Subversive Modernism
  1. Ingrid Sharpe (Leeds): Recovering the Role of Women in the 1918 Revolution
  2. Corinne Painter (Henry Moore Institute, Leeds): After the Revolution: Representations of and Responses to Violence in the 1920s
  3. Charlotte Woodford (Cambridge): Paragraph 218 in women’s literary and visual culture — protest for reform of the Weimar abortion laws
17.00 Standing up against the establishment
  1. Katya Krylova (Nottinghamshire): A Figure of Revolt? The Afterlife of Thomas Bernhard in Contemporary Austrian Literature
  2. Sophie Payne (Reading): Representations of the #Aufschrei Protest in the German media
  3. Clare Bielby (York): ‘Reforming the neue Frauenbewegung through revolting women

Saturday, 24 June, St Edmund Hall

9.00 Defining Pre-modern Concepts of Reform
  1. Simone Schultz-Balluff (Bonn/Rostock), Timo Bülters (Bochum): Klosterreform und Reformation in Briefen des frühen 16. Jahrhunderts
  2. Joanna Raisbeck (Oxford): Therese Huber’s perception of political reform in Poland
  3. Sophie Schünemann (Keele): ‘Das Puppenstift’ | A Fairy-Tale of Revolt
11.00 1968 and the consequences
  1. Mererid Puw Davies (UCL): Women, Writing and Revolt Around 1968: Helke Sander’s Der subjektive Faktor
  2. Léa Carresse (London): Gudrun Ensslin’s 1972-1973 Prison Letters: Guerrilla Fighting, RAF Ideology and the Linguistic Effects of Imprisonment.
  3. Katharina Karcher (Cambridge): Revolutionary vs. Reformist Feminism? Radical Ideas and Militant Tactics in the Feminist Movement against Violence against Women in West Germany
14.00 Round-table with Karen Leeder (Oxford), Ute Wölfel (Reading) & al.: ‘1989 – a German Revolution?’