Transnational Framings: The German Literary Field in the Age of Nationalism

Transnational Framings: The German Literary Field in the Age of Nationalism

25th Biennial St. Louis Symposium on German Literature and Culture

Our conference seeks to bring into view the push and pull of the national and international in Germany and Austria in the so-called Age of Nationalism, 1848-1919 through a collection of case studies toward a new approach to the literary history of the period. Viewing even overtly national(ist) literature and cultural projects as belonging to an international system, our presenters examine the interrelations of the agents, forces, enterprises, and processes that constituted the Austro-German literary-cultural field during this period. These agents include not only authors but also translators, publishers, editors, reviewers, and readers. Forces include the changing book market, industrialization, printing conventions, and new media. Enterprises include new magazines, anthologies, and the writing of national literary histories. Processes include text-based operations, such as (historical) fiction writing, translation, adaptation, and anthologization, as well as agent-based operations, such as networking. We aim to bring into view the complexities of the literary-cultural field as it was constituted in this fraught era, not just along the split between popular culture and high art famously described by Pierre Bourdieu but also along the fissures constituted by the countervailing forces of (inter/anti)nationalism as they variously positioned production and consumption of both popular and elite literature. The symposium is being co-organized by Professor Lynne Tatlock and Professor Kurt Beals.

For more information and to register for the Zoom links for each day of the symposium, please visit this link.