Conference "Rethinking Cold War Literary Culture"
University of Göttingen, July 4-6, 2024
Papendiek 16, 37073 Göttingen
The collapse of the Soviet Union supposedly led to the end of not only the Cold War but also, as the political philosopher Francis Fukuyama famously declared, history itself. And yet recent events—the Obama, Trump, and Biden Presidencies, the annexation of Crimea, Russiagate, the expansion of NATO, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine—have prompted some observers to suggest that the Cold War never really ended. To what extent, then, have we been sleepwalking through history?
The question is a momentous one for scholars of U.S. literary studies, which, over the course of the last decade, has seen the development of new and exciting fields, such as “post-45” and “the contemporary,” organized around the Cold War and its aftermath. This seminar invites papers that (re)consider the relationship between U.S. literature and the Cold War in light of twenty-first-century events and/or new research in the field.
We welcome papers on such topics as the institutionalization and legacy of “Cold War modernism” in university creative writing programs; the valences of American literature to public diplomacy; the relationship between literary “schools” (the Beats, Black Mountain Poets, the Black Arts Movement, the New Journalism) or genres (the campus novel, the systems novel, creative nonfiction, jazz poetry) and Cold War politics; how the Cold War shaped the transition between the literary cultures of the Old and New Lefts; and the persistence of Cold War paradigms in contemporary U.S. literature and criticism. We are open to papers on works in any literary genre, including the novel, graphic novel, short story, poetry, drama, and song verse.
Participants:
- Jessica Bundschuh, University of Stuttgart
- Jesse McCarthy, Harvard University
- John Burt, Brandeis University
- Bill Demastes, Louisiana State University
- Kenneth Warren, University of Chicago
- James Dowthwaite, University of Jena
- Ellen Hinsey, University of Göttingen
- Ernest Suarez, Catholic University
- Andy Majeske, John Jay University
- Laura Bieger, University of Bochum
- Gábor Schein, Eötvös Lóránd University in Budapest
- Natalie Erkel, University of Bochum
- Jarosław Płuciennik, University of Lodz
- Andrew Gross, University of Göttingen