Comparative Literature

Exhibiting Literature. The Interdisciplinary and Intermedial Mediation of Literature

A Conference Hosted by the Department of Comparative Literature, Göttingen University
1-3 September 2011, Historical Building of the Research Library, Göttingen

In 1984, Wolfgang Barthel famously asserted that the literary museum could neither adequately exhibit nor display the literary and its procedures. Yet literary houses, writers’ museums, exhibition spaces and other institutional venues portray themselves as places that continuously reevaluate the literary field, occupying dynamic places where authors, readers, and meet and find new meanings.

This conference addresses the synchronic and diachronic development of such forms of literary mediation in German and Anglophone contexts. Its aim is to investigate literary houses as places of exchange for (contemporary) literature, its authors and readers, as well as the role of literary museums as curators of literary heritage. It also aims to consider the forms in which literature is mediated from, for example biographical, historical and audience-reception points of view. How are texts presented audiovisually? How are manuscripts or authorial artefacts presented in the context of the museum? How is literature mediated beyond the space of the museum insofar as it is inscribed in cityscapes and landscapes? How do such strategies generate and sustain practices of literary tourism and their views of materiality and authenticity?

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers or poster presentations relating to the following key topics:
1.Literary institutions as actors in the field of contemporary literature: economic, symbolic and pedagogical functions.
2.Literary museums / literary houses as lieux de memoire: identity formation and the invention of tradition.
3.Intermedial aspects of literature exhibitions.
4.“Author” and “text” in literary studies, literary criticism and literary museums: relations between academic and practical forms of mediation.
5.“In the Footsteps of …”: forms and practices of literary topography.

The conference will be organised by Prof. Dr. Barbara Schaff, Dr. Katerina Kroucheva, Alena Diedrich, Mareike Dietzel und Raphael Mühlhölzer, Department of Comparative Literature, Göttingen University. Keynote speakers will include Prof. Dr. Hans Wißkirchen (Lübeck), Prof. Dr. Anne Bohnenkamp (Frankfurt) and Dr. Nicola Watson.

Applications from Post-Graduates are particularly welcome. The participation is for free.

Please send abstracts of approximately 300 words in German or English by 1 May 2011 to:

Mareike Dietzel: mareike.dietzel@gmx.de
Raphael Mühlhölzer: r.muehlhoelzer@googlemail.com