Friday, March 3, 2006 – Teleconference Room, Alexander Library

15:00 – 15:30 Welcome Reception and Registration

15:30 – 15:45 Welcome address : Rebecca Steele, conference coordinator

Opening remarks: Prof. Martha Helfer, Department Chair, German RU

15:45 – 16:30 Keynote Address: Prof. Johannes von Moltke, University of Michigan

“Placing Heimat: Some Methodological Considerations”

16:30 – 16:40 Coffee Break

16:40 – 18:00 Panel 1: Cinematic Concepts of Heimat

Commentator: Prof. Eric Jarosinski, Department of German, RU

Heimat in National Socialist Foreign Policy --Conjuring a German-Japanese Axis Through Film - Katharina Loew, University of Chicago

A Palimpsest of Identities, Past and Present: Echo der Berge (1954) and the Search for Post-War Austrian Heimat - Shane D. Peterson, Brigham Young University

Finding Home in a Liminal Space: Exile and Return in Andreas Dresden’s Halbe Treppe - Kathy Sclafani, Rutgers University

18:30 Conference Dinner at Frog and the Peach, New Brunswick (Invitation only)

Saturday, March 4, 2006 – Busch Student Center, Room 122

9:00 – 9:30 Breakfast on location (Rm 120)

9:30 – 9:40 Welcome remarks: Julia Feldhaus, conference coordinator

9:40 – 10:50 Panel 2: 18th and 19th Century Concepts of Heima.

Commentator: Prof. Martha Helfer, Department of German, RU

Arminius, Thusnelda und die Erfindung der Heimat Johanna Franul von Weißenthurns Drama Herrmann - Jens Kugele, Georgetown University

Conceptions of Heimat and Political Aims in Wilhelm Tell, Die Hermannsschlacht, and Der Rabbi von Bacherach - Rebecca Weidner , Georgetown University

The Role of German Jewry in the Construction of a German National Identity in Achim von Arnim’s Isabella von Ägypten – Rebecca Steele, Rutgers University

10:50 – 11:00 Coffee Break

11:00 – 12:20 Panel 3:Politically and Socially Motivated Concepts of Heimat

Commentator: Prof. Sven Reichardt, Center for Comp. European Studies, RU

Die europäische Heimat im Habsburger Reich: Stefan Zweig, James Joyce und Italo Svevo - Salvatore Pappalardo, Rutgers University

The Imagination of a Reunified Nation in Post-Wende German Texts - Imke Brust, Penn State

From Anti-German to Proletarian: Images of Germans and the Building of People's Poland, 1945-7 – Peter Polak Springer, Rutgers University

12:20 – 13:30 Lunch on location

13:30 – 14:30 Visual Representations of Heimat:

Photographing the Authentically Ugly Heimat: Erna Lendvai-Dircksen's "Face of the German Race" - Prof. Andrés Mario Zervigón, RU Dept. of Art History

14:30 – 14:40 Coffee Break

14:40- 15:40 Panel 4: Internally Motivated Concepts of Heimat

Commentator: Prof. Fatima Naqvi, Department of German, RU

Deconstruction Heimat: Memory and Space in Ingeborg Bachmann's Das Dreißigste Jahr - Christina Wall, University of Maryland

Heimat in Differenz – eine Untersuchung zu Urs Widmers Im Kongo - Peter Dahlhaus , University of Washington

The graduate students of the Department of German at Rutgers University invite abstracts for their 6th Annual Graduate Student Conference to be held at Rutgers University on Friday, March 3, 2006.

How important is a national identity in a post-modern world of globalization and the reality of the European Union? Recent debates in Germany concerning the idea of a “Neue Normalität” as postulated by the first generation of politicians in office born after WWII are a reminder that national identity and Heimat continue to be issues prevalent to the German conscious. After much re-education, Holocaust remembrances and WWII memorials, Germans today are encouraged by the idea of “Neue Normalität” to once again feel proud of their national identity after a long era of shame and confrontation with their horrible past. Within this discussion, Friedrich Merz coined the term “Leitkultur” as a search of German culture and Heimat, while trying to integrate or even assimilate the masses of foreigners into the understanding of the German’s new Heimat. This struggle for Heimat and a national identity extends beyond the boundaries of modern-day Germany and includes German-speaking countries such as Austria and Switzerland – lands in which German is spoken, but the people do not identify themselves as German. Furthermore, this issue is not a post-war, post-modern phenomenon as signified by the very word Deutsch, which originally was the word for a people (Volk) in medieval Germany or by the work of many authors in a pre-Bismarck period, such as the Grimm Brothers, writing in support of a national identity.

Topics can include, but are not limited to:

• Definition of the term Heimat
• Heimat in the literature of Germany, Austria and Switzerland
• Accounts of Heimat by German-language authors in exile
• Accounts of Heimat by foreigners in German speaking countries
• National identity
• Heimat in the fine arts, photography and film
• Nostalgia/Memory