An Interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference hosted by the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Chicago, March 11-12, 2005.

Keynote speaker: Niklaus Largier
Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Department of German; whose recent works include Lob der Peitsche. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Erregung. (Munich, C.H. Beck, 2001.)

Attempts to understand the relationship between the body, control, and sociopolitical life are at least as old as Plato and Aristotle, and significant among them are the contributions offered by German-speaking thinkers. In recent decades, commentators such as Foucault and Butler have drawn upon Hegel, Nietzsche and Freud in theorizing ways in which habits, technologies and institutional practices control the individual body, the social body and the body politic. In its interdisciplinary exploration of control in the Germanic context, our conference is interested in both documented social practices and fictional models across media such as literature, film and painting, from the Middle Ages to the present. By exploring both controlled and controlling bodies, we hope to gain a better understanding of the uncertain ontological status of control with respect to regulation and excess. How are the mechanisms of control involved in the very excesses they purportedly regulate? What role does control play in generative/creative processes? Does control function through repetition, reproduction, and suppression, or does control force intensification of bodily experience, pushing the body to transgress? How is excess regulated, experienced and represented? Furthermore, how do different disciplines conceptualize and represent the phenomenon of control?

Scholars from the Humanities and Social Sciences are encouraged to interpret the conference theme broadly and innovatively.

Graduate students from all disciplines working in the German-speaking context are invited to submit paper abstracts of 350-500 words in German or English. Conference presentations are to be given in English and should not exceed 20 minutes. Abstracts must be received by 15 December, 2004. Authors of accepted papers will be notified via email by 31 January, 2005. Please email your abstract as a Word attachment to the e-mail address given below.

In the body of your email, please include the following: title of paper, author’s name, institutional and departmental affiliation, e-mail address and primary phone number. Accommodation will be provided for conference participants. For further information about the conference, please email to the below address.

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