In the decades on both sides of the turn of the 20th century, a number of the most eminent German intellectual and cultural citics commented on the increasing dissolution of an objective sense of truth and meaning. Whether in the form of Max Weber’s famous dictum about the “disenchantment of the world” or Nietzsche’s notorious remark that “God is dead,” German thinkers observed this phenomenon with a mixture of celebration and alarm that paralleled what has been seen as the characteristicly modern experience of ambivalence. With the fragmentation of Truth, however, meaning and more especially the construction of meaning became both a cultural and a personal problem. How did various contemporaries attempt to adapt to an ever more complex and incongruous world? How did the fields of science and art interact with one another in establishing new forms of truth? What kinds of truth were they capable of producing? Is this a purely German phenomenon or does the increasing interface between these two fields reveal something deeper about the fundamental nature of modernity?
We invite papers that discuss the dynamic interaction between scientific and artistic endeavor in Germany between 1871 and 1933 to create meaning in and of the world.

Possible topics might include:

• the scientist as artist / the artist as scientist
• the relationship between science and aesthetics in the creation of meaning
• the relationship between form and/or method and the production of meaning
• the transmission of meaning from production to reception
• the role of the body in the creation of meaning
• experimentation as meaning
• occult sciences and creativity

Please send 300-word abstracts to both session organizers: R. Kurt Johnson (ryan.k.johnson@vanderbilt.edu) and Claudia S. Schlee (cschlee@iupui.edu). The deadline for proposals is Wednesday, Feb 3, 2010. We will will notify you of decisions by February 10, 2010. If selected, please be ready to submit a short bio and any of your technology needs by Friday, February 12. (The GSA deadline for proposals is February 15, 2010). All presenters must be current GSA members.