KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Veronika Fuechtner, Dartmouth College

Possible paper topics include, but are not limited to:
· Traditional portrayals of health and illness from the medieval period through the present
· Revolutionary medical models in literature, art, drama
· Problematizing the definitions of health and illness in art, literature and film
· Gender and medicine
· The various treatments of mental illnesses
· The role of the Kur in German culture, literature, and film
· Genetics research, stem-cell research
· Euthanasia
· Bulimia and Anorexia
· Medicine and religious portrayals
· Literature and art seen as medicine
· War and Medicine

The German Graduate Student Governance Association of the University of Cincinnati and the editors of the graduate student journal Focus on German Studies present the Sixteenth Annual Focus Graduate Student Conference held on October 28 - October 29, 2011 at the University of Cincinnati: http://www.artsci.uc.edu/collegedepts/german/focus/

Sponsored by the Charles Phelps Taft Research Center, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, and the Graduate Student Government Association of the University of Cincinnati.

[Submitted abstracts for conference consideration MUST BE SUBMITTED by OCTOBER 17, 2011 to Wesley Jackson and Vanessa Plumly at fogs.editor@gmail.com (ATTN: Focus on GS Conference). Please include your university affiliation in your email when you submit your abstract. See below for more details.]

The interdisciplinary study of medicine and health and the field of literature have always complimented each other, particularly within the German tradition. From the early German classics of Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan to the concerns of the Early Modern Faustus and Paracelsus, German writers have continued to problematize the role of medicine in society. Both physicians and artists have employed medical terminology to diagnose social, political, spiritual and relational problems.

This conference is an opportunity for graduate students to explore not only how issues of health and medicine have been portrayed in the arts, but also how various medical texts, illustrations, diagrams and models have been interpreted in the past or are currently being interpreted in the larger European cultural context.

This conference encourages an interdisciplinary approach to the topic of medicine and culture in the German tradition. We are interested in hearing papers from graduate students who are not only in German literary studies, but are also from historical, psychological, social, fine arts, and philosophical backgrounds.