GSURS 2024

All times are in PT.

To attend the symposium, register with Dr. Matt Pollard by sending him an email (matthewp@uvic[dot]ca) and he will send you the zoom info.

Saturday, April 6th

9:00 - 9:10 am Welcome and Acknowledgements

9:15 - 10:00 am Session 1: Reading Colonial Legacies

Farida Abdoulaye (UVic): "The Forgotten Genocide: Reconciling Germany’s Colonial Past in Namibia"

Tamara Laing (UVic): “Indianer Illusions and German Fantasy”

Lily Evans (UBC): “Post-Colonial Memory, Trauma, and Ethical Visual Representations in a German Context"

Kendyl Stark (UBC): “Polish-German Archival Discourse: Memory Politics and Conflict”

10:05 - 10:50 am First Plenary

Dr. Peter Gölz (UVic): “Of the foul German spectre – the Vampyre”

10:55 - 11:45 pm Roundtable 1: Fairy Tales and Popular Culture: Media Interventions

Sponsor: Dr. Biz Nijdam, with participants Varvara Bogantseva and Aliyah Fisher (UBC)

11:45 - 12:30 pm Lunch Break

12:35 - 1:35 pm Session 2: Haunting and Haunted Histories

Lindsey Andrew (UVic): "Nietzsche: Of Good and Spectral"

Haley Greenhalgh (UVic): “Exploring Germany’s Connection To The Name Lola”

Keith Molyneux (UVic): “We Are Remembered: The Importance of Photography and Visual Culture for Remembering Queer and Trans Individuals in Weimar Berlin” 

Cat Watt (UVic): “National Sexualism: German History, Identity, and Sexuality in the Political Spectacle of Rammstein”

1:40 – 2:25 pm Second Plenary

Dr. Jason Groves (University of Washington): “Going Under: Offshore Formations of German Studies on a Climate-Changed Planet”

2:30 – 3:30 pm Session 3: Voices of Belonging

Rachel Lundeen (University of Washington): Die Verwandlung der “Verwandlung”: Kreative Auseinandersetzungen mit marginalisierten Figuren in Kafkas “Die Verwandlung”

Hana Dekker (UBC): "Hermann Hesse's Appeal: A Cross-Cultural and Cross-Temporal Examination"

Angelina Schwarz (UVic): "The Gendered Vulnerability of German Women During the Holocaust: A Case Study of Auschwitz and Ravensbrück Concentration Camps"

Aoise Roche (UVic): “Gender-Exclusivity in the German Language: A Nonbinary Critique”.

3:30 pm Wrap-up

Sunday, April 7th

9:00 - 9:50 am Roundtable 2: An Absence of German Horror

Sponsor: Dr. Jason Lieblang, with participants Jack Macleod Mosher, Ross Oteri, Mikaela Cochrane, Natalia Sliwa, and Rowan Milligan (UBC)

9:55 – 10:40 am Third Plenary

Dr. Biz Nijdam (UBC): “Graphic Historiography: Comics on/and Writing History”

10:45 – 11:45 am Session 4: Transmission and Transference

Jia Gu (UBC): "Grimm’s Fairy Tales & Vocaloid Music: A Study on Cultural Diffusion”

Alexander Suyanto (UBC): “The Chronopolitics of the AfD”

Tenaya Tremp (UBC): "The AfD: Normality and Heimat as Central to Germany's Populist Far-Right." 

Lucas Hung (UVic) “'Don't Forget...': Bernhard Wicki’s Visual Portrayal of Youth in Die Brücke”

11:45 am Thanks and Auf Wiedersehen

GSURS 2023

All times are in PT. Remember to set your clocks for daylight savings!

SUNDAY March 12

9:00-9:05 Opening Remarks 

Land Acknowledgement & Welcome Note

Dr. Jason Groves (UW)

9:05-9:50 Plenary 1 

Dr. Annegret Oehme (UW): Fun with Footnotes

9:50-10:50 Panel 1: New Directions in German Studies: Community, Belonging, and Performance

Moderated by: Dr. Ervin Malakaj (UBC)

1. Bridget Chu (UBC): The Common in The Earthquake in Chile

2. Lea Lassen (UBC): Gatekeepers of Belonging

3. Jacqueline Boivin (UBC): Die Beiden Grenadiere as an Example of Cross-cultural Awareness in Nineteenth-Century Germany

4. Rachel Lundeen (UW): On the Threshold of the Unknown: Annemarie Schwarzenbach and Her Novella To See a Woman

5. Brandon Bach (UBC): A Dramaturgical Reading of Simmel’s “Concept and Tragedy of Culture”

10:50-11:40 Panel 2: German Jewish Studies: Queer Poetics, Queer History, and Collective Memory

Moderated by: Dr. Jason Groves (UW)

1. Elena Senecal (UVic): Jewish Revenge in Contemporary Holocaust Media: Value in Collective Memory

2. Colton Schons (UW): Queer Jews in the Weimar Republic: Reading Archival Silences

3. Auden Finch (UW): “Ein Löwy mit einem gewissen Kafka’schen Fond”: Franz Kafka, Jizchak Löwy, and the Queer Poetics of Non-Arrival

4. Lily Evans (UBC): “He was Tired. No One Looked at Him”: Memory Culture and Attention in Christian Petzold’s Transit

11:40-12:10: Panel 3: A Roundtable on Fractured Fairy Tales

Moderated by: Dr. Biz Nijdam (UBC)

1. Noah Demers (UBC)

2. Lena Khadra (UBC)

12:10-12:40 Lunch Break

12:40-1:10 Panel 4: Crafting Translations and Paratexts

Moderated by: Dr. David Gramling (UBC)

1. Jia Gu (UBC)

2. Alexander Suyanto (UBC)

1:10-1:55 Plenary 2

Dr. Jason Lieblang (UBC): From Caligari to Haneke: Histories of the Germanic Horror Film

Showcase End: 2 p.m.

GSURS 2022 (Inaugural Showcase)

Program: GSURS 2022

SATURDAY April 2

Opening Remarks (9:00 - 9:10 a.m.)

Land Acknowledgement & Welcome Note

Dr. Ervin Malakaj

Plenary 1 (9:10 - 10:00 a.m.)

Dr. David Gramling (UBC): “Thesis in a Bottle: Reflections on My Undergraduate German Studies Research, 23 Years Later”

Moderated by: Emilie Kneifel (UBC)

Panel 1: Film Studies (10:00 - 11:00 a.m.)

Moderated by: Dr. Rosemarie Peña (UBC)

1. John Ye (UBC): Ostalgie in Contemporary Germany

2. Sarah Wilkinson (UVic):  Stücke: Claustrophobia And The Haptic Vignettes In László Nemes’ Saul Fia (2015)

3. Goldman Lam (UBC): Power Dynamics and Justice in M 

Panel 2: Translation, Adaptation, Linguistic Identity (11:00 - 12:00 p.m.)

Moderated by: Dr. Caroline Rieger (UBC)

1. Austin Heinz (UW): Enhancing the Accessibility of German Art-Song Through English Translations

2. Auden Finch (UW): Mediating Jewish Identity in Late Imperial Austria-Hungary

3. Emilie Kneifel (UBC): Its Own Antidote: Linguistic Isolation & Post-Brechtian Theatre

Announce Lunch Break & End-of-Day Wrap-Up (12:00 - 12:30 p.m.)

Plenary 2 (12:30 - 1:30 p.m.)

Dr. S. Kye Terrasi (UW): “Turn of the Century for the Twenty-First Century: Resisting Gender Construction in the Literature and Art of Vienna 1900”

Moderated by: Emilie Kneifel (UBC)

Panel 3: Queer & Gender Studies (1:30 - 2:30 p.m.)

Moderated by: Dr. Ervin Malakaj (UBC)

1. Roshan Selden (UW): “The Art of Motherhood: Conflicting Gender Roles in ‘Das Lied von der Glocke’ and its Consequences on Friedrich Schiller’s Conceptualization of Art and Rebellion”

2. Nicolai Hilton (UBC): A Masculine Dominion: German Military Culture 1918-1945

3. Sahiba Ubhi (UBC): Nosferatu: A Symphony of Queerness

End of first day  (2:30 - 3:00 p.m.)

SUNDAY April 3rd

Panel 4: How we tell stories (9:00 - 10:00 a.m.)

Moderated by: Dr. Rosemarie Peña (UBC)

1. Charlie Zeisler (UVIC): The Personification of Nature in the Fairytales of the Brother Grimm

2. Ella MacQueen-Denz (UVIC): Christa Wolf’s Störfall/Nachrichten eines Tages: Moving Away from Human-Centred Narratives in Stream-Of-Consciousness Literature

3. Tyrell Loster Peitzsche (UVIC): A Child’s Innocence in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony

4. Sidney Syona Singh (UBC): Apples Melting on Books: Visually representing Heinz Skyte’s memories of Kristallnacht in Survivour of the Holocaust: True Stories of Six Extraordinary Children

Panel 5: History & Historiography & Biography (10:00 - 11:00 a.m.)

Moderated by: Dr. Ervin Malakaj (UBC)

1. Rachel Lundeen (UW): The Revolution, Institutionalized: The Impact of the 1960s West German Student Movement on Germany’s Two Largest Political Parties

2. Noah James (UBC): The Life and Career of Alvo von Alvensleben

3. Kolby Mullen (UBC): Inescapable Patriarchy: Robot Maria’s Lifeline in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis

4. Declan Hughes (UVIC): Horst Hoheisel, Counter-Monuments, and Lieux de Mémoire

Announce Lunch Break & End-of-Day Wrap-Up (11:00 - 12:00 p.m.)

Plenary 3 (12:00 - 1:00 p.m.)

Dr. Matthew Pollard (UVIC) “Riefenstahl as Revenant”

Moderated by: Gabrielle Bonifacio (UBC)

Panel 6: Humans & Nature (1:00 - 2:00 p.m.)

Moderated by: Dr. Jason Lieblang (UBC)

1. Kate Block (UVIC): The relationship between humans and nature in “The Runenberg” by Ludwick Tieck

2. Jamee Petterson (UVIC): Impermanence and Caspar David Friedrich: A Discussion about Nature and Humanity

3. Justin Lucoe (UVIC): Romantic view of nature during the Nazi Period

4. Abby Reed (UVIC): Ecocriticism in Otto Dix’s Paintings

End of Conference (2:00 p.m.)