Registration for the thirty-eighth annual conference of the German Studies Association is now open. Once registration has been completed, you will receive an e-mail with a link to the conference hotel reservation page for the Westin Kansas City at Crown Center. Please do NOT lose this link. You can ONLY reserve a room at the conference rate by using this special link. To reserve at the conference rate, please do NOT telephone the hotel or the GSA office, or use one of the Internet booking services. Please be aware of the refund policy on conference registrations.
This will be our first meeting ever in Kansas City, and our first in the state of Missouri in over a quarter of a century. Renowned for barbecue, steak, jazz, Harry S Truman, Hallmark Cards, the country's first modern shopping center, and much else, Kansas City is a thriving, dynamic city with a vibrant cultural and artistic life.
Again, we are looking forward to an exceptional series of luncheon and banquet speakers this year, as well as a special Thursday evening event; we hope that as many of you as possible can attend these important events. Each luncheon will cost $31, and the banquet costs $43. The Thursday-evening event will be free of charge.
The speakers are:
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18
SPECIAL EVENT (8:00 P.M.)
As part of our commemoration of the centennial of the First World War, the GSA is delighted to sponsor a special lecture, open to all conference attendees, by Professor Christopher Clark of Cambridge University. The subject of Professor Clark's address is 'How Europe Went to War in 1914.' A native of Australia, Professor Clark studied at the University of Sydney before continuing to Cambridge, where he received his doctorate and has taught ever since. One of the world's most distinguished historians, Professor Clark is a Fellow of St. Catharine's College. In October of this year he will become Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. He is the author of many books and articles, among them Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947 (2006) and The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2013). The latter volume, hailed by the New York Times as a 'masterpiece,' has received the Prix d'aujourd'hui in France and has been on the top of the nonfiction bestseller list in Germany.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19
LUNCHEON
As we approach the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we are pleased to welcome Walter Momper as our Friday luncheon speaker. As most of us remember, Walter Momper was Governing Mayor of (West) Berlin at the time of the events of November 1989, and in 1990 the first Governing Mayor of reunified Berlin; appropriately, the title of his address is 'Der 9. November 1989.' He is famous for his remark on November 10: "Wir Deutschen sind jetzt das gl'cklichste Volk auf der Welt!" As a trained historian at the Free University of Berlin and former executive director of the Historische Kommission zu Berlin, Walter Momper is especially well placed to put the events of November 1989, with which he was so centrally involved, into historical perspective. Momper also served as chair of the Social Democratic fraction in the Berlin Abgeordnetenhaus and as President of that body from 2001 until 2011.
BANQUET
The 2014 Presidential Address will be the highlight of this year's annual banquet. Professor Suzanne Marchand, Professor of History at Louisiana State University and President of the GSA in 2013 and 2014, will speak on 'The Great War and the Ancient World.' Professor Marchand received her B.A. degree from the University of California at Berkeley and her M.A. and PhD from the University of Chicago. She has taught at Princeton University and at LSU. Among her many books and articles are Down from Olympus: Archaeology and Philhellenism in Germany, 1750-1970 (1996) and German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Race, Religion, and Scholarship (2009), as well as the co-authored textbook Many Europes. She is on the editorial boards of Modern Intellectual History, German History, and the Journal of Art Historiography. She is also the recipient of many grants and awards.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 20
LUNCHEON
Dramatist and novelist Maxi Obexer will read from her works in progress. Obexer was born in the German-speaking area of South Tirol in Italy. She studied Comparative Literature, Philosophy, and Theater Studies in Vienna and Berlin. Her stage and radio plays have received numerous prizes, and she has been awarded writing fellowships, including from the Literarisches Colloquium, Berlin, the Akademie der K'nste, and the Akademie Schloss Solitude. Obexer has been the Max Kade Professor at Dartmouth College and guest professor at the Universit't der K'nste in Berlin. Among her best known works are Die Liebenden, Das Geisterschiff, and Gletscher. Her first novel, Wenn gef'hrliche Hunde lachen (2011) received wide praise, including in a review in the S'ddeutsche Zeitung. Her most recent work is the 'Kampfoperette' Planet der Frauen, which was commissioned by the Theater Freiburg and was produced jointly with musician Bernadete LaHengst. Obexer also enjoys working with visual artists; she and Ingrid Hora have created numerous installations and works of performance art, such as the recent 'Neue Heimat.' Obexer has long been interested in the theory, praxis, and pedagogy of dramatic arts and is in the process of founding the Neue Institut f'r Dramatisches Schreiben, a pedagogical and political project that will be the first of its kind in the German-speaking world. She is also currently working on a second novel, from which we hope she will read.