Call for Seminar Proposals GSA 2025

The 49th German Studies Association Conference, to be held in Arlington, VA from September 25–28, 2025 will continue to host a series of seminars in addition to regular panel sessions and roundtables (general conference information is available here). Seminars meet for three sessions, that is, one session on each day of the conference (Friday, Saturday, Sunday). They explore new avenues of academic exchange and foster extended discussion, rigorous intellectual debate, and intensified networking. Seminars are typically proposed and led by two to three conveners and consist of a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 20 participants, including the conveners themselves. Seminars must be open to applications from interested participants, and conveners are expected to make every effort to aim for broad diversity and include scholars from different disciplines, types of institutions, and career stages, including graduate students. Seminars may enable

  • extended discussion of (a) recent academic publication(s);
  • exploration of a promising new research topic;
  • feedback on ongoing academic projects through pre-circulated abstracts or works-in-progress;
  • a debate among scholars with different approaches;
  • in-depth discussion of a political or public policy issue, novel, film, poem, musical piece, painting, or other artwork; or
  • non-traditional and experimental modes of engagement that employ experiential, haptic, embodied, playful, and/or other creative approaches to objects of research, study, and inquiry.

Conveners are strongly encouraged to structure their seminars around dynamic forms of intellectual exchange; lengthy individual presentations are discouraged as they resemble those in “traditional” panels and may be proposed as a panel series. We hope that the work of seminars will eventually be disseminated to the broader community of scholars, for example, in a future GSA panel or roundtable, in an edited volume, or in the creation of a research group.

To apply to convene a seminar, current GSA members should submit a proposal through the online portal by 11:59 pm PST on January 7, 2025. The OpenWater conference submissions portal will open in early January; the link to access the portal will be posted on the conference website. The proposal must include the following items:

  1. Title of Proposed Seminar (indicate sponsoring network if applicable)
  2. Convener Information: names, ranks, institutional affiliations, and email addresses (please list conveners in alphabetical order by last name and provide the same email as the GSA log-in email to avoid future access issues)
  3. Seminar Description: a 150-word description of the seminar's topic and goals, which will appear in the call for participants and the final program
  4. Format Description: a 50-word description of the seminar’s format and procedures, which will appear in the call for participants
    • For consistency in all seminar proposals, please provide specific information about what participants need to share or prepare before the conference. We suggest that you incorporate a mechanism for individual titled contributions, especially for participants who need to show evidence of presenting a paper for travel grants, institutional support, etc. 
    • If participants should pre-circulate their contributions, please provide a specific length in page numbers or word count instead of characters. If readings will be pre-circulated, please be specific regarding the number and length of readings participants will be expected to complete in advance.
  5. DEI Statement (if appropriate): a 50-word statement describing any DEI components of the seminar that are not covered in the above descriptions
  6. Auditors: indicate whether you will open the seminar to auditors (6 maximum) should space allow

The Seminar Coordinators will review proposals and request revisions to the description and format of accepted seminars. A list of approved seminars and their descriptions will be posted on the GSA website by January 27, 2025. Conveners may then enlist participants to join the seminar; the application deadline for participants will be February 19, 2025. A call for auditors (who may observe but who are not considered formal participants) will be issued in the summer after the conference program has been published.

Please note the following guidelines and additional information regarding seminars (they may also be found here):

  • You must be a current member of the GSA to submit a proposal.
  • Seminar conveners must come from different institutions; if there are more than two conveners, no more than two may come from the same institution.
  • In order to facilitate extended discussion, seminar conveners and participants are required to participate in all three seminar meetings without exceptions.
  • Seminar participants, including conveners, may not submit a paper in a regular panel session. However, they may take on one additional role in the conference independent of their role in a seminar, including as moderator or commentator in a panel or as a roundtable participant. Please review the GSA conference participation guidelines before proceeding to the conference submissions portal. Regular paper submissions by seminar participants/conveners will be deleted in the submission system.
  • Although the GSA does accept proposals from conveners who have directed a seminar during the past two years, the GSA’s Seminar Committee gives preference to newcomers and thus encourages the rotation of seminar conveners in similarly-themed seminars. We further recommend that conveners contact the co-chairs of the Interdisciplinary Network Committee, Dr. Jeff Hayton (jeffrey.hayton@wichita.edu) and Dr. Nancy Nenno (nennon@cofc.edu), to connect with GSA Networks close to their topic.
  • Seminar conveners will have the opportunity to propose a cluster of pieces representing the work of the seminar for publication in Konturen, a peer-reviewed, online, open-access journal of international and interdisciplinary German Studies. Please note: although the portal for applications for publication in Konturen will only open after the conference is over, conveners may address their interest in this project in their seminar description.

Because only a limited number of rooms are reserved for seminars, important criteria for the Seminar Committee when selecting proposals include: whether a proposal could attract the minimum required number of participants; and whether the proposed format and goals differ substantially from that of roundtables or panel series. In addition to the GSA Seminar submission guidelines and the Calls for Participants from approved seminars at previous annual conferences, please consider the following questions when drafting your proposal:

  • Have you found co-conveners to conceptualize, discuss, and co-write the proposal?
  • Is your topic broad, attractive, and/or timely enough to attract the minimum number of participants?
  • Which areas of your proposed topic have been neglected and have potential for new and continuing research?
  • Does the proposal state a clear rationale for the seminar as well as its goals?
  • Have you considered a roundtable or panel format, and can you clearly identify the benefits of a seminar format for your proposal?
  • How will the three seminar days be organized?
  • Does the title clearly and effectively communicate the major aspects of the seminar topic and goals?
  • Have you reached out to an existing GSA network about sponsorship? (A list of networks and their coordinators is available on the GSA website.) Sponsorship is not required, nor is it a guarantee for acceptance, but communicating with network coordinators can help avoid submission of similar proposals and network sponsorship can help recruit participants.
  • Have you reached out to potential participants and other colleagues to gauge interest in the topic you intend to propose?
  • Do you have a mechanism for individual participants to generate titled contributions in order to justify use of institutional travel funds, apply for travel grants, and include the activity on their CVs? If your format involves abstracts or pre-circulated works-in-progress, how long should these contributions be in word count?
  • If you will assign pre-circulated published readings, approximately how many pages will you expect participants to read in advance? Please be mindful of the workload and keep the total readings under 100 pages.
  • What will your organizational timeline be for communicating with participants and pre-circulating relevant materials between panel acceptance and the conference meeting? Keep in mind that auditors may apply in the summer.

To access the OpenWater system to submit your proposal once the conference portal opens in early January (the link to the portal will be posted here), use the same username and password as you use to log into your GSA member profile. If you need to reset your password, please follow these instructions. Should technical questions or problems arise with the submission portal itself, please contact the GSA Operations Director (operations@thegsa.org).

The GSA Seminar Committee is chaired by CJ Jones, University of Notre Dame (cjones23@nd.edu). Please get in touch with them if you have any questions etc.

Thank you for your support of the GSA’s seminar program!