Call for Papers for a Series of Interdisciplinary Panels: “Cosmopolitical and Transnational

Interventions”

Thirty-Fourth Annual German Studies Association Conference

October 7-10, 2010, Oakland, California
Deadline: February 15, 2010

Contemporary socio-political theorists such as Etienne Balibar, Seyla Benhabib, Ulrich Beck and Edgar
Grandé, among others, have emphasized the need for a cosmopolitan Europe in the 21st century. Such a
Europe would utilize internal and external differences rather than suppressing them, and work towards a
“differential integration” of its subjects in order to optimally fulfill its transnational obligations and
connections. To mark the end of the eventful first decade of the 21st century, we are inviting proposals for
an interdisciplinary panel series across a wide range of historical, political, geographical, cultural,
anthropological, linguistic, aesthetic, philosophical, and visual perspectives.

Concepts: Comparative discourses of post-, trans-, and inter-national interventions; differential evaluations
of cosmopolitanism and cosmopolitics; colonial and postcolonial Europe; kinship, community, and identity;
human rights; spaces of citizenship.

Narratives: Globalization and literary imagination; new and emergent forms of bi- and multilingualism;
translations, travelogues and other forms of cultural transfer; literature as the space for cosmopolitical and
transnational interventions; transformative definitions of ‘national’ literatures; World Literatures and the
literary marketplace.

Histories: The archeology of cosmopolitan Europe against prevailing presentism in discourses of

multiculturalism, transnationalism, and globalization.

Media Environments: Transnational modes of production, distribution, circulation, and reception of

cinema and television; internet art, computer games, video art, animation; digitization of libraries and
museums, theater and performance; cultural politics of the European Union; architecture in relation to
global environmental awareness; new cityscapes.

S o u n d s : World music (popular and classical) in/and Germany; musical appropriations of

rap/hiphop/Bollywood soundtracks and new meanings of race and ethnicity; internet radio, podcasts and
transformation of the public sphere; copyright issues and piracy.

This series of panels is organized by B. Venkat Mani (University of Wisconsin; bvmani(at)wisc.edu) and
Elke Segelcke (Illinois State University; esegelc(at)ilstu.edu) in collaboration with TRANSIT. Selected
papers will be considered for publication in TRANSIT <http://german.berkeley.edu/transit>.

Important: Please send in your abstracts to the two organizers AND via the GSA website by February 15,
2010 and indicate that your submission is intended for the Interdisciplinary Program and the above series of
panels “Cosmopolitical and Transnational Interventions.” Visit the GSA website (www.thegsa.org) for
general information about membership requirement, travel funding, and the online submission process,
which opens on January 5, 2010.