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Beginnings and Endings of Modernity in German-Speaking Lands

An Interdisciplinary Conference
(Click here for further information.)
April 2-4, 2004
Hosted by: Duke University & University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

This conference brings together scholars of German history, culture, and literature who work in medieval, early modern, modern, and postmodern studies in order to forge an interdisciplinary and cross-chronological conversation about the problem of modernity in German-speaking lands. The concept of modernity is clearly useful and, on the whole, widely agreed upon in scholarly circles, yet the temporal and conceptual borders of the modern remain contested and even obscure. Scholars continue to argue about the boundaries setting off the modern from what precedes, and now according to some, follows it. Why does this boundary continually shift? How and why do different fields and sub-fields create or negate notions of continuity and discontinuity in their effort to support notions of modernity and its boundaries? What concepts, assumptions, and kinds of evidence allow a discipline or field to talk about modernity? Participants will be addressing beginnings and endings of modernity from many perspectives, including gender and sexuality studies; the rural/urban divide; notions of community and salvation; concepts of time; media studies and knowledge production; power relations between rulers and subjects; the construction and use of law; the creation of modern notions of subjectivity; and the construction of aesthetic value.

Spring 2004

Fall 2003

Spring 2003

Fall 2002

Spring 2002

Fall 2001