“Diversifying Analyzes of Canonical Texts: Exploring New Perspectives and Approaches”

Kanon revisited: Diversifying analyzes of canonical texts

Literary conference in Bern and Fribourg, 18.–20. January 2024

The German-language literary educational canon, which was also a reading and school canon until the middle of the 20th century, is essentially a child of the predominantly Protestant, almost exclusively male literary studies that have developed since the middle of the 19th century. In the recent past, resistance to this canon has formed on various occasions. On the one hand, this resistance is expressed in the fact that proposals for counter-canons were made or pleas were made for the extension or revision of the canon, but often while retaining tried-and-tested questions. On the other hand, contemporary literature has forced literary studies to enrich its analytical tools and to develop new perspectives on literature that no longer corresponds to the current paradigms of the traditional canon. Gender and queer theoretical approaches, for example, served this purpose, a postcolonial approach with anti-classical or anti-racist accentuation.

Following the post-colonial questions that have been asked about texts from the traditional canon of the 19th and early 20th centuries for some years now, further new methodological concepts are to be tested on earlier and later texts of the canon in order to uncover constellations that remain hidden from traditional literary studies. Last but not least, a revision of the canon from new perspectives can also serve to revitalize the traditional canon for contemporary literary studies and literature teaching, without thereby competing with a desirable expansion of the canon. It is not necessary to do away with all tried and tested objects, but rather to take a different perspective. As a supplement to the expansion and revision of the canon, we think that updating the access to texts in the traditional canon is desirable. This would close the gap between what is considered socially relevant and textual work with canonical texts at university and in school.

Starting here, we want to conduct a discussion on innovative approaches to revising the German-language literary canon at a two-day conference in Freiburg and Bern. Diversifying readings of old texts that are considered to be stable in value are to be deepened and tested. While the voices thus made audible and constellations made visible may not always be those inherent or made visible to those who authorized, interpreted, and canonized the texts, the canonical texts always contain more than just the dominant mainstream because they are world-representing also transport hidden, marginal or unconscious moments of culture, which a one-sided view of the canon has consciously suppressed.

Suggestions for contributions to the discussion mentioned are welcome, which include canonical texts with regard to the textual coding of Otherness, be it in terms of gender, identity or desire. It is important to focus on colonialist structures and economic or medical-political patterns of exclusion and to make vulnerable identity constructs legible.

The four panels of the conference focus on gender-theoretical, feminist readings, queer-theoretical re-readings, anti-racist perspectives on texts and questions dedicated to alterization in the context of the economy or classicist stereotypes. We welcome contributions that explore this question on a content-rich level or that discuss the narrative structures that are required for the production of Otherness have served.

Please send until May 21, 2023 a maximum one-page proposal for a 25-minute presentation as well as a short personal note to the organizers of the conference: [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].

You will receive a message from the organizers about the submitted proposal by the beginning of July.

Subject to an outstanding financing commitment, it is planned to cover travel and accommodation costs in full and to publish the contributions after the conference.

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Editors: Constanze Baum – Lukas Büsse – Mark-Georg Dehrmann – Nils Gelker – Markus Malo – Alexander Nebrig – Johannes Schmidt

This announcement was made by H-GERMANISTIK [Mark-Georg Dehrmann] supervised – [email protected]