[AMS-announce] CFP: Edinburgh German Yearbook Volume 3 (2009): Contested Legacies - Constructions of Cultural Heritage in the GDR (journal)

[ams-announce-admin at list.bowdoin.edu]

Edinburgh German Yearbook Volume 3 (2009): Contested Legacies - Constructions of Cultural Heritage in the GDR
Edited by Matthew Philpotts and Sabine Rolle

EGYB is a new annual publication for German Studies, published by Camden House, intended to encourage and disseminate lively and open discussion of themes pertinent to German Studies, viewed from a wide variety of perspectives inside and outside the conventional boundaries of the discipline.  We very much see the new journal as interdisciplinary and wondered that there might be musicologists working on, for example, constructions of musical canons and with knowledge of musical institutions in the GDR and their approach to this. 

In the context of the approaching 20th anniversary of the fall of the Wall, volume 3 engages with current debates on memory and tradition in order to re-visit the cultural history of the GDR. Existing cultural traditions were one of the principal constraints on the realisation of the first socialist state on German soil; at the same time, the cultural values of the past were frequently appropriated in order to legitimate SED policy. We intend to examine this tension in attitudes to the past in the GDR, through a range of contributions exploring how the discourses and values of East German society interacted with the cultural values of the past, in general, and with the German cultural inheritance, in particular.

Contributions are invited from the full range of academic approaches - literary, cultural, linguistic, musical, artistic, political, historical, and theoretical - and might address, for example, the following broad areas:

- Continuation and change in political, cultural, judicial, educational, economical, religious and media institutions
- The 'canon' in literature, drama, music, visual arts
- Conservation versus renewal in the built environment
- Attitudes towards traditions and customs in majority and minority cultures
- Remembering the past: historical narratives (including history of science, history of ideas etc.)
- Exhibiting the past: memorials and museums

Publication will be autumn 2009, and the deadline for finished contributions will be 30 January 2009. Essays may be in English or German. *Abstracts for proposed contributions should be submitted by email to both the editors by the end of March 2008.* 

Dr Matthew Philpotts (matthew.philpotts at manchester.ac.uk) 
Dr Sabine Rolle (s.rolle at ed.ac.uk)