CFP - special issue on air war

[Wilms, Wilfried]

CFP - Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik (special issue on air war) 

 

Proposals are invited for contributions to a volume of essays on the air war in Europe from 1937-1945. Historical essays that place the European air war in historical context - e.g. strategic bombing during WWI, warfare against colonial possessions during the interwar years, the bombing war against Japan, etc - are welcome, but our main interest is in critical studies on literary or cinematic representations of and reflections on the bombing war conducted by and/or against Germany during the Second World War.  We wish to move beyond moral and political arguments about who should and should not be presented as victims (as elicited, for instance, by the publication of Jörg Friedrich's Der Brand).  Although we recognize that representations and narratives are often, if not always, morally and politically inflected, we also assume as normal that all people be able to tell their stories, no matter who the people or what the stories are.  Therefore, we are looking for studies that directly deal with representations (in, for instance, novels, poetry, paintings, memorials, photographs, films) of the bombing war, its effects (on aircrews or victims in Spain, Poland, the Netherlands, England, Germany, or elsewhere), its efficacy, and the efforts to remember or efface the memory of its effects after the war.  We are also interested in examinations of why such representations may be rare or lacking in certain national literary traditions (for instance, the post-war German literary tradition, as claimed by Sebald). 

 

Possible topics include:

 

German literature on air war (Nossack; Ledig; Kluge; et.al.)

American/British/Dutch/French/ Polish/Russian/Spanish etc. literature on air war

Air war & film

Public memory and memorials

The distinction between memory & history

Air war & international law

Taboo & repression (psychological and/or social)

The role of photography (as means of warfare and as representation of warfare's effects)

Narrative form and leitmotifs

Language and style

 

Please e-mail abstracts of c. 200 words to both the editors by 1 June 2004:

 




Prof William Rasch

wrasch at indiana.edu

Indiana University 

 

Prof. Wilfried Wilms

wilmsw at union.edu

Union College, NY




 

 


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