The Goethe Society of North America

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The Goethe Society of North America (GSNA) was founded in December 1979 in San Francisco as a non-profit organization dedicated to the encouragement of research on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832; pronunciation here) and his age. The impact of the work of the Goethe Society of North America is considerable and demonstrates that in its relatively brief career it has already become a major forum for constructive research within the international community of scholars of the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Century.

Since 1982 the Goethe Society of North America has published the Goethe Yearbook, which has become a respected organ of eighteenth-century studies in diverse disciplines and which is recognized as a vital compendium of current research in its articles and its extensive review section. The Goethe Yearbook is distributed free to all paid-up members of the GSNA—see [Membership] on how to become a member.

Since 2006 the Goethe Society has been sponsoring a new book series that will be published by Bucknell University Press. The goal of this series is to publish innovative research that contextualizes the “Age of Goethe,” whether within the fields of literature, history (including art history and history of science), philosophy, art, music, or politics.

The Goethe Society of North America has allied organization status with the Modern Language Association (MLA) and the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS). The Society has also arranged to hold Southern California meetings at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library in Los Angeles in cooperation with the UCLA Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies. Thanks to its growing membership and the continued financial support of such institutions as the German Department at the University of California, Irvine, the Society is looking forward to a productive future.

The current edition of Goethe News and Notes (Fall 2008) is available as Flash Paper here and as a pdf file here. For previous editions click here.

In honor of the 25th anniversary of its founding, the Goethe Society of North America has created a bibliography of monographs on Goethe or his age published by its members (1970-2005). This is a work in progress. If you would like to add to the list, please send the bibliographic information (books only) to Ms. Rie Sumitani. If you have any questions about this project, contact Astrida Tantillo.

The Society maintains a listserv, goethe-l@davidson.edu, to help facilitate the exchange of ideas among its members. To subscribe, or unsubscribe, please contact the webmaster@goethesociety.org.

2008 GSNA Conference

August 20, 2008

Dear GSNA Members,

We are pleased to announce that the official website for the GSNA Conference on Goethe and the Postclassical is now up and running. You will find the website at:

www.goethesociety.org/conference

From here you can check out the program, register for the conference, reserve your hotel room, and more. Please note: The hotel is currently experiencing difficulties with its GSNA-specific online reservation site. Please do not attempt to reserve your rooms online until you receive a message that the problem has been corrected. If you wish, you may reserve by phone by calling 412-683-2040. Make sure you identify yourself as part of the Goethe Society of North America in order to get conference rates and ensure that we meet our end of the contract.

We are extremely excited about the conference. We have two outstanding keynote speakers (Ulrich Gaier and Robert Richards), a presidential panel on Faust (with papers by Ben Bennett, Ellis Dye, Daniel Wilson, and response from Jane Brown, and chaired by Meredith Lee), and around sixty papers and twenty panels. Colleagues from across North America and Europe are attending. We are receiving support from the University of Pittsburgh, the DAAD, and the DFG.

We would like to invite all members to peruse the program. We are hopeful that many of you will want to come, even if you didn’t submit a proposal. Perhaps we can tempt you by extending an invitation to volunteer as a panel chair. If you would like to serve in this capacity (and perhaps secure institutional funding for your trip), please send an email to Burkhard Henke. We will process these requests on a first-come, first-served basis. All GSNA members are invited to volunteer.

Please note that all conference participants are required to be members of the GSNA. You will find instructions on the conference web site. You will find our dues are very reasonable, especially for students, emeriti and junior faculty. If, on the other hand, you have institution funds available to you, we encourage you to consider paying your dues at the patron level. In any case, you should know that the 2008 dues which you will be paying include the Goethe Yearbook that will appear in early 2009.

We would like to thank our webmaster Burkhard Henke for the splendid design of the conference website. He and the rest of the board assembled this site in all its detail in just a matter of days.

We look forward to seeing many of you in November.

Yours, on behalf of my co-planners, Karin Schutjer and Clark Muenzer,
Simon Richter

Recent Announcements

August 20, 2008		August 20, 2008
News and Notes From the President The other day I introduced my two sons, Toby (8) and Sam (6), to Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It all started because of Toby’s obsession with birds. On a whim, I showed the boys the dead parrot routine on YouTube. One thing led to [ ... more]		News and Notes From the Vice President The response to the upcoming Goethe Society conference has been phenomenal, and I would like to thank the planning committee (comprising Simon Richter, Clark Muenzer, and Karin Schutjer) for its efforts on behalf of the Society. [ ... more]
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Panels Special Session at GSA 2008 Organized and chaired by Stefani Engelstein, University of Missouri "Structure and Meaning in the Age of Goethe" [ ... more]		Panels Panels at MLA 2008 1. Annual Business Meeting and Presidential Address 2. Special Session [ ... more]
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Yearbook From the Yearbook Editor Members in good standing should have received Volume 15 of the Goethe Yearbook earlier this year. Volume 16 is scheduled for an early 2009 publication. It presents [ ... more]		Yearbook From the Book Series Editor I am very excited to announce that the first book in our series, Peter J. Schwartz’s After Jena: Goethe’s Elective Affinities and the End of the Old Regime, is in the copy-editing stage. [ ... more]
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Syllabus Archive From the Webmaster The Goethe Society now offers a compilation of syllabi that address aspects of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German culture. Members are invited to submit syllabi [ ... more]		Dues Reminder Members who have not yet paid their dues are gently reminded to do so. The Goethe Yearbook is sent only once this obligation is met. For your convenience, we offer an online payment option. [ ... more]