THE ATKINS GOETHE CONFERENCE
Re-Orientations around Goethe
Pennsylvania State University, November 3-5, 2017
The topic of the 2017 Atkins Conference, encourages us to revive the vital questions that so dramatically transformed life around 1800 by demonstrating how they still matter in our own era. We have the opportunity to confirm that the principles of the Enlightenment have not been superseded in the global world, that the realization of true freedom requires us to cultivate the entire person not just a single skill, that the experience of nature can still transform our lives. Goethe’s writing and the work of his contemporaries remind us that the beauty of poetry and philosophy outlasts the political maneuvers of courtiers and adventurers. At the same time, Re-Orientations around Goethe provides us with the occasion to explore the long history of our own era by discovering that many contemporary debates about the environment, media, scientific knowledge, global politics, gender, and sexuality also had their place in the eighteenth century.
About
Organized by the Goethe Society of North America, this scholarly conference will take place on the campus of the Pennsylvania State University, November 3-5, 2017. It will feature two full days of panels as well as a dissertation workshop. We are grateful to Mr. Stuart Atkins for his generous support of this conference in honor of the memory of his parents, Lillian and Stuart P. Atkins. We would also like to thank the Pennsylvania State University for its considerable financial and logistical support.