Goethe Society of North America (GSNA) Session at ASECS, Los Angeles, March 2015
The Idea of Europe in the Goethezeit
Convener, John H. Smith, Dept. of European Languages and Studies, University of California, IrvineThe decades around 1800 in German-speaking countries saw major developments in the arts, society, politics, and philosophy that fostered thinking about both nationalism and cosmopolitanism. But the idea of "Europe," which one could say lies between those two poles, also became a focus. Paul Michael Lützeler explored the topic of "Goethe and Europe" in his South Atlantic Quarterly essay (2000), which we can take as a point of departure for this session. We will explore the way Europe was conceived in relation to questions of both national identity and universalism for thinkers of the late Enlightenment, Classicism, Idealism, and Romanticism.Please send 250-word proposals to John H. Smith by September 5, 2014.