From the Executive Secretary

I am delighted to continue my work for GSNA as your new executive secretary!Let me start with many thanks: to Karin Schutjer, for doing such a marvelous job and helping along the transition, everybody at the executive committee and particularly Burkhard Henke for helping me keep deadlines and disseminate information. Thanks to all of you for sending me ideas, suggestions, and conference panel proposals – but please no books or reviews. Please send them to Sean Franzel, who is doing a marvelous job.The call for panel proposals for MLA 2017 has gone out already, but here is a list of current and upcoming deadlines:

• ASECS, 15 March 2016 for the 2017 convention
• GSA, 15 November 2016 for the 2017 convention
• MLA, 1 December 2016 for the 2018 convention

For the 2016 GSA, Elliott Schreiber and Edgar Landgraf have arranged an impressive series of panels on Goethe at Play. Three panels, sponsored by our society, have been submitted to the program committee. You can see details below. Clearly, we’ll be well represented in San Diego!In the meantime, happy spring and please do not hesitate to contact me!

Birgit TautzBowdoin College

Call for Papers: 2017 MLA

Panel sponsored by the Goethe Society of North America, proposed by Karin Schutjer (University of Oklahoma) and Birgit Tautz (Bowdoin College)

Refugees, Migrants, and Exiles in the Age of Goethe

This panel examines figurations, metaphors, and constellations of displacement, engaging with questions of belonging, home, and escape, broadly construed. Papers may explore these questions in Goethe’s as well as contemporaries’ works. While we consider biographical approaches, we are particularly interested in fictional, psycho-geographical, and historical treatments, including, for example, adaptation and reception of antiquity or the Bible, French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, the Grand Tour, or resettlement due to environmental change, colonization or development projects.1-page abstracts by 1 March to btautz@bowdoin.edu and kschutjer@ou.edu.

From the Executive Secretary

With the annual meeting of the German Studies Association fast approaching, know that we will once again be hosting a cash bar in conjunction with our annual business meeting. If you’re attending the GSA, please plan to join us at 6:30 pm on Saturday evening in the Arlington Ballroom Salon 2 Foyer. The business meeting will begin around 6:50 pm in Salon 2. We’ll be saying a fond thank you to the officers who are ending their terms this year, will announce our election results, honor the recipient of the 2014 Essay Prize, and report on exciting new ventures and ideas for the future.

Karin SchutjerUniversity of Oklahoma

2015 GSA Panels

Special GSNA Sessions at the Annual Meeting of the German Studies AssociationWashington, DC, October 1-4, 2015

Goethe’s Integration of Art and Science

Moderator: Clark Muenzer, University of PittsburghCommentator: Frederick Amrine, University of Michigan

1. “Goethe’s Epistemology of Love,” Arthur Zajonc, Amherst College
2. “Organicist Aspects of Schenkerian Thought,” Jeff Swinkin, University of Oklahoma
3. “Spiel der Phantasie: Trauer, Tanz und Therapie in Goethes Lila,” Ferdinand Bubacz, New York University

Science, Nature, and Art: From the Age of Goethe to the Present

Seminar Conveners:Frederick Amrine, John Smith, and Astrida Orle TantilloSeminar Participants:

1. Yvonne Al-Taie, Kiel University
2. Jeffrey Champlin, Bard College at Alquds University
3. Daniel DiMassa, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
4. Sally Hatch Gray, Mississippi State University
5. Martha Helfer, Rutgers University
6. Jennifer Hoyer, University of Arkansas
7. Samuel Kessler, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
8. Rita Krueger, Temple University
9. Alice Kuzniar, University of Waterloo
10. Marcus Lampert, University of Chicago
11. Charlotte Lee, University of Cambridge
12. Seth Elliott Meyer, University of California, Berkeley
13. Elizabeth Millan, DePaul University
14. Howard Pollack-Milgate, DePauw University
15. Sebastian Rand, Georgia State University
16. Michael Saman, College of the Holy Cross
17. Elliott Schreiber, Vassar College
18. Alexis Smith, University of Oregon
19. Gabriel Trop, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
20. Johannes Wankhammer, Cornell University

2016 MLA Panels

Special GSNA Sessions at the Annual Convention of the Modern Language AssociationAustin, TX, Austin, 7–10 January 2016

Goethe and Cognitive Science, Cognition and Goethe

Presiding: Charlotte Lee, University of Cambridge, Murray Edwards College

1. “The Sunlike Eye: Historicizing Cognition in Goethe and Uexküll,” Joseph D. O’Neil, University of Kentucky
2. “Discovering the Urpflanze: Depictions of Empirical Observation in Goethe’s Botanical Writings,” Yevgenya Strakovsky, Stanford University
3. “Cognitive Problems in Faust,” Christian Peter Weber, Florida State University
4. “Ottilie’s Learning Disability and the Uncanny Saintliness of Deficient Social Cognition in Die Wahlverwandtschaften,” Donald R. Wehrs, Auburn University, Auburn

Cognitive Science in the Goethezeit

Presiding: John H. Smith, University of California, Irvine

1. “Goethe and Schiller as Pioneers of Embodied Cognition,” Frederick Amrine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
2. “Phantasy and Cognition: Johannes Müller Reading Goethe,” Edgar Landgraf, Bowling Green State University
3. “‘Des bildenden Geists werdender Werkstatt’: Hölderlin and the Plasticity of Poetry,” Charlotte Lee, University of Cambridge, Murray Edwards College

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Narratologist

Cooperative panel arranged by the International Society for the Study of Narrative and the Goethe Society of North AmericaPresiding: Birgit Tautz, Bowdoin College

1. “Goethe, the Novel, and the ‘Secret Quest for Meaning,’” Karin Anneliese Wurst, Michigan State University
2. “Narrative Solipsism in Die Leiden des jungen Werthers,” Christopher Chiasson, Indiana University, Bloomington
3. “A School of Fiction or the Limits of Narrative: Goethe’s Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten,” Sebastian Meixner, University of Tübingen