Nominations Sought

Dear Members,Since all of our officers began the final year of their terms on January 1, I have constituted a nominating committee in accord with the Society's By-Laws. I am pleased to announce that Martha Helfer (mhelfer@rci.rutgers.edu) has agreed to serve as the committee's chair, along with Karin Schutjer (kschutjer@ou.edu) and Vance Byrd (byrdvl@grinnell.edu) as members. The committee will nominate eight members for the following four offices: Vice-President, Secretary-Treasurer, and two Directors-at-Large. The Vice-President will succeed to the Presidency after her or his three-year term in 2019.Please contact Martha with your suggestions no later than April 1. If you are willing to be considered yourself, please also let Martha know.

Clark MuenzerUniversity of Pittsburgh

Call for Papers: Cognitive Science (2016 MLA)

Panel sponsored by the Goethe Society of North America, proposed by Charlotte Lee (Cambridge) and John H. Smith (UC Irvine)

Cognitive Science in/and the Goethezeit

Modern Languages Association Annual ConventionAustin, TX, 7-10 January 2016A lot of work in the humanities recently has been drawn to the cognitive sciences, from the role of mirror neurons in empathetic and aesthetic experiences (Galese) to post-phenomenological interdisciplinary studies of the senses. And a lot of work on the Goethezeit has been drawn to varieties of scientific practices and to conceptions that once seemed antiquated but may actually have been all too prescient (the interrelations between the inorganic and organic, between mind and body, and between subject and object). This session would like to bring these two interests together. Building on a proposed conference on “Embodied Cognition and the Goethezeit” in Cambridge (September 2015), the session invites papers that would address such issues as the way literary and/or philosophical texts in the Age of Goethe explore cognitive processes or the way contemporary cognitive science might illuminate literary/philosophical texts; how the period looked at the intersection of mind and body; the extent to which the Goethezeit offers approaches to cognition that were not taken up by modern science but may be relevant again.One-page abstracts by March 1, 2015, to Charlotte Lee (cll38@cam.ac.uk) and John H. Smith (jhsmith@uci.edu).

Call for Papers: 2016 MLA

Collaborative Session:International Society for the Study of Narrative & the Goethe Society of North America

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Narratologist?

Modern Languages Association Annual ConventionAustin, Texas 7-10 January, 2016Although constituting an innovative and influential narrative corpus, the prose works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe are not often invoked in either the core texts of classical narratology or in contemporary narrative theory. According to Martin Swales, however, Goethe maintained a life-long interest in narrativity that significantly shaped his narrative practice. The inattention to Goethe's work on the part of narrative theorists thus represents a significant oversight. We invite papers to consider how narrative theory can illuminate Goethe's prose works—in particular his four novelistic masterworks Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774, The Sorrows of Young Werther), Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-1796, Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship), Die Wahlverwandschaften (1809, Elective Affinities), and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821/1839, Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years). We also wish to explore the ways in which Goethe’s narrative work enacts its own particular narrative theory. Possible presentations might address the following questions: How can narrative theory be productively deployed in analyses of Goethe’s works? How does an examination of his works help us to better understand the narrative conventions of the novel as they developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, whether in the context of German-language literature or transnationally/translinguistically? How do his prose works invite or resist narratologically inflected readings? How can insights into the narrative dynamics of Goethe’s texts enrich existing narratological  paradigms? We invite papers that either narrow in on particular narrative theoretical aspects of Goethe’s works or broaden their focus to consider Goethe’s narratives alongside the work of other writers.1-page abstracts to mcglothlin@wustl.edu and kschutjer@ou.edu by 1 March 2015 

2013 Essay Prize

The Goethe Society awarded the 2013 best essay prize to Patricia Anne Simpson for her article, "Sacred Maternity and Secular Sons: Hölderlin’s Madonna as Muse." I join my colleague Gail Hart and Peter Höyng in congratulating her for her superb scholarship. Patricia Simpson is Professor of German at Montana State University and her essay appeared in the Camden House anthology, Religion, Reason, and Culture in the Age of Goethe, which she edited along with Elizabeth Krimmer.Patricia Simpson’s essay moves from broadest imaginable intellectual history to a very close reading of an exemplary poem. Her opening paragraph follows the fine German academic tradition of synthesizing as many ideas as possible in one very complex statement, in other words, it shows off just how smart the author is. She situates her argument within eighteenth-century debates over philosophy and theology, the place of the divine in secular modernity, as well the as the importance of pantheism, polytheism, and paganism within poetry. In its broad sweep, the essay reasserts the prominence of religion in our understanding of German intellectual history. She surveys the shifting boundaries between religion and philosophy from Spinoza to Habermas, without becoming so lost in abstraction that she ignores the real life consequences heterodox thinkers faced when they offend the reigning institutions. After a forceful overview, Professor SImpson then winnows her argument down from the accusations of atheism Fichte faced to a tightly focused reading of Hölderlin’s neglected fragmentary ode, "An die Madonna." Simpson demonstrates how Hölderlin attention to maternity, religion and poetic epiphany stood dramatically apart from that of his contemporaries.In choosing Professor Simpson’s work in a year rich with North American Goethezeit scholarship, the committee characterized it as "a beautiful reading of Hölderlin's poetry, explaining the murky dynamics of the Madonna figure and its references to gendered parents with great clarity while disrupting the very basic assumptions about modernity and secularism." In the end we all agreed that it was "thoroughly researched, broad in scope, shedding new light on Hölderlin, with a sophisticated argument, all the while elegantly presented. Ein kleines Meisterwerk."

Daniel PurdyPennsylvania State University

From the President

After more than two years of planning, the 2014 Atkins Conference in Pittsburgh is quickly approaching. With the unflinching support and tireless work of our directors, Heather Sullivan and Horst Lange—who along with me have designed our program—as well as with Burkhard Henke’s technical and aesthetic expertise, everything is now falling into place. Please, therefore, think of this message to you as my last “breathless” invitation to join the festivities in Pittsburgh.The final program will be posted on the conference website in just a day or two, so take the time to review it and complete your personal schedules. They are sure be filled with events that will edify and entertain. At the top of the list are our two keynote addresses by our two distinguished colleagues Jane K. Brown and Anne Bohnenkamp-Renke, whom we will also honor with Life Memberships to the Society. But to launch things on Thursday evening after our Annual Business Meeting we are hosting a gala reception with enough food and drink (at least for most of us) to make a late dinner unnecessary. And for those arriving in the afternoon, after picking up your registration packets at the Wyndham Hotel, please consider taking the five-minute walk to the University Library to inspect an exhibition of rare books, manuscripts, and Goetheana in the Special Collections Department on the third floor, where you can also visit a display of books by members. Friday and Saturday, of course, will be the talks. In addition to the Keynote Addresses, these will include our Presidential Forum with Ellis Dye, Simon Richter, and Astrida Tantillo speaking to “Goethe and the Humanities Today” and some twenty panel with sixty papers, courtesy of you.About seventy-five people have already signed-up for the final event on Saturday evening at the Andy Warhol Museum, but you still have a few days to buy a ticket on the conference website, if you don’t want to be alone in your room at the hotel. In addition to drinks and food, we will nourish you with full access to all seven floors of the museum, just for our group, as well as a display of all five of Andy’s Goethe-serigraphs and an animation installation entitled “The Poodle Arrives.” If you haven’t heard already, we are providing bus transportation from the Wyndham, but all that information and more is in the “Program.”I’ll have to leave you now to check menus, rooms, and student workers. If all goes as planned, they will be the people wearing conference t-shirts who can help you out and answer your questions.Have safe journeys all to Pittsburgh. We’ll be seeing each other in just over a week!

Clark MuenzerUniversity of Pittsburgh