Yale Law School's Career Development Office presents "The Recovery of the Public World: Reviving Democracy." This conference will explore emerging visions of a civil society which transcend the old divisions of liberal and conservative/private vs. public; examine ways of integrating religious and spiritual traditions and public service work; and identify strategies of revivifying a participatory democracy. Jim Wallis, author of Soul of Politics and founder of Sojourners, will be the keynote speaker at the conference. Scheduled panels include "Public Citizens: A Lost Ideal," "Compassionate Action: Finding Unity and Diversity," and "Democracy in Action." For more information please contact Susan Feathers, Attorney Counselor for Public Service, Yale Law School, 127 Wall Street, New Haven, CT 06511, (203) 432-1676; fax (203) 432-8423. New Haven, CT: April 9-10, 1997
Millersville University of Pennsylvania presents its 16th Annual Conference on the Holocaust. The theme is "The Origins of the Holocaust in Germany and Europe." Keynote speakers will include: Gerhard Weinberg, University of North Carolina; Miles Lerman, United States Holocaust Museum; John Weiss, CUNY; and Omar Bartov, Rutgers University. In addition, six panels will examine scholarly papers on a variety of topics, including "Big Business, Foreign Policy and the Final Solution"; "The Goldhagen Controversy"; "The Road to the Holocaust: Voters, Logic, and Complicity"; "Euthanasia and the Holocaust"; and "Auschwitz Remembered-A Slide Presentation." Registration fee is $10. To register or for more information, call Millersville University, located near Lancaster, PA, at (717) 872-3555. You may also request information by contacting Dr. Jack Fischel, chairperson of the MU history department and conference coordinator, by fax at (717) 871-2485 or by e-mail: meichler@marauder.millersv.edu. Millersville, PA: April 13-14, 1997
A three-day conference on "Biotechnology, Culture, and the Body" will be held at the Center for Twentieth Century Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The conference will take up the social and cultural ramifications of reproductive technology and end-of-life technologies: two areas of rapid medical progress that have recently sparked much creative work across the humanities and social sciences. Scholars from anthropology, cultural and literary studies, history, film, bioethics, and medicine will address how new and emerging medical technologies are recasting the central debates in our society about the authority of scientific medicine, the personal and political control of the body, and the appropriate relationships between technology, natural processes, and social life. For more information contact: Paul Brodwin, conference organizer, Center for Twentieth Century Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201. Phone: (414) 229-4141, or fax: (414) 229-5964, or e-mail: ctr20cs@csd.uwm.edu. You may also see the conference home-page. Milwaukee, WI: April 24-26, 1997
This interdisciplinary conference will examine the way poetry affects and is affected by social context, looking at a range of poetry including performance-oriented, community-based, socially engaged, and formally experimental work. Designed to bring poets, scholars, and activists into conversation, the conference will feature roundtable discussions, poetry readings and performances, keynote lectures, and panel presentations. Featured poets include Adrienne Rich, Sonia Sanchez, Robert Hass, Amiri Baraka, Miguel Algarín and poets from the Nuyorican Cafe, along with Alicia Ostriker, Cheryl Clarke, Abena Busia, Ed Roberson, and Eliot Katz. Other featured speakers include Cary Nelson, Charles Altieri, Meena Alexander, Charles Bernstein, Maria Damon, Tricia Rose, Ross Talarico, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Bob Perelman, Michael Taussig, Walter Kalaidjian, Carolyn Forché, and many others. Visit our web site. Request registration materials at (908) 932-8029 or by e-mail: poetry97@fas-english.rutgers.edu, or by writing Harriet Davidson, Department of English, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08903-5054. New Brunswick, NJ: April 24-27, 1997
The Midwest Victorian Studies Association's annual conference will focus on the Victorians and the Germanic. Twentieth-century conflicts have effectively heightened the differences between England and Germany, obscuring the ties that linked the two nations during the nineteenth century. But the connection with German and the rest of the Germanic world-part kinship, part rivalry-was a central fact of Victorian culture. Connections to be explored include those in music, philosophy, literature, and in questions of national identity. Sponsored by the University of Illinois at Chicago, the conference will meet in Chicago on April 25th and 26th. For further information, or to register for the conference or join the Midwest Victorian Studies Association, contact Keith Welsh, Department of Literature and Language, Webster University, 470 E. Lockwood Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63119 or e-mail: welshke@websteruniv.edu. Chicago, IL: April 25-26, 1997
The Robert Penn Warren Circle and the Center for Warren Studies present their joint meeting at Western Kentucky University, with the focus "Robert Penn Warren and Literary Theory." Professor Hugh Ruppersburg, University of Georgia, will give the keynote address on "Warren's Reputation Among the Postmoderns." In addition, panels will discuss recent regionalist theories, "political correctness," and the place of Warren's poetry and fiction (including All the King's Men and Band of Angels, "Ballad of a Sweet Dream of Peace," and Warren's critical introductions) in the literary canon. There will also be an open dramatic reading of the newly reissued Brother to Dragons and theatrical performances of stories from Warren's collection A Circus in the Attic. The conference will also feature roundtable discussions to which graduate students are welcome. For more information, please contact Professor Lucy Ferriss, Program Chair, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY 13323, or call (315) 853-4462; or e-mail: lferriss@hamilton.edu. Bowling Green, KY: April 25-27 , 1997
How did the Cold War look from the other side? Why do more and more people now think of themselves as "Eastern German" before "German"? What was the German "new wave" before Fassbinder, Kluge and Straub/Huillet? How does the image of Weimar, Nazi and postwar German cinema shift if we add the missing piece to the puzzle- DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft), the state-owned film studios of the German Democratic Republic? A diverse and international group of scholars will address such questions and view rare films at a conference inaugurating the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts, an archive and study center. Book lodging immediately if possible; it's autumn in New England! Contact Barton Byg, Director, DEFA Film Library, Department of Germanics, Herter Hall, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA 01003. Telephone (413) 545-6671, or fax (413) 545-6995. You may also e-mail: defa@german.umass.edu, or see the web page. Northampton/Amherst, MA: October 2-5, 1997
The organizers of the Seventh Annual Women's Studies Conference at Southern Connecticut State University are inviting submissions including proposals for papers, roundtable discussions, workshops, performances, slide/video shows, poster sessions and works in progress. The conference will explore Latina issues and influences across an interdisciplinary spectrum including, but not limited to: anthropology, demographics, economics, education and pedagogy, history, language, law, literature, philosophy, politics, psychology, religion, sociology, and the visual and performing arts. Theoretical perspectives may include cultural studies, feminism, Lesbian theory, Marxism, post-modernism, post-structuralism, queer theory, and racial theory. Activist and community-based approaches are also welcome. Send proposals postmarked by June 2, 1997 by e-mail to WOMENSTUDIES@SCSU.CTSTATEU.EDU, by fax to (203) 392-6723, or by mail to Dr. Vara Neverow, Women's Studies, EN271, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, CT 06515. Telephone: (203) 392-6133/6717/5864. New Haven, CT: October 3-5, 1997
"Water: Cultural Representations and Ecological Questions in Germany and the American West" is the topic of a University of Oregon German Studies symposium. Co-sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service, the UO Humanities Center, the UO College of Arts and Sciences, and the UO School of Architecture and Allied Arts, the symposium aims to provide a forum for analyzing the cultural, environmental, and political significance of water from a broad range of interdisciplinary and international perspectives. Sessions will link the ecological and cultural responses to water by addressing such issues as boundaries, water as transportation, architecture and water, hygiene/purity/pollution, floods and drought, aridity, waterpower, hydrophobia, fishing (including Native American fishing rights) and imaginary water creatures. Presentations should contribute to an intercultural discussion of water-related issues. Abstracts for papers (in English/20-minute limit) are now being accepted. Due to the Lingua Franca publication schedule for this notice, readers are eligible for an extended submission deadline of April 15. For submissions and/or more information, contact Susan C. Anderson, Chair, German Studies Committee, Dept. of Germanic Languages and Literature, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403; tel. (541) 346-4056; fax (541) 346-4126; e-mail: susana@oregon.uoregon.edu. Eugene, OR: October 16-19, 1997
The Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society presents its third annual international and interdisciplinary conference, with special sessions on aggressivity and violence. Speakers (tentatively) include: Parveen Adams, Fred Alford, Willy Apollon, Maurice Apprey, Homi Bhabha, Danielle Bergeron, Cynthia Burack, Lucie Cantin, Joan Copjec, Jane Flax, James Glass, Judith Gurewich, Norman Itzkowitz, Juliet Flower MacCannell, Paola Mieli, Joseph Montville, Gregory Saathoff, Renata Salecl, Harold Saunders, Carrie Schaffer, Joseph Smith, Howard Stein, Claudia Tate, J. Anderson Thompson, Vamik Volkan, Victor Wolfenstein, and Elisabeth Young-Bruehl. Proposals for papers or panels welcome on any aspect of psychoanalysis and social change or aggressivity and violence. Send one-page abstracts (no papers) by August 15 to Mark Bracher, English Department, Kent State University, Kent, OH 44242. You may also fax (330) 672-3152, or e-mail: mbracher@kent.edu. Washington, DC: November 6-8, 1997