Completed articles in English or in German due no later than March 15,
2010.
Growing out of a successful workshop in Ottawa in May 2009, this edited volume will focus on creativity, or related contemporary concepts such as Genie and Schöpfungskraft, as reflected by German-speaking women and their creative works around 1800. Contributions will explore the relationship between late-18th-century understanding(s) of female creativity and the cultural practices of women in the period. We welcome submissions from different disciplines such as literary criticism, history, philosophy, art, and music, as well as interdisciplinary perspectives, but all should address explicitly the theoretical question of creativity and gender in German-speaking Europe around 1800 with reference to specific texts or other cultural artifacts.
Possible topics might include:
1. Contemporary concepts of creativity such as Originalität, Genie,
Talent, or Schöpfungskraft and their relationship to gender
– sources of female creativity, e.g. inspiration vs. conscious
making, madness and disease, etc.
– male vs. female concepts and models
– relationships between discourses on creativity in aesthetics,
theology, biology, anthropology, etc.
– paradigm shifts in the understanding of creativity
– connections with specific historical events, trends and cultural
movements such as the Sturm und Drang or Romanticism
2. (Self-)representations of female creativity or the female creative
process, including:
– models/prototypes (schöne Seele, Weibergenie, Sappho) in male
and female discourse or in dominant and resistant discourse
– creative constructions of self; performativity
– creativity as strategy or strategic position
– the (self)marketing of female creativity
– habitus, ritual, fashion
3. Place/milieu of female creativity
– city, country, court, salon, travel etc. as Handlungsspielräume
– theater, music-theater, ballet and other milieus of social
performance
– periphery vs. centre, interior vs. exterior, private vs. public
– intermediality
– intersections with class, race, religion, nationality, etc.
– cultural practices such as contests, collaborations, publishing
and other forms of circulation
4. Female creativity in relationship to the creative work and its reception
– gender and medium or genre
– creative process vs. autonomous work
– imitation/copying, adaptation, translation
– techné, performance, improvisation
– professionalization, dilettantism, virtuosity
– pseudonymity/anonymity as masquerade
– representations of female creativity as self-reference and
metacriticism
General guidelines for submissions:
The text of the article should not exceed 48,000 characters (including blanks, endnotes and abstract). English articles should include an abstract of approx. 120 words in German. Black-and-white-images can be included. However, copyright needs to be arranged by the author.
Abstracts (500 words) due November 15, 2009 to Angela Borchert
(borchert@uwo.ca), Linda Dietrick (l.dietrick@uwinnipeg.ca) and Birte
Giesler (birte.giesler@usyd.edu.au).
fax: 519-661-4093
phone: 519-661-2111-82210
Angela Borchert
Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature
The University of Western Ontario
Department of Modern Languages and Literatures
University College 256
London, ON N6A 3K7 Canada
email: borchert@uwo.ca