German Studies Association (GSA) 2020 Seminar: Theory Critical, or Marx, Nietzsche, Freud NOW!*
GSA Forty-Fourth Annual Conference, October 1-4, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Crystal City)
Call for Papers GSA Seminar “Holocaust Tourism Revisited: Holocaust Memorial Culture between Education, Tourism, and Commemoration,”
Application deadline: January 27, 2020
Every year, millions of visitors stream to Holocaust memorials, museums and sites of atrocities. Considering their differing motives for visiting these sites, many reject the label “tourist.” We would like to pay attention to educational visits and exhibition design at Holocaust memorial sites and museum in Europe, the U.S. and Canada, including virtual reality visits and testimonies. We hope to attract an interdisciplinary group of scholars, including graduate students, educators, and practitioners from institutes of higher education as well as memorial sites and museum, who are interested in re-thinking what has come to be labeled “Holocaust Tourism” and who want to discuss challenges, limits, and opportunities at sites of Holocaust remembrance globally.
Among the questions we want to discuss are: What strategies do Holocaust memorials and museums employ to engage visitors with diverse national, cultural, and religious backgrounds as well as differing abilities, varying levels of previous knowledge and often opposing expectations? How does knowledge of the Holocaust transmitted through mass media such as Hollywood films influence site visits? What are scenographic and spatial effects (on multiple senses) of staging the Holocaust? How do virtual visits and 3D-testimonies contribute to Holocaust remembrance? How can visitor intentions and reactions be evaluated?
Conveners will distribute methodological readings and talking points for interdisciplinary discussion by mid-July. Participants will pre-circulate electronically six- to eight-page position papers by mid-August to be read by all participants prior to the conference. Seminar meetings will start with five-minute summaries of the position papers and presentations of images and/or videos of Holocaust memorial sites and museum, followed by moderated discussions. Since this conference takes places in Washington DC, we would like to incorporate an optional visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (presumably on Thursday afternoon, before the actual GSA conference, depending on participants’ availability).
Please submit 250-word abstract of your seminar contribution as well as a brief bio directly through the GSA website: https://www.xcdsystem.com/gsa. The application site is open from January 6, 2020 to January 27, 2020. Please note that you have to be a GSA member for the current year in order to apply. Applicants will be notified by February 3.
For more information about the 2020 German Studies Association Conference, including submission guidelines, see here: https://www.thegsa.org/conference/current-conference.