GSA 2023 Defining Cultural Journalism in 19c Germany (01.03.2023)

CFP: The Self-Criticism of History: Defining Cultural Journalism 

in Nineteenth-Century Germany

German Studies Association Conference

October 5-8, 2023

Montreal, Canada

In 1845, Robert Prutz described journalism as the daily self-criticism to which the times subjected themselves. Prutz had this vision of constant journalistic and historical self-assessment at a time when writers across a broad political and aesthetic spectrum were working out what the rapidly expanding field of journalism implied for their diverse concerns. In nineteenth-century Germany, cultural journals were simultaneously imagined as fortresses in the war of ideas (Heine), vehicles for bringing literature into the industrial age (Mundt), motors of world literature (Goethe), a means, in opposition to ponderous books, of politicizing philosophy (Ruge), and, because of their male-dominated editorship, expression of a practice and profession that women had to struggle against in order to have a voice in public discussion (Aston). Furthermore, these writers of early journalistic programs adapted terminology and metaphors from fields like philosophy, historiography, aesthetics, and the natural sciences, showing that they saw the heterogenous practice of journalism as a force that could connect these divergent disciplines.

We invite papers exploring the programmatic concerns of journalism throughout the German nineteenth century. We especially encourage papers on texts that the author would be interested in translating and introducing for a forthcoming translation anthology of nineteenth-century German cultural journalism (please contact us for further details about the anthology). Topics and questions that papers might consider, but are in no way confined to, are (text in bold are section headings for the anthology):

·Journalistic Programs

·How do specific nineteenth-century journals imagine their readership?

·How do specific journalists’ practice reflect his or her journalistic program?

·What theoretical terms are introduced by journalistic programs and what is the source of that terminology (for example historiography, art and literary criticism, sociology, and the natural sciences)?

·Criticism, Literature, and the Business of Print

·How is journalism taxonomized? How does programmatic writing on journalism differentiate between newspapers, magazines, annuals, and almanacs? 

·How do journalists differentiate themselves from writers of books?

·New Technologies of Journalism

·How do journalistic programs reflect on the contemporaneous development of print technology and image reproduction?

·Journalism and Cross-Cultural Communication

·How do journals set for themselves the task of facilitating cross-cultural communication?

·What kind of networks (transnational, transeuropean, transatlantic) are at stake?

·The History of Journalism and Journalism as History

·How is journalism construed as a (at times privileged) form of history writing?

·How do journalists, editors, and publishers look back on the journalistic activities of previous decades?

Please send a 200-250 word abstract and a 100-word bio to Sean Franzel (franzels@missouri.edu) and Michael Swellander (mswellander@skidmore.edu) by March 1, 2023