Conference Sessions and Calls for Papers

Current Calls for Papers

GSA Conference, October 5-8, 2023, in Montreal, Canada: Heinrich Heine and Translation 

Heinrich Heine’s oeuvre and reception raise important questions about the poetics and ethics of translation. Notable US poets, for example, have translated his well-known early poetry with very different motivations, including situating it in his biography as a German Jew (Emma Lazarus), reflecting his lyrical refinement (Ezra Pound), and radically communicating the ambiguities of his poems through homophonic translation (Charles Bernstein). Additionally, modern Hebrew poets and Jewish translators balanced their love of Heine with his apostasy and Germanness after the Shoah. Heine’s sprawling oeuvre, comprising of poetry, essays, journalism, and voluminous correspondence, also begs the question of how much of a writer’s work must be translated, a question Charles Godfrey Leland repeatedly raises in his twenty-volume nineteenth-century translation of Heine’s works (the most complete English translation to date). Moreover, Heine’s regular use of untranslated words and sentences from other languages (including French, English, Latin, and Hebrew) suggests he imagined his German as polyphonous and energized by the tension of translatability and untranslatability.   

Our panel seeks papers on Heine and translation. Paper topics may address, but are not limited to: 

  • The history of Heine translations 
  • Translations of Heine by notable authors in (Matthew Arnold, Emma Lazarus, Mark Twain, Gérard de Nerval, Mikhail Lermontov, etc.) 
  • Comparative readings of translations of a single Heine text 
  • Heine’s translations of Lord Byron 
  • Multilingualism in Heine’s writing  

Please send a 200-250 word abstract and a 100-word bio to Abigail Gillman (agillman@bu.edu) and Michael Swellander (mswellander@skidmore.edu) by March 1, 2023. 

Past Conferences

MLA Convention, January 2023: Heine and the Diasporic Experience

Presider

Alicia Ellis, Colby College

Presentations

Linda Maeding (University of Bremen): 1492; or, The Emergence of a Diasporic Utopian Thinking in Heine
Willi Goetschel (University of Toronto): Heine’s Diasporic Modernity
Alicia E. Ellis (Colby College): Slavery, History, and Seascapes: Heine’s ‘Das Sklavenschiff’ and Walcott’s ‘The Sea Is History’
Arianna Amatruda (University of Florence): Diasporic Bodies in Heine’s Oeuvre: The Case of Pomare

 

Heinrich Heine und die Menschenrechte. Internationale wissenschaftliche Konferenz zum 225. Geburtstag Heinrich Heines

Heinrich-Heine-Institut, Heinrich-Heine-Gesellschaft e.V. und North American Heine Society, Düsseldorf, 18. und 19. November 2022

Sabine Brenner-Wilczek (Heinrich-Heine-Institut Düsseldorf), Willi Goetschel (University of Toronto): Begrüßung
Christoph auf der Horst (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf): Heinrich Heines Kampf für die Menschenrechte. Konstruktivität und Solidarität
Arnd Pollmann (Alice Salomon Hochschule Berlin): "Der Gedanke geht der Tat voraus". Inwiefern gab es zu Heines Zeit Menschenrechte?
Tracie Matysik (University of Texas at Austin): Ursus sacer: Sovereignty and Bear Life in "Atta Troll"
Christine Ivanovic (Universität Wien / Freie Universität Berlin): Zur Aktualität von Heinrich Heines "Atta Troll"
Helge Dedek (McGill University): "Eine Bibel des Egoismus" - Heine, Recht und Rechte
Christian Liedtke (Heinrich-Heine-Institut Düsseldorf): "...und es war ein Mensch." Menschenrechtsverletzungen in Heines Werk
Sebastian Wogenstein (University of Connecticut): Vom Recht auf Brot. Sozioökonomische Rechte als Menschenrechte bei Heine
Willi Goetschel (University of Toronto): Heine und die Menschenrechte: Eine verborgene Tradition

 

MLA Convention, January 2022: Heinrich Heine and Human Rights

Presider

Alicia Ellis, Colby College

Presentations

Claudia Nitschke (Durham University, UK): Embodying Human Rights: Heine’s Atta Troll
Christoph auf der Horst (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf): Heine’s Struggle for Human Rights: Writing in the Spirit of Solidarity
Willi Goetschel (University of Toronto): Poetic Justice: Heine’s Critique of the Limitations of Human Rights
Helge Dedek (McGill University): ‘A Bible of Egoism’: Heine, ‘Human Rights’, and Law
Sebastian Wogenstein (University of Connecticut): Lege artis: Heine and Human Rights

 

MLA Convention, January 2021: World Literature Otherwise: Heine's Opening Gambits

Presider

Willi Goetschel, University of Toronto

Presentations
Azade Seyhan, Bryn Mawr College: Searching for Heinrich Heine in the World Literary Domain 
    Chloe Vaughn, Columbia University: Invented Worlds: Heine and Herder between National and World Literature 
      Barbara Di Noi, University of Florence: Heine's Subversive Notion of Weltliteratur (World Literature) 
        Michael Swellander, University of Iowa: ‘Yes, He Was a Mighty Poet’: Heine’s ‘Jehuda Ben Halevy’ and World Literature 
          Christoph auf der Horst, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf: Heinrich Heine and the Persistence of His Concept of World Literature 

           

          Contact

          If you would like to notify the membership of a Heine-related call for papers and would like it posted on this website, please email  Sebastian Wogenstein (wogenstein@uconn.edu).