Verschwinden: Disappearing into Providence

Rhode Island as a Literary Constellation

Call for papers: Panel at the 2027 NeMLA conference (March 6 - 9, Newport, RI)

Due date for paper proposals: September 30, 2027

Submission link: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22479

In the hope of connecting our academic endeavors more closely to the places and times we find ourselves in, this panel proposes Rhode Island, and close by Providence in particular, as a nodal point for a constellation of German, American, and European literatures, histories, and cultural memories.

The project is inspired by Alfred Andersch’s text “Verschwinden in Providenz,” which is inspired by the author’s 1970 visit to Brown University. “verschwinden” interweaves Andersch’s literary echo chamber with the city of Providence and its literary legacies: Edgar Allan Poe, also referenced in the 1959/60 poem “Erinnerung an eine Utopie,” whose copy of “Ulalume” he sees at the Providence Athenaeum. Just a few streets over, the Falun Red of the Stephen Hopkins House finds its way into “Verschwinden” and opens an intertextual chain reaching from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s “Die Bergwerke zu Falun,” to Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle.“ Texts that share an obsession with dis- and re-appearance, evanescence, and the half-life of the past.

Just 30 miles from Brown’s campus lay Fort Kearney, a German POW camp during World War II. It shaped an entire generation of writers: Andersch, Hans Werner Richter, Curt Vinz, Gustav Hocke, and Franz Wischnewski all passed through it, and the postwar journal “Der Ruf” emerged from its orbit.

We could cast the net further still. Peter Handke’s “Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied” as well as Wolfgang Koeppen’s “Amerikafahrt” traverse Rhode Island and record a postwar German gaze on America. Rosemarie Waldrop’s “The Hanky of Pippin’s Daughter” reviews semi-biographically pre-WW2 Germany, but is anchored in Rhode Island. More could be, and should be added to this echo chamber (Sebald, Adorno, Freud, Arno Schmidt, H.P. Lovecraft…)

Therefore, papers engaging any aspect of this literary-historical constellation are welcome:

• Close readings
• Archival work
• Memory studies
• Transnational approaches
• Pedagogical integration
• Place-based methodologies
• And more

Presentations may be in English or German.

Paper proposal submissions are due by September 30 and have to be uploaded to the NeMLA website, together with some essential biographical information about yourself. The link below will take you directly to this panel’s submission page.

Submission link: https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22479

If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to contact Dr. Benjamin Brand (Univ. of Pittsburgh) at benjamin_brand@pitt.edu.