Stefan Zweig's Transatlantic Connections, Oct 1-3 2009

full name / name of organization: 
SUNY Fredonia
contact email: 

Papers are invited for an international Stefan Zweig Symposium to be held at SUNY Fredonia on Oct 1-3 2009. This symposium, the first major scholarly event on Zweig to take place in the United States in over two decades, intends to bring together scholars, artist, critics, and students from around the world to discuss Zweig's life and works. It will include keynote lectures by Klaus Weissenberger (Rice University) and Zweig biographer Oliver Matuschek as well as a manuscript exhibition with archival materials from SUNY Fredonia's extensive Stefan Zweig collection. The symposium will also feature the United States premiere of Sylvio Back's award-winning feature film Lost Zweig (2003) in the presence of the director.

Whereas recent Zweig symposia in Berlin and Jerusalem have focused their attention primarily on Zweig's relationship to Europe, the SUNY Fredonia symposium hopes to particularly attract papers that explore Zweig's "transatlantic connections," i.e. the way in which his writings establish a dialogue—much like the first successful transatlantic telegraphic exchange that so much fascinated the Austrian modernist himself—between Europe (both British and Continental) and the Americas. Possible topics of exploration include:

- Zweig's categorization of Brazil as the "land of the future"
- Zweig and exile
- Zweig's reception in Europe and in the United States
- Representations of the old and the new world in Zweig's works
- Zweig and "world literature"

All paper presentations will be plenary. There is no registration fee for this conference.

Scholars are also kindly invited to prolong their stay after the symposium to do research at SUNY Fredonia's Stefan Zweig Archives.

Please send a 500-word abstract of your paper to vanweseb@fredonia.edu by May 15 2009. Participants will be notified by May 30 2009.

Symposium Organizers:

Birger Vanwesenbeeck, Department of English, SUNY Fredonia
Jeremy Linden, Head of Archives, SUNY Fredonia