Women in German ConferenceNovember 6-9, 2025University of Massachusetts Amherst – Amherst, MA As part of the 50th anniversary of Women in German, this panel is interested in how the material of the past can be transformed into an unexpected, whimsical, and radical future(s) by feminist intervention. It is about past things created anew with revolutionary consequences. We are interested in papers discussing literary adaptations from, between, and into film, television, theater, and other ‘modern’ media which provide a feminist or queer lens to the source text. Feminist and queer adaptations can both enrich an existing text while rejecting to utilize heteronormative, patriarchal, colonial languages that uphold oppressive institutions. We are interested in thinking through the utopian function of adaptation as a process of rebuilding with the ruins.  This panel seeks papers that investigate adaptations of pre-20th-century texts in German literary and cultural studies from a feminist perspective:

• How do feminist adaptations remake canonical culture and to what ends?
• What constitutes a successful queer and/or feminist adaptation?
• How does one avoid heavy-handed didacticism in feminist and queer adaptations? 
• What unadapted texts would benefit from adaptation into a modern, inclusive context?
• What other terms/concepts can be used to better describe the process of adaptation as a feminist practice? (e.g., tradaptation, rewriting, overwriting) 
• How does the medium inflect different feminist adaptations?
• How do other socio-political institutions affect the making of adaptations? (such as copyright, access to archives, etc.)

 Of particular interest are multicultural papers that engage with cultural influences from, into, and within German-language contexts that complicate the idea of national literature, the canon, and German Studies. 
Please submit your abstract of approx. 250 words and a 100-word bio by February 15, 2025 to Cynthia Shin (cynshin@iu.edu), Brandy Wilcox (bewilcox@knox.edu), and Rachel MagShamhráin (r.magshamhrain@ucc.ie).