Brüder Grimm Kongress 2012

Brüder Grimm Kongress 2012 is another conference dedicated to the Grimms' Bicentennial next year.  It is scheduled for December 2012 in Kassel, Germany. (Brrr... It'll be cold!) Most of the conference site is in German but the call for papers is in English and I will share it below. Note that the dates are given in European form, not U.S. with day/month/year.

Fairy tales, Myths and Modernity – 200 years of Brother Grimm’s Children’s and Household tales” Kassel, 17.12. - 20.12.2012.

Conference organizers: Prof. Dr. Claudia Brinker-von der Heyde, Universität Kassel, FB 02 Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften (Institut für Germanistik) / Dr. Holger Ehrhardt (Universität Kassel, FB 02 Geistes- und Kulturwissenschaften (Institut für Germanistik)/ Prof. Dr. Hans-Heino Ewers, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, FB 10 Neuere Philologien (Institut für Jugendbuchforschung)

Deadline for submission of proposals and abstracts: 14.11.2011

20th December 2012 marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of the Brother Grimm’s first volume of their Kinder- and Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales). This work is imbued with the spirit of Romanticism. It probably represents the most famous collection of early nineteenth-century fairytales throughout the world and has proved to be one of the most frequently translated works of German literature. The Hessian cities of Hanau, Steinau, Kassel, and Marburg are the places where the Grimm Brothers were born and raised, where they received their education, where they studied and started their careers. In this region the Kinder- and Hausmärchen were collected and recorded.

Besides the general success of their fairytale collection, the Brothers Grimm played a leading role in many other areas: in Germany as well as abroad their mode of collecting fairytales, sagas, anecdotes, legends, and animal epics set a standard. They were emulated and celebrated as discoverers and editors of literary as well as legal sources and monuments of the past, as researchers of myths and dialects, as historians of languages, and as dictionary compilers.

The old narrative material, the myths, and sagas of heroes of archaic cultures and earlier times exerts a remarkable fascination even today on writers of fantasy and fiction novels. The Brothers Grimm tackled the question of how to treat old and most ancient narrative material. They maintained points of view that are still controversially discussed today.

The 200th anniversary of the first volume of Kinder- and Hausmärchen is to be celebrated with an international conference under the provisional title “Fairytales, Myths, Modern Age” to be held in Kassel from 17 to 20 December 2012. Researchers and colleagues from all over the world are cordially invited to the place where the Brothers Grimm spent more than thirty years of their lives. In Kassel they collected not only fairytales and sagas, but also started work on their famous dictionary.

Papers on the following topics are now called for:

Historical Philosophy of Romanticism and the Discovery of Vernacular Literature: Ethnic and Folkloric Studies and Modern Age
The Brothers Grimm and the Middle Ages: Imagination, Projections, and Reconstructions
The Brothers Grimm, Romanticism, and the Vormärz
The Brothers Grimm and the Origins of (National) Philology: Language and National Identity
The Brothers Grimm and the Beginnings of National Research on Myths
The Writing of Fairytales in Europe from the 16th to the 18th Centuries and the Assessment According to the Brothers Grimm
Kinder- und Hausmärchen: Ideological Premises, Sources, Contributors, Principles of Treatment, History of Editions, and Reviews
International Reception of the Kinder- and Hausmärchen: Translations, Adaptations, Arrangements, and Revisions
Fairytales and childhood: educational concepts
The Collection of Fairytales and Sagas of the Brothers Grimm as Prototype and Example for Similar Projects in other Cultures and Countries
Fairytales as Reading for Adults and Children
History of (International) Illustrations of Fairytales, Picture books of Fairytales, Fairytales in Comics and Mangas
Narrating Fairytales – Live and Recorded
Adaptations of Fairytales I: Fairytale Plays, Fairytale Dramas, Fairytale Operas, Fairytale Movies and Television Productions
Fairytales and Psychoanalysis
Work and Impact of the Brothers Grimm: national and international


Contacts:

Universität Kassel, FB 02 Geistes-und Kulturwissenschaften IfG

Frau Katharina Becker, Kurt-Wolters-Straße 5, 34125 Kassel,

E-mail: Grimm2012(at)uni-kassel.de

Homepage: www.grimm2012.uni-kassel.de

The conference at the University of Kassel will give researchers from all over the world a platform to discuss these topics and to reflect on new perspectives on the Brothers Grimm and their work.

We welcome proposals for 30 minute papers (700 words) with a short biography and current contact details. Please send them by email to grimm2012(at)uni-kassel.de in the form of a MS-word document. The deadline for the submission of all proposals is 14 November 2011.