Proposals for individual papers, complete sessions, and roundtables for the 41st annual conference of the German Studies Association (5-8 October 2017) may be submitted after Thursday, 5 January. All proposals must be submitted by 15 February 2017. Only online proposals will be accepted.
Submissions may be made through our new conference interface at https://www.xcdsystem.com/gsa. Please note that one must be a 2017 member to submit. Your login credentials for this site are your GSA website username and password. If you are having difficulties with your password or with membership payments, please contact Ursula Gray (UG@press.jhu.edu) at Johns Hopkins University Press. All other questions or issues can be directed to Elizabeth Fulton (helpdesk@thegsa.org).
Further conference information can be found at https://www.thegsa.org/conference/current.html. There you will see a series of links including our call for papers, conference submission guidelines, information about our interdisciplinary Networks, and descriptions of the 2017 seminars.
Please note that, in conjunction with the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the GSA is seeking proposals that deal with not only with the Reformation itself but also with its legacy over the course of five centuries. To paraphrase Christa Wolf, we are asking the 'Was bleibt?' question about the Reformation and its effects. We are also seeking to foster collaboration among several academic societies that are interested in these questions. To that end, we encourage interested GSA members to submit proposals to the American Academy of Religion (AAR), the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference (SCSC), and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL). We are waiving our respective conferences' registration fees for the members of the other societies. Please go to their websites for additional information.
Our members might be particularly interested to note that the SBL will meet in Berlin from 7 to 11 August 2017, and among the topics to be considered are the Reformation anniversary and 800 years of Berlin religious history. Proposals for the Berlin conference of the SBL must be submitted by 1 February. The call for papers is here, and SBL session submission forms are here.
We hope that members of the GSA and our fellow societies can participate in sessions at each others' conferences, creating an interdisciplinary dialogue that could result in later workshops, seminars, and publications.
Atlanta is also the home of the Pitts Theology Library at Emory University. The library contains the Kessler Reformation Collection, one of the most remarkable of its kind in the world. We hope to organize regular shuttles from the conference venue at the Sheraton Downtown to the library, which will be holding a special Reformation exhibition.
And of course, as always, the GSA encourages proposals from all disciplines and all topics interested in German Studies. We look forward to welcoming as many of you as possible to Atlanta in October 2017!