Inaugural Conference, December 2013 – Intercontinental Cross-Currents Network

Intercontinental Cross-Currents: Women’s Networks across Europe and the Americas (1776-1939)

December 5–7, 2013, Lutherstadt Wittenberg

The conference will focus on the literal and metaphorical networks created and navigated by women from the American Revolution to the onset of the Second World War. We are interested in papers on a wide range of transatlantic themes, including the history of ideas, the migration of texts, identity formation, literary production and reception, feminism and emancipation, immigration, and social reform. How and in which forms did ideas, bodies, and texts travel across oceans and continents? How did women’s lives adapt and change as a result of such networks? What were the consequences of such intellectual and social engagements on the literary and socio-political milieus of these women? Which cooperative strategies enabled and emanated from such relationships? We especially invite participants whose projects focus on relations between women in the Americas and Scandinavia, and in eastern and southern Europe. In addition to examining the historical networks of our nineteenth- and twentieth-century predecessors, we anticipate establishing a global web of contemporary researchers engaged in transatlantic studies. At the conference, we will discuss future events and other venues for continued collaboration.

Keynote Speakers:

Dr. Jutta Gsoels-Lorensen (Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University, Altoona, Pennsylvania, USA)

Prof. Dr. Gabriele Pisarz-Ramirez (Professor for American Studies and Minority Studies at Leipzig University, Leipzig, Germany)