Day 1: The 27th Biennial St. Louis Symposium on German Literature and Culture
Scholars from Europe and the United States, graduate students, members of the university community, and all others interested were encouraged to attend.
Archiving the Sounds of German Cultures: A Century of Collection, Curation, and Creative Practice
Archiving the Sounds of German Cultures explores how the recording and documentation of sound has shaped German cultures and their narratives from the early twentieth century to the present. Featuring the work of ground-breaking artists and leading experts on this topic from the fields of history, media studies, music, art history, and literature, this symposium examines the practice of sound archiving not only as material preservation but also as re-formation: the use of archival sound as source material and inspiration for creative practice.
Friday, March 27
Danforth University Center, Room 276
9:30 – 9:45 AM
OPENING REMARKS
Stephanie Kirk, Director, Center for the Humanities
Matt Erlin, Professor and Chair, Department of Comparative Literature and Thought
9:45 – 10:30 AM
SESSION 1: Sonic Interventions as Curatorial Practice
Moderator: Lynne Tatlock, Washington University in St. Louis
Sarah Koellner, Washington University in St. Louis: “Exhibiting Listening to the Art of German Cultures: On Sonic Interventions, Curatorial Practices, and the Narration of a Nation.”
11:00 – 12:30 PM
SESSION 2: Archiving the Sounds of Atrocity
Moderator: Corinna Treitel, Washington University in St. Louis
Florence Feiereisen & Erin Sassin, Middlebury College: “The Archive as a Portal: Auralizing the Mundane in Extraordinary Times”
Peter Davies, University of Edinburgh: “Voices in the Dark: How do Audio Dramas refer to the Holocaust?”
1:30-3:00 PM
SESSION 3: Sounding from the Radio Archives
Moderator: Alex Ullman, Washington University in St. Louis
Olivia Landry, Virginia Commonwealth University: “Broadcasting with an Accent: Sounds from the Fifth Wall”
Carolyn Birdsall, University of Amsterdam: “Celebrating 100 Years of Radio? Curating Diffcult (Audio) Heritage in Exhibition Spaces in Germany and Austria”
3:30-5:00 PM
SESSION 4: Sound, Performance and the Archive
Moderator: Pat Burke, Washington University in St. Louis
Kira Thurman, University of Michigan: “The Munich Machine: Disco and the Making of a Black German Pop Star”
Ela Gezen, University of Massachusetts, Amherst: “Archived Sounds and Audiovisual Traces of Turkish Migration to West Berlin”
Sponsored by:
Department of Comparative Literature and Thought, Washington University in St. Louis
The Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
The Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, Washington
Goethe Institut Chicago
Goethe Institut New York
Live and Mediated Performance Faculty Research Seminar supported by the Center for the Humanities, Washington University in St. Louis.
Department of African and African American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis