<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><P class="MsoBodyText" align="center" style="text-align: left;font-size: 17px; "><SPAN style=""><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times"><B>CALL FOR PAPERS</B></FONT></SPAN></P><P class="MsoBodyText" align="center" style="text-align: left;font-size: 17px; "><SPAN style=""><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times"><I><B>Ta(l)king Pleasure in German Culture: A Day in the Dialectical Playground</B></I></FONT></SPAN></P><P class="MsoBodyText" align="center" style="text-align: left;font-size: 17px; "><SPAN style=""><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times"><B>Saturday 20 October, 2007</B></FONT></SPAN></P><P class="MsoBodyText" align="center" style="text-align: left;font-size: 17px; "><SPAN style=""><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times"><B>School of English, Media and Performing Arts<SPAN style=""></SPAN></B></FONT></SPAN></P><P class="MsoBodyText" align="center" style="text-align: left;font-size: 17px; "><SPAN style=""><FONT class="Apple-style-span" face="Times"><B><SPAN style="; font-size: 17px; text-align: center; ">The University of New South Wales</SPAN></B></FONT></SPAN></P><P class="MsoNormal" style=""><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">‘<SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">Nothing needs less justification than pleasure.’ (Bertolt Brecht, 1948)</SPAN></SPAN></P><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; ">Since the Enlightenment numerous German artists, theorists, writers, filmmakers and performers have evoked the figure of the child and concepts of playfulness and pleasure in order to contest or transform the cultural sphere in the face of technological, industrial and economic rationalisation.<SPAN> </SPAN>Their work has engaged with ‘play’ in many of its senses: brisk, light, lively, irregular or capricious motion; action working with rapid movement or change; recreational activity especially as carried out by children; a mimetic representation of an action; a source of enjoyment.<SPAN> </SPAN>Among such cultural thinkers we find Walter Benjamin, who lamented the desensitisation of the human sensorium in the modern world and admired the mimetic play of children. For him, this childlike ability to make ‘non-sensuous’ or unexpected connections between disparate things could serve as a way of re-vivifying the pleasures of our mimetic faculty.<SPAN> </SPAN>In writings celebratory of ‘the scientific age’, friend and colleague Bertolt Brecht called for ‘new kinds of pleasure, better suited to our time’.<SPAN> </SPAN>These included the joy of a naïve quizzical attitude informed by a dialectical belief in contradictions as the source of progressive change.<SPAN> </SPAN>For Brecht the ability to revel in a ceaseless play of opposites, ‘the joke of contradiction’, was a crucial component in the art of pleasurable living.<SPAN> </SPAN>Other artists have dreamed of playgrounds that resist duplication of the cultivated.<SPAN> </SPAN>Like German filmmakers, Alexander Kluge and Werner Schroeter, they have been inspired by the idea that ‘children prefer the bushes: they play in the sand or in scrap heaps.’ Elements of this radical playfulness permeate the dance theatre of choreographer Pina Bausch and the subversive stagings of media provocateur Christoph Schlingensief.</DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; "> <O:P></O:P></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; ">This symposium invites academics, artists, writers and other cultural producers to join us for a day in the playground to explore how ideas and practices of play and pleasure have circulated, and indeed continue to do so, in German culture.<SPAN> </SPAN>While our emphasis will be on culture since the eighteenth century, we also welcome comparative and historical analyses of earlier German theory and practice which deal with notions such as aesthetic pleasure.<SPAN> </SPAN>In addition we encourage reflection on Anglo-American, and in particular Australian reception, of German cultural expression with regard to these themes.</DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; "> <O:P></O:P></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; ">Our aim is not only to explore but also to generate spaces,<SPAN> </SPAN>‘playgrounds’ in which a variety of ideas and experiences can play on and rub against one another so as to bring about movement, change and transformation.<SPAN> </SPAN>To this end we aim to open up an interdisciplinary dialogue between theory and creative practice by incorporating the presentation of short performance works and an exhibition mounted by contemporary Australian-based artists, including Martin del Amo, Paul Gazzola, Regina Heilman and Heidrun Lohr.<SPAN> </SPAN></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; "> <O:P></O:P></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; ">The organisers of this one-day symposium welcome proposals for 20 minute papers in English on the following suggested and related themes:</DIV><P class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.45pt; font-size: 14px; ">Figurations of the child</P><P class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.45pt; font-size: 14px; ">Theories and practices of playfulness and pleasure</P><P class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.45pt; font-size: 14px; ">Historical conceptualisations of aesthetic pleasure</P><P class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.45pt; font-size: 14px; ">Explorations of fun and humour</P><P class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.45pt; font-size: 14px; ">Links between motion, emotion and social change</P><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; "> <O:P></O:P></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; ">Papers addressing German culture across a broad range of fields are welcome, including: theatre, performance, film, media, literature, poetry, popular culture, music and visual art.<SPAN> </SPAN>Postgraduate students are encouraged to apply. </DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; "> <O:P></O:P></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; ">Through this symposium we aim to foster possibilities for publication and future research collaboration.<SPAN> </SPAN>We also hope to publish a selection of papers in either an edited book or special issue of a relevant journal based around the central themes of the symposium.</DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; "> <O:P></O:P></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span"><B>Abstracts of 200-300 words</B> should be sent to <A href="mailto:m.mumford@unsw.edu.au">m.mumford@unsw.edu.au</A> by <B>Friday 17 August 2007.</B><O:P></O:P></SPAN></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; "> <O:P></O:P></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; ">Further queries may be directed to the symposium convenors:</DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; "> <O:P></O:P></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; "><SPAN lang="EN-US">Dr Michelle Langford and Dr Meg Mumford<O:P></O:P></SPAN></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; "><SPAN lang="EN-US">School of English, Media and Performing Arts<O:P></O:P></SPAN></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; "><SPAN lang="EN-US">Webster Building<O:P></O:P></SPAN></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; "><SPAN lang="EN-US">The University of New South Wales (UNSW)<BR> Sydney NSW 2052</SPAN></DIV><P class="MsoFooter" style="font-size: 14px; ">Tel: (02) 9385 4489</P><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; ">Email: <A href="mailto:m.langford@unsw.edu.au">m.langford@unsw.edu.au</A></DIV><P class="MsoFooter" style="font-size: 14px; ">Tel: (02) 9385 4865</P><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; ">Email: <A href="mailto:m.mumford@unsw.edu.au">m.mumford@unsw.edu.au</A><SPAN lang="EN-US"><O:P></O:P></SPAN></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; "> <O:P></O:P></DIV><DIV class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 14px; ">The symposium will be held in the context of the German Cultural Month in Sydney 2007, GerMANY FACES Australia, and is a joint initiative between the School of English, Media and Performing Arts at UNSW, and the Goethe-Institut, together with the Consulate General of Germany and the German-Australian Chamber of Commerce.<SPAN> </SPAN></DIV><P class="MsoFooter" style="font-size: 14px; 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