CFP (Symposium): “Digital Kafka” International Symposium (Proposals due 03/29/24)
Proposals are now being accepted for the "Digital Kafka" International Symposium. This symposium aims to focus on research, teaching, and creative approaches that either make use of digital tools to analyze Kafka’s work or use digital platforms to share and disseminate parts of Kafka’s oeuvre and its analyses. The symposium will take place at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. on November 1-2, 2024. Proposals are due by March 29, 2024.
Call for Papers
Digital Kafka
International Symposium; Georgetown University, November 1-2, 2024
Franz Kafka’s oeuvre has been examined countless times in the past—mostly in the form of articles and contributions to books and edited volumes. As his works have been available in the digital realm for quite some time now, including many of his drawings, this symposium aims to focus on research, teaching, and creative approaches that either make use of digital tools to analyze Kafka’s work or use digital platforms to share and disseminate parts of Kafka’s oeuvre and its analyses. The 100th anniversary of Kafka’s death in 2024 seems to be an apt moment to look at digital approaches to his texts and drawings that build on the affordances of Digital Humanities which has become an established area of scholarly activity in the past decades.
At the symposium, researchers will be able to share their digital projects and approaches, and we will discuss the following questions, among others:
- What can digital approaches reveal about Kafka’s writings and drawings? How do these analyses change or extend existing scholarship?
- How can digital tools be useful for creative approaches to Kafka’s works? How can the materiality of Kafka’s oeuvre be preserved in the digital realm?
- How can digital approaches enhance teaching Kafka’s texts? What are the advantages and disadvantages of teaching his writings using digital platforms?
- What role do the archives and institutions that hold Kafka’s work play in offering and disseminating his works digitally?
This two-day symposium brings together researchers from the institutions that hold Kafka’s oeuvre with scholars, teachers, creators, and digital scholarship specialists to discuss and exchange details about current approaches to Franz Kafka’s works. The emphasis is on digital projects that present scholarship on Kafka’s oeuvre or provide online platforms that allow users to engage with Kafka’s works, including his drawings. Projects may include databases that make his work digitally accessible or use qualitative data analysis to examine, for instance, the relationship between retranslations or adaptations of his work. The symposium will also address the affordances of digital platforms and projects vis-à-vis analogue approaches to Kafka’s oeuvre.
The symposium will take place at Georgetown University, in Washington, DC, on November 1-2, 2024. It is sponsored by the DAAD and the Georgetown German Department.
Abstracts of up to 300 words should be sent to Verena Kick, vk275@georgetown.edu.
Abstracts should provide details about the digital project or approach to Kafka’s work.
Deadline for proposals: March 29, 2024.
Works in progress are welcome and junior scholars are especially encouraged to apply!
(Limited funds may be available to assist early career researchers with travel costs.)
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Verena Kick, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Assistant Professor, Department of German
Affiliated Faculty, Program in Film and Media Studies
Georgetown University
Washington, DC 20007