DDGC Conference 2025

Interdependence and Solidarity Formations in German Studies and the ArtsApril 10-12, 2025 (Online)

The fifth biennial DDGC Conference will draw on our collective’s long tradition of coming together in community to take stock of the field and anticipate better structures for it in the future. We will gather under the theme, “Interdependence and Solidarity Formations in German Studies and the Arts,” which strikes us as a particularly urgent framework to think through some of the impasses and active structural suppressions for (artistic) collective action as well as scholarship tied to it that we are witnessing in our circles. We pay special attention to structures of interdependence between the field and various cultural landscapes and art as well as activist practice.

We will draw on insights from comrades working in Black studies, disability studies, ethnic studies, feminist studies, migration studies, and queer/trans studies, who have long theorized the role of interdependence, solidarity, and other formations for coalitional work aimed at reconceptualizing the academy. The scholar-practitioners working in these fields maintain that theory is an important starting point for developing their political practice. Here, practice entails forming support infrastructures and networks for people and their work in times when existing institutions fail them. The 2025 DDGC conference will feature work across the theory-praxis dynamic. 

The conference theme is intended to be capacious enough to hold different types of projects. Participants may submit an abstract either for a presentation (~ 20 minutes) or a shorter work-in-progress (“Werkstatt”) presentation (~10 minutes).

The Call for Papers can be found here.