CALL FOR PAPERS Graduate Conference Department of German, New York University The Pains of Language Keynote: WERNER HAMACHER (Frankfurt am Main) April 15-16, 2016 Deutsches Haus at NYU, New York City * Schmerz versteinerte die Schwelle. TRAKL The Department of German at New York University is honored to present renowned philosopher and literary theorist Werner Hamacher as the keynote speaker of a graduate conference on the topics of pain and language. The German tradition, in thought and poetry, offers a wide array of powerful reflections on pain: from Lessing’s Laokoon, via the heartaches of young Werther, Schopenhauer’s (and later Freud’s) declaration that all wanting stems from lack and suffering, Jean Paul’s poetic explorations of Weltschmerz and Nietzsche’s celebration of Dionysian Urschmerz, through to Ernst Jünger’s metaphysics of pain. Our conference will explore the vast archive of aches and woes, and attempts to elucidate the intimate relation between pain and language. Probing the pain threshold of poetic utterance, we will open our conversation to other languages and literatures to show that wherever language “speaks,” as Heidegger says, it speaks of pain. Possible topics, provocations, and prompts for contributions include: • Animal pains • Articulations of pain: cries, complaints, and lamentations • Physical pain and emotional anguish • Indolence, apathy, and anesthesia • Language and violence • Literary and artistic sublimations of pain • Pain and alterity: empathy and the ethics of compassion • Pain and sovereignty • Pain management and the possibility of healing • Pathos and the rhetoric of suffering • Pein and Peinlichkeit • Phantom pains and hypochondria • Sadistic and masochistic practices • Punishment, torture, and martyrdom • Trauma; forgetting and repressing pain The conference intends to capture the phenomenon of pain from the perspectives of philosophy and literary studies. Our hope is to develop a critical lexicon that does not rely on psychologizing tendencies in the appropriation and description of pain. We primarily invite doctoral students of German and related disciplines to submit proposals; post-doc level researchers are welcome to participate. Submissions should contain a 300-word abstract of the projected talk as well as a short bio; contributions will be 20 minutes in length. Send your submissions to [email protected] Deadline for submissions is Friday, January 15th, 2016. .