For the past two years, researchers from around Germany have investigated and discussed 'narrative liminality' in a network funded by the German Research Foundation. As part of their collaboration, they have explored and theorized the boundaries and interrelations between the symbolic forms of narrative, play, data, ritual, spectacle, and others. On October 10-12, 2019, this work culminated in a conference on the topic "Beyond Narrative: Literature, Culture, and the Borderlands of Narrativity," organized by American Studies Leipzig faculty and convened at Leipzig's University Library.
In April 2019, network members of the DFG research network on “Narrative Liminality and/in the Formation of American Modernities” convened again in Leipzig for the third meeting and workshop. After an inaugural meeting in April 2018 and a second workshop focused mostly on conceptual and terminological work in October of the same year, this meeting was organized around two talks by external experts.
As part of our next workshop in the Narrative Liminality network, we would like to invite all interested students and scholars to two guest lectures on April 26 and April 27:
Prof. Leon Gurevitch (Victoria University of Wellington) will speak on the topic "Liminal Labour: Narrating the Quantified Career and the Symbolic Value of Visual Effects Production." His talk takes place on Friday, April 26, 5.30pm at the Villa Tillmanns (Wächterstr. 30, 04107 Leipzig).
After an inaugural meeting earlier in the year, the DFG research network on "Narrative Liminality and/in the Formation of American Modernities" held its second workshop from October 25 to 27, 2018, in Leipzig.
Americanists from all over Germany convened in Leipzig on April 20 and 21 to inaugurate a Research Network on "Narrative Liminality." Funded by the German Research Foundation, the network serves to explore the boundaries and interrelationships between the symbolic forms of narrative, play, data, ritual, spectacle, and others. It is meant to test and advance the assumption that these forms are best understood as gradable rather than as binary, and that important cultural and symbolic work is done in the spaces where these forms meet, intersect, or overlap.