>>> All times: Eastern Standard Time <<<
Thursday, September 23, 2021
9.30-10 am Welcome – Helga Schreckenberger (President of the North American Society for Exile Studies, University of Burlington / Vermont)
Opening remarks – Swen Steinberg (Queen’s University, Kingston, and Carleton University, Ottawa / Ontario)
10-11 am Environmental Representations in Exile Writing 1
Thomas F. Schneider (Remarque Center for Peace, Osnabrück): Hades, Lethe or Locus amoenus: The role of nature in Erich Maria Remarque‘s writings on European Exile
Helga Schreckenberger (University of Burlington / Vermont): Channeling the American Pioneer: Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer’s Die Farm in den Grünen Bergen / The Farm in the Green Mountains
11-11.15 am Break
11.15-12.15 pm Environmental Representations in Exile Writing 2
Werner Nell (University of Halle): Relations to and the Impact of Nature in Critical Views on Modernity from Exile: Siegfried Kracauer and Albert Salomon
Jörg Thunecke (New York): Deadly volcanic activities on Sicily: Hermynia Zur Mühlen’s anti-Fascist novel Er heiratet nicht für Geld / He does not Marry for Money (1932/33)
12.15-12.30 pm Break
12.30-13:30 pm Exile Reflections of Environments between Identity and Attribution
Kirsten Krick-Aigner (Wofford College / South Carolina): Exile and the Longing for Heimat in the Representation of the Natural World in Bettina Bauer-Ehrlich’s Children’s Books
Margit Franz (Karl Franzens University Graz): “There, Where the Pepper Grows.” From exoticizing descriptions to practical implementations in Asian and African exile countries
13.30 pm End of day 1
13.45-15 pm Business Meeting of the North American Society for Exile Studies (optional / for members)
Friday, September 24, 2021
9.30-11 am Refugees, Knowledge and Nature in Canada
Martin Bemmann (University of Freiburg): The Unlikely Career of Leon J. Koerner: Transcontinental Transfers of Economic and Environmental Knowledge as Key to Entrepreneurial Success and Societal Integration, 1938/39-1955
Swen Steinberg (Queen’s University, Kingston, and Carleton University, Ottawa / Ontario): Knowledge in Flight? Hungarian Foresters, the Uprising in 1956 and the Sopron Forest School at UBC Vancouver
Amanda Leslie / Asher Goldstein (University of Edinburgh / Linköping universitet): Naturalizing citizenship: Canada’s national parks and the promotion of imaginaries of citizenship on Indigenous land
11-11.15 am Break
11.15-12.45 pm Exile as Environmental Experience
Natalie Eppelsheimer (Middlebury College / Vermont): Of Droughts, Diseases, and Safaris: German Exiles as Farmers in Kenya
Reinhard Andress (Loyola University Chicago): The Halo of the Jungle: Narrating the Exile Experience of the Aron Family in Ecuador
Marlen Eckl (Hofheim/Ts.): “Europe in the jungle.” The agricultural settlement of Rolândia, a place of refuge in the interior of Brazil
12.45 pm End of day 2
Saturday, September 25, 2021
9.30-11 am Individual Perspectives on Environments of Exile
Jacqueline Vansant (University of Michigan-Dearborn): “Freilich ist das Leben hier absolut kein leichtes, aber … ”: A Youth‘s Reflections on Exile, Emigration, and the Environment in the Middle East, 1939-1943
Hadwig Kraeutler (Vienna): Engaging (with) environments: Some essentials. The museologist, writer, art historian Alma S. Wittlin (b. Lviv/Ukraine, 1899; d. Palo Alto/CA, 1991)
Zlata F. Phillips (New York State University at Albany): Monkey Business: Paddling the Amazon, Pedaling in France to Spanish border, and Publishing for children around the world
11-11.15 am Break
11.15-12.15 pm Expellees and Deportees in New Environments
Avi Sharma (Technical University of Berlin): Our homes were “cold as an ice-block” and “hot as an oven”. On the seasonal experience of displacement in refugee camps in Germany and India ca. 1945/50
Hilla Peled-Shapira (Bar-Ilan University, Israel): Between Moscow and Baghdad: Climate and the Image of the City in the Works of Iraqi Writers in Exile
12.15-12.30 pm Conclusion
12.30 pm End of conference / get together