AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.

Yellowed pages, virtual realities: publication in women in German's past, present, and future.(Women in German Yearbook)

Women in German Yearbook

| January 01, 2004 | Blackwell, Jeannine; Clausen, Jeanette | COPYRIGHT 2004 University of Nebraska Press. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)Copyright

The first two presidents of WiG reflect on the history of the organization and the Yearbook, take stock of the present, and speculate about the future. WiG began as a supportive community for feminist Germanists isolated in their departments from like-minded scholars. The Yearbook has come to embody the ethos of the organization in certain ways: feminist process and academic rigor; scholarly and creative writing side by side. Despite the high quality and rich variety of the contributions, the Yearbook has not yet found a substantial readership beyond WiG itself. The authors explore the promises and perils of e-publication as the likely future of the Yearbook. (JB and JC)

**********

Jeanette: The editors' invitation to write a piece for this twentieth volume of the WiG Yearbook was an opportunity to reflect on where we began and how far we've come, as well as to project some ideas for the future. Women in German as an organization goes back to 1974. Our first annual conference took place in 1976 and the first volume of the Yearbook was published in 1985. (1) Back then, the camera-ready copy was prepared on typewriters. Today it appears that journals published as bound volumes may soon go the way of carbon copies and mimeographed newsletters. It is important for WiG to engage in reflection and planning not only to keep pace with change, but also to become a more vital force in the profession. What does the future hold for our organization and for the Yearbook? How, to use a clich6 from strategic planning, can we take WiG to "the next level"? The climate for feminism, higher education in general, and German Studies is much different than twenty years ago.

How the Yearbook Got Legs

Jeannine: The Yearbook grew out of a need to find venues for feminist publications, and it emerged at a time when some academic feminist groups were experiencing a crisis in growth and development. American feminism had survived a struggle over separatism and other issues that divided or mortally wounded many feminist collectives and coalitions. Academic feminists were trying to decide if and how much they had sold out to the establishment. Amazingly enough, the Coalition of Women in German survived the troubled waters of early feminism, partially because of long-term and long-distance friendships nurtured by the organization and its annual conference. But it survived as well because the members, isolated in small, beleaguered German departments strewn across America, needed WiG to recharge and reconnect. Women who had edited free feminist circulars and newspapers found themselves finished with graduate school and landing in the academy. But what would their next feminist writings look like? We knew we could produce a lively, important, witty newsletter. We knew we could create a collaborative, spontaneous hilarious artwork known as the WiG Cabaret. Could we carry that verve and vitality into different forms?

Jeanette: What we began with was mostly enthusiasm and a sense of urgency: where were we going to publish our work if we didn't have our own journal? The first issues of the Yearbook were modeled in part on the volumes produced every year by the GDR Symposium in Conway, NH. Published by the University Press of America, each volume contained a selection of papers from the previous year's symposium. WiG, we thought, could pull together papers from our annual sessions at AATG, MLA, and, of course, the WiG conference. However, we quickly saw the need to cast a wider net and in fact to solicit contributions from feminist scholars who probably wouldn't have sent their work to WiG at the time.

Jeannine: We knew how great the papers were in the WiG sessions at the various conferences--I am thinking about the double session on Romantic women at the MLA in 1985, for example--and we wanted to capture this energy to show what the organization's members were really doing. Another source of inspiration was the first conference of Frauen in der Literaturwissenschaft (Women in Literary Scholarship) in Hamburg in 1983, organized primarily by Inge Stephan and Sigrid Weigel. Several of us attended that conference and presented papers there. Even though the West German feminists had organized much later than we, and their group was much smaller and localized, they were preparing a conference volume right then and there. WiG had to get moving! Their first conference volume, Feministische Literaturwissenschaft: Dokumentation der Tagung in Hamburg im Mai 1983 (Feminist Literary Scholarship: A Documentation of the Conference in ...

Related articles from newspapers, magazines, journals, and more
Yearbook Interactive Announces the 20 Best Multimedia Yearbooks in the Country...
Press release article from: Business Wire June 25, 2001 700+ words
...CD-ROM-based yearbooks Yearbook Interactive(TM...based multimedia yearbooks. "It's an incredible yearbook, definitely the...multimedia versions of yearbooks and school publications...The company's yearbook authoring software...
Yearbooks Still Preserve Memories for High School Seniors, Do Strong Business.
Newspaper article from: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News June 8, 2003 700+ words
...replacements. "The yearbook business is very...than 225 million yearbooks over the last 50...technologies like digital yearbooks on compact discs...the $10 digital yearbook at Monterey is gaining...own interactive yearbook software. "We...The production of yearbooks has changed so ...
Yearbooks fade out at universities.
News wire article from: Chattanooga Times/Free Press (Chattanooga, TN) October 28, 2007 700+ words
...Justin McCulley, yearbook sponsor at East Ridge...School, said high school yearbooks remain popular, but...students from buying one. Yearbook prices generally range...have stopped producing yearbooks, but social networking...Cantrell said UTC's yearbook was an entirely different...
Yearbooks Get Personal.
Press release article from: PR Newswire September 26, 2005 700+ words
...What's Hot' in Yearbooks in Preparation for National School Yearbook Week MINNEAPOLIS...National School Yearbook Week. Jostens, a leader in providing yearbooks to students and...they put into their yearbooks," said Larson...recognize and thank yearbook advisers and staffs...
Yearbooks change, stay the same: Cutting edge technology, familiar lines.
Newspaper article from: Spokesman-Review (Spokane, WA) June 3, 2006 700+ words
...each other's yearbook. "Yearbooks are my favorite...changed the way yearbooks are created...School's first yearbook, the "Pantera...the 340-page yearbook that sells for...Most of the yearbooks in the area sell...
E-Yearbook.com Launches New Website With Old College Yearbooks.(Website...
Press release article from: Business Wire June 5, 2007 700+ words
...browse old college yearbooks online: http://www.e-yearbook.com. Consumers...Yearbook.com: E-Yearbook.com is the leading...browse old college yearbooks on the Internet. Consumers use E-Yearbook.com to search for...
Yearbook buff's collection is in a class by itself.
Newspaper article from: Saint Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul, MN) May 14, 2006 700+ words
...said of his vintage yearbooks, which show rows...South High School yearbook with a drawing of...pay big bucks for yearbooks that contain pictures...he has paid for a yearbook is $100, for Josh...d love to find a yearbook for Shattuck military...Perrier finds a lot of yearbooks for ...
Canada Yearbook Services Announces New Sales Territory in Ottawa, Ontario...
Press release article from: Business Wire October 30, 2007 700+ words
...over 50 years, Canada Yearbook Services has been providing...affordable high school yearbooks of unparalleled quality...produce an outstanding yearbook year after year...publishing high school yearbooks that are designed to...company also provides yearbook workshops and a variety...
Yearbook discourse in/ex-clusion: excavating identity and memory.(Essay)
Magazine article from: Journal of Curriculum Theorizing Freedman, Debra M. Snow-Gerono, Jennifer L. Slonaker, Anne L. Antrop-Gonzalez, Rene Duo, Pey-chewn Huang, Hsiu-Ping December 22, 2006 700+ words
...pages of our high school yearbooks. What did we value...explains the school yearbook is a sign of belonging...within/on/between yearbook pages become projected...By exploring our yearbook signings, our hope...of excavators. Our yearbooks come from a variety...
Today's yearbooks raise eyebrows.(FEATURES)(LEARNING)
Newspaper article from: The Christian Science Monitor May 31, 2005 700+ words
...print, Garden City High yearbook adviser Betsy Hirst...been some journalistic yearbooks, but they really caught...more sinister meaning. Yearbooks can also cause trouble...approval. Indeed, yearbook advisers have eternally...manager for Friesen Yearbooks, a Canadian company...
For more facts and information, see all results

Source: HighBeam Research, Yellowed pages, virtual realities: publication in women in German's...

©2009 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
About us | FAQs | Contact us | Privacy policy | Terms and conditions
Other Gale sites: Encyclopedia.com | HighBeam Research | Acquire Content | Books & Authors | Goliath | MovieRetriever | Smart QandA