German Studies Canada

Setting the Agenda for German and European Studies in Canada for the next three years: Four universities share the DAAD support in the round four "Promoting German and European Studies in Canada” (2010-2013)

Building on traditionally strong ties with these institutions, the DAAD once again selected to promote a range of activities at four Canadian universities. The University of Montréal, University of Toronto and York University have received research and programming funding to promote and expand German and European Studies in Canada for the upcoming three years. In addition the University of Victoria received funding to continue its Canada-wide network and outreach project GermanStudies.ca.

To date, the DAAD has been fully supportive of the transatlantic mobility of scholars/ students/ researchers and the development of joint transatlantic initiatives. The recent proposals indicate that there is still a tremendous potential to expand initiatives in the field of the transatlantic relationship. Through the development of new and innovative transatlantic projects/ programs and cross-cultural linkages, Canada-German and Canada-European Union relations will be strengthened significantly.

The focus in this latest round of DAAD funding is in particular on collaborative and interdisciplinary projects that often bridge the gap between social scientific and cultural studies. For many years, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) has supported German and European Studies at Canadian universities. The latest call "Promoting German and European Studies in Canada" was launched in the latter part of 2009 as part of the DAAD's fourth annual call for proposals to support German and European Studies at Canadian universities.

Graduate Studies, Visiting Scholars, Research with focus on transatlantic dimension: Université de Montréal, Centre canadien d’études allemandes et européennes CCEAE

The Centre Canadien d’études allemandes et européennes CCEAE plays a vital role in supporting the German and European Studies Community in Canada. Established in 1997, the Centre canadien d’études allemandes et européennes/Canadian Centre for German and European Studies (“the Centre”) has gained a national and international reputation for research, teaching and outreach thanks largely to a ten-year funding commitment from the DAAD. During the upcoming years numerous projects, many of which have a particular interdisciplinary focus, will be developed and offer a great range of research and exchange activities.

Focus on Graduate Studies:

In a consortium between CCGES (York University), CCEAE (Université de Montréal with the collaboration of McGill University) and the JIGES (University of Toronto) a Pan-Canadian Summer School for graduate students in German and European Studies will start in 2010. The following themes have been selected for future Summer Schools:• 2010: Minorities in Modern Germany (leading role: Randall Hansen and Till van Rahden)• 2011: Science, Technology, and the State in Modern Germany (leading role: Marcus Funck and Doris Bergen • 2012: German and European Stadt-Land-Schaften (leading role: Ulrich Ufer, Stefan Soldovieri and Jennifer Hosek)

Transatlantic Dimension:

The Transatlantic Doctoral Academy on Corporate Responsibility (TADA) brings together German and Canadian PhD students who address questions of corporate responsibility/business ethics in their doctoral theses. 18 PhD students from 14 different universities (from Vancouver to Frankfurt/ Oder, from Toronto to Flensburg) have been selected to participate in at TADA for the next two years.

The program “Clean Clothes or ‘dreckige Weste’ allows graduate student to conduct research on corporate responsibility in the textile industry”. Funding for student mobility within the framework of a comparative transatlantic research project on business ethics related to the textile industry will be sought. Two German and two Canadian students complete their master theses on this particular subject in 2010 by comparing the strategies of German and Canadian companies and the way they deal issues of corporate responsibility.

In 2010 in Kaiserslautern, the five-day seminar “Ethics and Leadership” will provide 20 graduate students with the opportunity to discuss business ethics with experts (academics as well as practitioners), work on case studies, and develop an interdisciplinary and international understanding of the seminar's topic.

Seed money for research projects in preparation of grant proposals and joint transatlantic programs:

Cold War Christianities: Religion and Politics in Post-war Europe: Till van Rahden and Holger Nehring (The University of Sheffield, head of the research group “Cultures of the Cold War”) are assembling a transatlantic research group on “Cold War Christianities” to explore the relationship between religion and politics in post-war Europe.

International Workshop on “Interculturalité en période de guerre – interactions, transferts et perceptions de l’Autre, Europe – Québec 1939-1947” : To be held in September 2011, this workshop will both mark the end of an exploratory collaborative project between the two responsible faculty members and seek to initiate a broader collaborative research group with members from Canada, Germany and France.

“Advertising Film and the Body Politic in Germany, 1918-1960”: This workshop will examine the emergence and transformation of advertising film during the Weimar Republic, the Third Reich and the Adenauer Era in the Federal Republic of Germany.

Short Research Visits in collaboration with partners:

October 2010: Dietmar Köveker; September 2010: Reinhard Krüger, March/ April 2010: Werner Gephart and Raja Sakrani; April to mid-June 2010: Helga Bories-Sawala; September 2011 and September 2012: Hans-Jürgen Lüsebrink; April 2010: Andreas Fahrmeir; October 2010, Bernd Lindner; September 2011: Lothar Probst, January 2010 : Stephanie Hofmann.

Medium Term Projects:

Continuing Lecture Series “Diversity and Civility”: Since September 2008, the Centre has organized a lecture series on “Diversity and Civility.” Speakers will be asked to relate their theoretical considerations to the fields of globalization and modernity with a particular methodological emphasis on interdisciplinarity.

The Civilizing Process, Complex Modernity and the Question of Western Fundamentalism: One overarching interest at CCEAE relates to questions concerning the construction and crises of Western civility within modernity. This focus brings together interdisciplinary (history, sociology and anthropology) and diachronic interests of scholars at CCEAE.

Research on “Civilizing Processes and Democratic Civility, 1968/1989” analyzes two crucial stages in the recent history of contemporary democracy. Here, research will collect documents (letters, photos, novels and archival materials) relating to interconnections between manners, democracy and the dilemma of social interaction in democratic societies.

“The Civilizing Process, Complex Modernity and the question of Western Fundamentalism” is expected to enhance the strategic cooperation between CCEAE and the Freie Universität Berlin.

Special Project International Conference:

“The Return of History? Global and European Consequences of German Reunification”: To mark the twentieth anniversary of German unification on October 3, 2010, the CCEAE, the Centre d’excellence sur l’Union européenne (CEUE - McGill/Université de Montréal), the Canada Research Chair for German and European Studies, and the Centre d’études et de recherches internationales de l’Université de Montréal (CERIUM) will host an international two-day conference on the “The Return of History? Global and European Consequences of German Reunification.” The conference will focus in four themes in particular:“Flexicurity” and the Future of the Welfare State, Conflicting Memories of Violence and Suffering, Does Democracy Have a Future? An Atlantic Divide.

International and transatlantic initiatives: York University, The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies (CCGES)

The CCGES has received funding for six diverse projects, many of which place an emphasis on the benefits of collaboration. The projects range from research projects, to mobility opportunities for students, as well as a summer school for Canadian graduate students conducting research and/or working in areas that relate to German studies. In brief, details on five of the projects are presented here:

 • The first of the funded research projects is "International Research in Urban Education - a Pilot Project," which will be overseen by CCGES affiliate Professor Alice Pitt, Dean of Education at York;

• The second is "Asian Diasporic Communities in Canada and Germany: Theorizing the Politics of Secularism Across Disciplinary Boundaries," a project that is being led by Professor Michael Nijhawan (CCGES Faculty Affiliate, Sociology);

• The third is a cooperative arrangement between CCGES' Director, Professor Roger Keil and Centre affiliate Ute Lehrer (both Faculty of Environmental Studies) and colleagues in the Geography Department of the Frankfurt's Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universität. This project includes the regular exchange of students and faculty from partners as a means of regularizing the project's collaborative basis between its contributors;

• The fourth is led by Professors Keil and Lehrer and will see York and the University of Toronto work with partners at the three Berlin universities (Free University Berlin, the Technical University Berlin and the Humboldt University) as well five New York universities (Columbia, NYU, CUNY, Rutgers and Fordham) to build a network that will apply to the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft's "Graduiertenkolleg" program;

• The fifth project is a Summer School for Canadian graduate students working on topics related to German studies in 2011. This project is a collaboration between the CCGES with partners at le Centre canadien d'études allemandes et européennes at the Université de Montréal, the Joint Initiative for German and European Studies at the University of Toronto and McGill University.

Focus on Germany in the 20th Century University of Toronto, The Joint Initiative in German and European Studies at the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies (CERES)

Turning Points: Germany in the 20th Century, a proposal submitted to the DAAD's call for applications entitled "Promoting German Studies in Canada Program" includes a project series that revolves around four research clusters:

 1. Eugenics, demography, and public health This cluster features two research projects, notably: a workshop led by Susan Solomon on German Public Health between the Wars (2010), and an international conference, organized by Randall Hansen (Toronto) and Annette Timm (Calgary) on Eugenics, Genetics, and Population Policy after World War II in the United States (2011);

2. Modernity and Embrace Under this cluster, Alexandra Hausstein and an international team of scholars from Montreal, Toronto, the FU, Berlin, Vienna, and Friedrichshafen are to organize a research project on the construction of modernity in Canadian-European relations from the early enlightenment onward;

3. Human Security This cluster privileges the collaboration of Stephen Clarkson and Pia Kleber at the University of Toronto with scholars from UQAM, Waterloo, Ottawa, Albert and Western. Herein, JIGES will bring three German scholars to Canada for one-month long research and lecture visits which will link culture in questions of human security in both Europe and North American contexts.;

4. The future of German Jewish History In cooperation with the Department of History (James Retallack and Derek Penslar), the Centre for Jewish Studies (Hindy Naijman), and the University of Montreal, JIGES plans to organize a four-part series of talks on methodological and substantive developments in the study of German-Jewish History.

"Engaging the German Studies Community in Canada: networking, dissemination and outreach" University of Victoria (in association with partners at the Universities of Toronto, British Columbia and York)

The GermanStudies.ca information platform/portal has become an engaging medium for connecting the German and European Studies community in Canada. Providing some context for the funding request, the Germanstudies.ca is an increasingly developed experts' database of scholars in the fields of German and European Studies from across the country. Students and the public, accordingly, have an excellent tool at their disposal to identify top experts and learn more about the type of research being undertaken across Canada. Furthermore, the quarterly newsletter as well as the events calendar and news alerts have become important tools to disseminate information to the German and European Studies community in Canada. DAAD, on behalf of German research and outreach, plays the role of an entrepreneur in distributing information and instigating networking in an innovative fashion. The nature is that no other single European country has such an extensive network and presence in the Canadian academic environment. In collaboration, GermanStudies.ca hopes to establish itself further as a major hub for activities in German and European Studies. GermanStudies.ca's experience over its first three years underlines how dependent the relatively small German Studies community in Canada is on both building collaborative networks among scholars, and in disseminating knowledge more widely to the public. Accordingly, increasing the size of the experts’ database through adding more, and updating existing profiles, have been core aims for the past year. To strengthen its engagement function, GermanStudies.ca seeks to promote the networking of key-players, and the dissemination of knowledge about the first-rate scholarly expertise that is available in the field of German and European Studies in Canada.

Funding for the coming years intends to formalize existing linkages and augment capacity for collaboration across Canada and through the transatlantic relationship. The main participation and outreach tools advanced by the GermanStudies.ca information platform can be grouped into four categories:

1. Continued development to augment capacity as an information pool, notably pursued through a cross-Canada event calendar, latest news page, list server, as well as quarterly newsletter;

2. As a knowledge broker, Germanstudies.ca features an increasingly developed expert's database and expand the breadth of research on German and European Studies into other areas of social science and humanities research;

 3. “Promoting innovative online projects” will greatly expand and regularize the online content and breadth of German and Europe Studies information and initiatives;

4. Networking and collaborative outreach will be significantly augmented and is already underway through collaborative relations between Germanstudies.ca and the CAUTG (the Canadian Association of University Teachers for German), as well as with German and European Studies Centres/ Institutes, ECSA-Canada, and the Strategic Knowledge Cluster Canada-Europe Transatlantic Dialogue (www.carleton.ca/europecluster).