Sketch of Franz Kafka by artist
Friedrich Feigl
ATTENTION AUTHORS AND SCHOLARS:
If you are interested in submitting papers, please review our editorial suggestions.
THE KAFKA SOCIETY CONVENTION PROGRAM
Philadelphia, PA; December 2009

Tuesday, 29 December 2009
3:30–4:45 pm, Loews Philadelphia
Kafka Anew: Life, Work, Translations
Program arranged by the Kafka Society of America
Presiding: Marie Luise Caputo-Mayr, Temple University
Matthew Powell
Walsh University
Searching Kafka’s Diaries for the Untold Story
Marjorie Edna Rhine
University of Wisconsin, Whitewater
Kafka’s Epistolary Project: Translating Libidinal Energies in
“Letters to Felice”
Phillip Lundberg
Bridgewater, NJ
“Essential Kafka”: Translating What’s Written In Between the Lines
Catriona MacLeod
University of Pennsylvania
Kafka’s Amerika: Lost (and Found) in Translation
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
1:45–3:00 pm, Loews Philadelphia
Kafka Anew: Multiple Perspectives
Program arranged by the Kafka Society of America
Presiding: Mark Harman, Elizabethtown College
Pamela S. Saur
Lamar University
Conversational Interactions in Kafka and Pinter:
A Linguistic Analysis
Shambhavi Prakash
Rutgers University
Sonorous Intrusions: Translation of Sound in Kafka’s Der Process
Agnes Malinowska
University of Chicago
The Cloudy Spot at the Center of the Father’s Concern: Kafka and Benjamin on Legal Violence and Narrative Postponement
Hugo Rios
Rutgers University
Embracing Failure: Kafka on Film
ELECTION RESULTS FOR EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND VICE-PRESIDENT
Vice-president Marjorie Rhine, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater
Executive Committee
(New Members)
Mark Harman, Elizabethtown College
Michael Levine, Rutgers University
Marjorie Rhine, University of Wisconsin, Whitewater
These esteemed colleagues will start their term in 2009. We welcome all of them and are looking forward to collaborating with them.
THE KAFKA SOCIETY CONVENTION PROGRAM
San Francisco, CA; December 2008

Saturday, 27 December 2008
3:30–4:45 pm, San Francisco Marriott, Foothill E
Kafka, the Premier Practitioner of Labor Law in Central Europe
Presiding: Michael Levine, Rutgers University
Ayad Rahmani
Washington State
University
In the Belly of the Ship: A Demonstration of Machine Power
and Labor Relations
Paul North
New York University
Everything Succumbs to Building
Megan M. Ewing
Princeton University
From Burrow to Bureau: Ego Defense in Kafka’s “Der Bau”

Respondent: Iris Bruce, McMaster University
Sunday, 28 December 2008
12:00 noon –1:15 pm, San Francisco Marriott, Pacific Suite A
Kafka, Brecht and Labor
Presiding: Marie Luise Caputo-Mayr, Kafka Society of America
Olaf Berwald
University of North Dakota
Marsyas Skin Grafts: Brecht/Kafka Palimpsests in Volker Braun’s Poetics of Survival
Jens Klenner
Princeton University
Denken als Dienstleistung: Von Kopflangern und Handlangern in Brecht und Kafka
Nicola Behrmann
Food Comes First: Labor and Poverty in Kafka and Brecht

Respondent: Judith Ryan, Harvard University
ANNOUNCING THE WINNERS OF THE KAFKA SOCIETY OF AMERICA
PRIZE FOR THE BEST ESSAY BY AN EMERGING SCHOLAR

Among the many valuable scholarly submissions for the best essay prize, the Committee selected two outstanding essays and split the prize money of USD $2,000.00 between the two authors:

Keith Leslie Johnson, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT
Kafka: Toward an Ethic of the Creaturely

Sorin Radu Cucu, SUNY, Buffalo, NY
The Fantasy of the Invisible Master or the “Unnamable” in Kafka’s The Trial

The prize was sponsored by Franz Muster, Panoramic Windows and Doors, with the assistance of Dr. Brigitta Blaha, Austrian Consul General in New York City and members of the Executive Committee of the Kafka Society of America*. The winning essay was selected by a panel of experts.

*Kafka Executive Committee Sponsors: Stanley Corngold, Rolf J. Goebel, Clayton Koelb, Elizabeth Rajeck, Judith Ryan, Henry S. Sussman, Ruth V. Gross.

Kafka Society Members and Other Private Sponsors: Jennifer Geddes, Michael G. Levine, Breon Mitchell, Mark Harman, John Pizer, John Zilcosky, Marjorie Rhine.

We congratulate the winners and wish them a successful further career and thank again the sponsors of this prize.

Note to the authors of the other prize submissions: You will be shortly contacted by the prize committee chair with further information.
THE KAFKA SOCIETY CONVENTION PROGRAM
Chicago, IL; 27–30 December 2007

Thursday, 27 December 2007
3:20– 4:45 pm, Parlor C, Sheraton Chicago Hotels and Towers
KAFKA NOW: Kafka and Popular Culture
Presiding: Judith Ryan, Harvard University
Randy Laist
University of Connecticut
Kafka 2.0: YouTube Metamorphoses
Marie Luise Caputo-Mayr
Temple University
Their Take on Kafka Now: Recent Kafka Adaptations
on the New York Stage
Henry S. Sussman
SUNY Buffalo
Extraterrestrial Kafka
Friday, 28 December 2007
12 noon– 1:15 pm, Parlor C, Sheraton Chicago Hotels and Towers
KAFKA NOW: Kafka and Recent Literature
Presiding: Marie Luise Caputo-Mayr, Temple University
Jae Hee Chang
UCLA
Kafka on the Shore and in Contemporary Japanese Literature
Elisa Martínez Salazar
Universidad de Zaragoza
Kafka in Spain at the Beginning of the 21st Century
Mark Harman
Elizabethtown College
Der Verschollene/The Missing Person Now:
Revisiting Kafka’s First Novel
Mark Zisselsberger
SUNY Binghamton
The Afterlife of Literature: W. G. Sebald and
Kafka’s Hunter Gracchus

Substitutes:
Denise Huber, Harvard University
A Contrastive Study of Kafka and Pamuk
Daniel Medin, Stanford University
Poetic Belatedness in J. M. Coetzee’s At the Gate
Betiel Wasihun, Yale University
Franz Kafka’s America or Der Verschollene and Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore
Roman Halfmann, University of Xiangtang, Hunan, China
Kafka’s influence on the Far-Eastern Culture: The Riddles as Part of the Solution: Haruki Murakami and Franz Kafka
THE KAFKA SOCIETY CONVENTION PROGRAM
Philadelphia, PA; December 2006

Thursday, 28 December
3:30–4:45 pm, 203-A Convention Center
Kafka and His Factories: Industrial Kafka I: “The Real Thing”

Presiding: Marie Luise Caputo-Mayr, Kafka Society of America
Benno Wagner
Universität Siegen
Paris, 9-11-1911: Kafka's Poetics of Accident
Patrick Fortmann
Tulane University
By Accident: Risks and Dangers of Kafka's Automobiles
Kata Gellen
Princeton University
The Mass-Produced Word: Kafka's Newspapers

Back-up candidates:
Tim Attanucci, Princeton University
Auto-Omnibus: Kafka‘s Machine Traffic
Barry Murnane, Freiburg/Breisgau
Kafka's Dead Letter Offices: Bureaucracy, Technology and Magical Thinking
Saturday, 30 December
1:45–3:00 pm. Regency Ballroom C1, Loews
Kafka and His Factories: Industrial Kafka II: Factories and Systems of the Mind

Presiding: Henry S. Sussman, SUNY Buffalo
Marjorie Edna Rhine
University of Wisconsin, Whitewater
Manufacturing Discontent: Mapping Traces of Industrial Space in Kafka's Haptic Narrative
Sorin Radu Cucu
SUNY Buffalo
“Modern Times:” Kafka and the Mechanical Imagination
Martina Lüke
University of Connecticut
The Human Machine/The Human as Machine in the Death Factory: Technology as Mirror of Modernity in Kafka's “In Penal Colony”
Rolf J. Goebel
University of Alabama, Huntsville
Industrial Work as Urban Phantasmagoria: A Note on Benjamin
and Kafka

Back-up candidates:
Allen Shelton , Buffalo State College
Capital of the Wide Green Swamps
Lawrence Nannery, Saint Francis College, Brooklyn
Kafka and His Factories
THE KAFKA SOCIETY CONVENTION PROGRAM
Washington, D.C.; 29–30 December 2005

Thursday, 29 December
1:45–3:00 pm, Georgetown East, Washington Hilton
Kafka and the Body Politic I: Contemporary Discourses
Presiding: Marie Luise Caputo-Mayr, Kafka Society of America
Patrick Forman
Harvard University
"Aus mir geschnittenes Fleisch:" The Body Politics of
Kafka Literature
Eva B. Revesz
Scripps College
The Human Beast: Kafka’s Concentrationary Universe
David Suchoff
Colby College
Kafka’s Jewish Politics: Zionism, Goethe and the Hidden
Openness of Tradition
Arnd Wedemayer
Princeton University
"Diesseitswunder:"  Franz Kafka as Political Saint

Respondent: Judith L. Ryan, Harvard University
Friday, 30 December
12:00 noon –1:15 pm, Conservatory, Washington Hilton
Kafka and the Body Politic I: Contemporary Discourses
Presiding: Henry Sussman, State University of New York, Buffalo
Esther Kirsten Bauer
University of Wisconsin,
Stephen's Point
Lost Between Power and Desire: Franz Kafka’s Der Verschollene
Olaf Berwald
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Polis, Solitude, and Solidarity: Soundings of Kafka in Weiss
and Canetti
Lucian Ghita
Yale University
Topographical Assemblages and Reconfigurations: The Politics of Space in Kafka’s The Trial
Michael G. Levine
New York University
Freedom of Speech: The Space of the Mouth in the Kafka Corpus

Respondent: Iris Bruce, McMaster University
THE KAFKA SOCIETY CONVENTION PROGRAM
Philadelphia, PA; 29–30 December, 2004

Wednesday, 29 December
10:15-11:30 am, Washington B, Loews
Hotel
Kafka and Music: The Theme of Music in Kafka’s Texts
Presiding: Marie Luise Caputo-Mayr, Kafka Society of America
Walter H. Sokel Josephine’s Songs and the Role of Music in Kafka
Stanley Corngold Kafka and the Several Senses of Music
Iris Bruce “Musikwissenschaft:” Kafka’s Sounds of Silence
John Hamilton “Ist das Spiel vielleicht unangenehm?:” Musical Disturbances and Acoustic Space in Kafka
Thursday, 30 December
12:00 noon-1:15 pm, Regency Ballroom C2, Loews
Hotel
Kafka and Music: Musical Pieces Inspired by Kafka
Presiding: Judith Ryan, Harvard University
Ruth Gross Finding the Right Key for Kafka’s "Castle:" André LaPorte’s Opera, “Das Schloss”
Martha Hyde Paradoxical Barriers and Morphing Forms: Gyorgy Kurtag's "Kafka-Fragments: op. 24"
Francien Markx Recomposing Kafka: Ernst Krenek’s "Sechs Motetten nach Worten nach Franz Kafka"
David Fulmer Breaking Boundaries: Pozzi Escot’s Chamber Music inspired by
"The Metamorphosis"
THE KAFKA SOCIETY CONVENTION PROGRAM
San Diego, CA; 27–29 December, 2003

Saturday, 27 December
5:15-6:30 pm, Coronado, San Diego Marriott Hotel
Global Kafka I
Program arranged by the Kafka Society of America
Presiding: Marie Luise Caputo-Mayr, Kafka Society of America
Anne E. Jamison
Princeton University
Representations of Czech Identity in Kafka: Problems of Minor Literature
Marjorie Edna Rhine
University of Wisconsin, Whitewater
Satanic Verses and Kafka’s Curse: Kafkan Echoes in Stories of Mutable Postcolonial Identites
Joseph Reuben Metz
University of Utah
Kafka Goes Global: International Connections and National Identities in Kafka's Der Verschollene
Rainer Rumold
Northwestern University
Kafka's Nomad Images, from Multilingual Borderland to Global Experience
Monday, 29 December
7:15-8:30 pm, Torrey 2, San Diego Marriott Hotel
Global Kafka II
Program arranged by the Kafka Society of America
Presiding: Janet A. Ward, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Patrick J. O’Neill
Queens University
Global Kafka: Translations, Readers, Texts
Julius M. Herz
Temple University
Kafka and the Slavic World
Marie Luise Caputo-Mayr
Temple University
Kafka's Reception in the Romance Language World
Ruiqi Ma
University of California, Riverside
“Kafka’s Influence on Post-Mao Chinese Writers
The Kafka Society of America organizes and sponsors scholarly presentations on Kafka-related topics at the Modern Language Association convention, held annually in December. Suggestions for future MLA-Kafka sessions are welcome.
We have traditionally asked presenters at our MLA-Kafka sessions to reserve their papers for publication in the Journal of the Kafka Society of America. We are offering a forum for Kafka debate at the MLA and our Journal should reflect this effort. Your presentation should be original and not have been previously published.

Papers can be submitted in either English or German. We would like to ask our contributing scholars to prepare and edit their papers with the utmost care to avoid the burden of prolonged editing. We ask for this professional courtesy in order to minimize, wherever possible, editorial work. Please, follow the most recent MLA style manual; “Endnotes” (Notes) and Works Cited are required. Also, consult recent numbers of the PMLA or our Journal. We ask you in particular to double-check all endnotes, quotations and citations for accuracy. We also urge you to make use of collegial editorial help, which always proves invaluable.

Submit your article via email attachment to the editors mentioned below and make sure to include your complete work and home addresses, phone, fax and email information. Your documents should be Microsoft Word 97-compatible.

In addition, print out two hard copies of your document, checking that both correspond, and burn a PC-formatted CD containing the Microsoft Word 97-compatible file. Mail all of these materials to:
Marie Luise Caputo-Mayr
160 East 65th St., # 2C
New York, NY 10065
Email:

In addition to the electronic submission to the editors, please send one additional hard copy to each of the following: Judith Ryan, German Department, Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138 (); Julius M. Herz, 3795 Route 212, Riegelsville, PA 18077 (); Marjorie Rhine, University of Wisconsin, Department of Foreign Languages, Whitewater, WI 53190 (); Michael Levine, German Department, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 (); Iris Bruce, Department of Modern and Classical Languages, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada, L8S 4M2 (); and Mark Harman, Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, PA 17022 ().

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