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The Society offers scholarships in honor of the late Gloria Flaherty, the accomplished scholar and founding member of the Goethe Society. Since 2008, the Society has been awarding those scholarships exclusively for dissertation workshops at GSNA conferences. Our next conference will be held in Pittsburgh in 2014.

The Society also offers an annual essay prize, which carries an award of $500. The guidelines for submission appear below.

March 6, 2013

2011 Award

Congratulations to John H. Smith on his award-winning article, “Living Religion as Vanishing Mediator: Schleiermacher, Early Romanticism and Idealism,” The German Quarterly 84.2 (2011): 137-58.

As stated in the abstract, religion was fundamental to the conceptual revolutions of Early Romanticism and Idealism. Schleiermacher linked the divine to the new philosophies of life and served as a productive “vanishing mediator” for Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis, Schelling, and Hegel. They all strove to “vitalize” the Spinozan identity of deus and natura and thereby made a crucial turn from the philosophies of Kant and Fichte. The idea of a living religion laid the foundation for a new dialectic of unity-in-difference and difference-in-unity. This vitalistic religious dimension becomes visible for us as we come to recognize the interweaving of faith and secular reason in modernity.
  

March 6, 2013

2012 Award: Call for Submissions

The executive committee seeks nominations or self-nominations for its annual essay prize, which carries an award of $500. Please submit a copy of the essay (electronic version preferred) for the best essay published in the year 2012 on Goethe, his times, and/or contemporary figures by March 31, 2013 to the Society's Vice-President.

The following articles are eligible:

     1) articles written by a North American scholar (defined by institutional affiliation at the time of publication); or
     2) articles written by a current member of the GSNA; or
     3) articles published in the Goethe Yearbook.

NB: Articles by current GSNA board members are not eligible. GSNA members are encouraged to submit their own articles for consideration.
  

March 6, 2013

Dissertation Workshops

In order to encourage and support research in the Age of Goethe, the Goethe Society of North America organizes dissertation workshops at its international Atkins conferences, held every three years (see Pittsburgh in 2008, Chicago in 2011). Participating students, who are selected on the basis of their dissertation prospectus and a letter from their adviser, are all awarded a Gloria Flaherty Scholarship in the amount of $500 plus a waiver of the conference fee. More importantly, they participate in panel discussions, where they are engaged in conversation by senior scholars in their field who direct comments and questions to their projects.

The GSNA will hold its next dissertation workshop at the 2014 conference in Pittsburgh. Details regarding the application process will follow shortly, but all applicants are expected to join the GSNA (for just $10!). Membership includes the Society’s newsletter twice each year, as well as a copy of the Yearbook of the Goethe Society of North America.

With this continuing commitment, the GSNA hopes to contribute to the academic and intellectual success of graduate students engaged in Goethe studies and quite possibly to identify new talent for the Goethe Yearbook and our Book Series.
  

March 6, 2013

Essay Prize Winners

2011
John H. Smith, "Living Religion as Vanishing Mediator: Schleiermacher, Early Romanticism and Idealism," German Quarterly 84.2 (2011): 137-158.

2010
Dalia Nassar, "From a Philosophy of Self to a Philosophy of Nature: Goethe and the Development of Schelling's Naturphilosophie," Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 92.3 (2010): 304-321.

2009
Sara Eigen Figal, "When Brothers are Enemies: Frederick the Great's Catechism for War," Eighteenth-Century Studies 43:1 (2009): 21-36

2008
Tobias Boes, "Apprenticeship of the Novel: The Bildungsroman and the Invention of History, ca. 1770-1820," Comparative Literature Studies 45.3 (2008).

2007
Christian Weber, "Goethes ‘Ganymed’ und der Sündenfall der Ästhetik," DeutscheVierteljahresschrift 81: 317-45.

2006
Andrew Piper, "Rethinking the Print Object: Goethe and the Book of Everything," PMLA 121.1 (2006): 124-138.

2005
Elisabeth Krimmer, "‘Eviva il Coltello’? The Castrato Singer in Eighteenth-Century German Literature and Culture," PMLA 120.5 (2005): 1543-1559.

2004
Edgar Landgraf, "Romantic Love and the Enlightenment: From Gallantry and Seduction to Authenticity and Self-Validation," German Quarterly 77.1 (2004): 29-46.

Karin Schutjer, "Beyond the Wandering Jew: Anti-Semitism and Narrative Supersession in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre," German Quarterly 77.4 (2004): 389-407.

2003
Karin Barton. "Apum Rex/Regina: Goethes Bienenlehre als Schlüssel zu Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahren," in Body Dialectics in the Age of Goethe, ed. Marianne Henn and Holger A. Pausch (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003): 117-67.

2002
Horst Lange, "Wolves, Sheep, and the Shepherd: Legality, Legitimacy, and Hobbesian Political Theory in Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen," Goethe Yearbook 10 (2001): 1-30. And "Weislingen: Goethe’s Politics of the Ego," Goethe Yearbook 11 (2002): 177-196.

2001 and 2000
Not awarded

1999
Elizabeth Powers, "The Artist’s Escape for the Idyll: The Relationship of Werther to Sesenheim," Goethe Yearbook 9 (1999): 47-76.

1998 and earlier
Not awarded