This panel takes stock of the larger FRG, now, twenty years after what Article 23 of the Basic Law terms the Beitritt of the GDR into the Federal Republic.

Since 1990, multiple, often competing gendered discourses and practices have been shaping understandings of this event and of the New Republic. Conceptions include: failed, impotent state; colonizer/colonized; “normalized” pillar of Fortress Europe; potent economic engine; virgin market; dowried bride.

Our aim is to account for dominant narratives without reinscribing them; we welcome contributions that offer alternatives to established frameworks and lived experiences of the (post) Beitritt.

Please send abstracts of approximately 350 words by January 15, 2010 to both:

Jennifer Ruth Hosek, Queen’s University, Ontario