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Col. 8 No 1, Fall 1996
The Society
for Germanic Philology: Present and Future The last two years have been an eventful time for our Society and it might be worth a moment's time to think about both where we've come and where we are now heading. Beyond the revamping of the journal, discussed elsewhere in this newsletter, we see as the key accomplishments of the past years: - We have expanded membership, with a ca. 50% increase in 1996 alone. It is gratifying to see that many of our new members are from Europe, where the Society had previously been largely unknown. Moreover ó and importantly for our fiscal well-being ó we are seeing a pickup in institutional subscriptions to the journal. - Germanic Linguistics: Annual Conference (GLAC) is now established as a national and international forum for the discussion of scholarly work and the broader questions facing our profession. The 1997 GLAC will be held at UCLA, the 1998 conference at Ohio State and we have a list of excellent sites under discussion for the years beyond. This past year, we drew over 100 participants from North America, Europe and Asia. The Society has begun to provide some financial support for the conference, in addition to the contribution in time that many have made. - This newsletter has not only been redesigned but also put on line. Members and non-members therefore have access to news about the Society's activities and to general developments of interest in the field via the World Wide Web. The result of these efforts has been very encouraging, but we are looking now to the future with other goals. At the top of our list is raising the profile of our journal, the AJGLL, by expanding our base of institutional subscriptions in North America and abroad. In a time of drastic budget cutbacks at many universities, this goal poses a considerable challenge. Nonetheless, we feel that we can make some inroads by making generous offers to new subscribers. We are currently providing a complete set of back issues to new institutional subscribers gratis.
American Journal of Germanic Linguistics and Literatures AJGLL is alive and well, even if still somewhat behind schedule. Issue 8.1 (Spring 1996) has been mailed to members and institutional subscribers; 8.2 (Fall 1996) is now in preparation and should go to press later this fall. The Editorial Committee encourages members to support our journal by contributing quality manuscripts for publication. Review editor, Sarah Fagan, is always looking to expand her pool of reviewers. Those interested in writing reviews for AJGLL should send a note listing their areas of expertise to: Professor Sarah Fagan, Chair, Department of German 528 Phillips Hall, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242.
GLAC 3 GERMANIC LINGUISTICS: THE THIRD ANNUAL CONFERENCE The Conference of the Society for Germanic Philology APRIL 25 - 27, 1997
This year's organizers are C.M. Stevens and R.S. Kirsner. email: glac3@humnet.ucla.edu
SGP Elections University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3243 USA Email: tshannon@garnet.berkeley.edu Home Fax: 1-707-747-1453 Office Fax: 1-510-642-3243 Lester Wilhelm Julius "Smoky" Seifert, 1915-1996 by Louis Huffines (Bucknell), William Keel (Kansas) and Joe Salmons (Madison) Smoky Seifert passed away on September 3, 1996, at his home in Madison, Wisconsin, bringing to an end one of the most important careers in German-American studies and taking from our midst one of the most positive, energetic voices in the field. He was born and grew up in a German-speaking rural community near Juneau, Wisconsin and attended Northwestern College there, going on to earn a Masters degree at the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. at Brown University in 1941. After serving in World War II, he returned to teach in the Department of German at the University of Wisconsin at Madison for four decades, and remained active even after retiring with emeritus status in 1985. Smoky had massive impact on the field of German-American linguistics, both directly and indirectly, and was responsible in important ways for where the field is today through his research, teaching and simply as a member of the community. Smoky's active research career in German-American studies extended over more than half a century, from the 1940s well into the present decade. That work, especially on the language varieties of the Pennsylvania Germans, provides a basis on which all later studies in the field have depended. Smoky's collaboration with Carroll E. Reed produced a language questionnaire and linguistic atlas for Pennsylvania German which are still in use today. Smoky Seifert along with Carroll Reed were, indeed, the founding fathers of modern Pennsylvania German studies. In fact, their collaboration and friendship provided for all of us a model of caring cooperation which is seldom achieved in higher education. Just as important for our field, Smoky Seifert directed many very important dissertations on aspects of German-American studies. He served as informal advisor to many, if not most, emerging scholars in the field to the extent that he is often referred to as "Stiefdoktorvater" by the many who sought and enjoyed his counsel. His kindness was legendary. Beyond German-American studies, he worked extensively on and taught the older Germanic languages, and he did pioneering early work in using television for foreign language instruction. As a result of these and other accomplishments, he was honored repeatedly by the scholarly community, serving as Visiting Professor at the Universität Marburg in 1966-67, being named "Distinguished German Educator" by the Wisconsin AATG in 1985, and had conferred upon him the Bundesverdienstkreuz erster Klasse in 1989. The Society for German-American Studies bestowed him its Distinguished Service Award in 1987. MLA in Washington The Discussion Group for Germanic Philology is sponsoring a session at the 1996 MLA convention in Washington, D.C. The session will take place in the Washington Hilton on Saturday, December 28th from 8:30-9:45 a.m. Scheduled speakers are: Robert Bloomer (SUNY Stony Brook) "The Contribution of the Kluge to Modern Etymological Research"; Mary B. Paddock (Yale), "Fear and Persuasion in an Old English Paradise: An Old Saxon Tradition"; Thomas F. Shannon (UC, Berkeley), "Typological Shift and Word Order Drift in West Germanic"; Mark R. V. Southern (U of T, Austin), "Convergence Creole v. Normativism: contact-induced change, standard languages, sociocultural identity, and the Drang nach Normen"; moderator: Anna Grotans. A business meeting of the Discussion Group will immediately follow the session. Of interest to Society members may also be the Delta Phi Alpha sponsored session, "Problems in Germanic Linguistics," which will take place on Sunday, Dec. 29th at 10:15am in the Monroe Ballroom East, Washington Hilton and Towers. Speakers are: Alfred Wedel (U. of Del.) "Verbal Prefixation and the Complexive Aspect in German"; Jennifer Dailey-O'Cain (U. of Mich.) "Hannover German as Standard German: The Origin and Scope of a Linguistic Urban Legend"; Erik J. Macki (U. of Wash.) "Toward a Diachronic Germanic Syntax: Case Theory and Germanic Verb Position" moderator: John Reynolds. Computer Clearinghouse Project The Computer Clearinghouse Project for computer-aided studies in all areas and periods of German Language, Literature and Language Pedagogy and in Medieval Scandinavian invites all colleagues working in these fields to list ongoing, completed and/or projected work with the Project Directors, Professor Evelyn S. Firchow, University of Minnesota, 219 Folwell Hall, 9 Pleasant Street S.E., Minneapolis, MN 55455-0123, USA (email: firch001@maroon.tc.umn.edu) or Professor Anna A. Grotans, Ohio State University, 314 Cunz Hall/German, Columbus, OH 43210-1229, USA (email: agrotans@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu). Only projects using the computer for calculations and research can be included, not word processing. All projects will be listed in the International Annual Newsletter for German Computer Research published in the first annual issue of the Germanic Notes and Reviews. Yearly subscriptions to this journal are U.S. $14 domestic and U.S. $16 international. All checks or inquiries should be sent to Professor Richard Krummel, Editor, Germanic Notes and Reviews, 2801 Arrowwood Circle N.W., Bemidji, MN 56601, USA. An abbreviated version of the Newsletter appears in the first yearly issue of Germanistik (Niemeyer, Tübingen). This list does not include projects in German Language Instruction or the Items of Interest sections. A new edition of the Indo-European Newsletter has appeared. It contains news, listings of new books and upcoming conferences as well as essays. Subscription rates: $10 for students, $20 for U.S./Canada, $25 for outside U.S./Canada. (Checks should be made payable to "UCLA Foundation/FAIES" and mailed to: FAIES, 2143 Kelton Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90025. Please include your mailing address.) Contributions go toward publication of two newsletters per year, prizes at the annual UCLA IE conference for best paper by a new scholar, and lectures during the academic year and at the annual conference. The newsletter is formally associated with the Indo-European Studies Program at UCLA, but includes much information for those interested in Indo-European both within the U.S. and abroad. Electronic Information/Communication Channels of Interest For a variety of web sites in many languages, check out the Web page for the Language Learning Resource Center at Carnegie Mellon University: - For bibliographic and course materials pertaining to Middle High German contact the web page of the University of Essen Department of Older Germanic Languages: http://www.uni-essen.de/fb3/mediae/mediae.htm - An excellent starting point for information on things medieval is http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/labyrinth-home.html
In July-August 1997, a six-week NEH Summer Seminar will be co-directed by Paul E. Szarmach and Timothy Graham at the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. Entitled "Old English Literature in Its Manuscript Context," the Seminar will provide fifteen American college teachers with the opportunity to study major Old English prose texts in their original manuscripts; participants will also be able to pursue their own research agendas using the facilities of Cambridge University. For more information see http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/rawl For information on conference dealing with any aspect of natural language: linguists, translators, interpreters, teachers of languages (even one's own native language to native speakers, such as English in American high schools), those who are involved in natural language processing, et al., linguistics please see the WWW at URL http://www.clark.net/pub/royfc/confer.html The source of information is continually updated with over 90 new conferences since the 11 September 1996 edition. In addition please also see the Society's web site, with updated conference information pertaining directly to Germanic linguistics and philology. If you are unable to access WWW and would like to receive a hard copy of any information source listed in this Newsletter, please let the editors know, and we'll be happy to send you one.
The fifth annual Workshop in Comparative Linguistics will be held at The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, November 16 - 17, 1996. For information, contact Department of Linguistics, The Ohio State University (phone: 614-292-4052; fax: 614-292-4273; e-mail: lingadm@ling.ohio-state.edu In future volumes of the Newsletter we would like to include a short section devoted to our members and their scholarly activities. If you have recently published a book or article, are planning a conference, have received a grant, etc., please let us know (via snail or email)! John M. Jeep of Oxford University in Miami, OH just published Alliterating Word-pairs in Old High German in the series Studien zur Phraseologie und Paroemiologie vol. 3 (Bochum: Brockmeyer, 1995). Evelyn S. Firchow has just published Notker der Deutsche von St. Gallen, De interpretatione/ Boethiusí Bearbeitung von Aristotelesí Schrift ëperi hermeneias.í Kondordanzen, Wortlisten und Abdruck des Textes nach dem Codex Sangallensis 818 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1995) and Notker der Deutsche von St. Gallen, ëCategoriae: Boethiusí Bearbeitung von Aristoteleí Schrift kategoriai, Konkordanzen, Wortlisten und Abdruck derTexte nach den Codices Sangallensis 818 und 825, 2 vols. (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1996). Return to the the SGP home page.
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