Erfurt 3 – 5 December 2015: “Concepts of Simultaneity”

Venue: Universität Erfurt, Senatssaal, MG 1, 10. Stock

The term simultaneity is used in a variety of contexts to denote phenomena of “same-time-ness” – in daily life as well as in specific scientific fields like physics, technology, biology or ergonomics. Despite its widespread occurrence, the term does not specify whether synchronicity is involved or not, whether the events perceived as simultaneous are exactly so in every moment of time, or just at several coinciding moments during a larger time span; nor does it clarify whether the simultaneous states are all likewise real (in a temporal and local presence) or only potentially or virtually at the same time, as not-yet-actualized superimposed states.
What do we really mean when we say that something is happening “at the same time”? How can we define and understand simultaneity before, with and after the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics? Which concepts actually deny the possibility of absolute simultaneity? What are the political or ethical questions entailed in sociological constellations of temporal concordance?
This international conference aims to discuss ontological as well as phenomenological concepts of simultaneity from various disciplines (anthropology, cultural history, sociology, philosophy, narratology, media and film studies, comparative literature, and physics) with a main focus on theories of the 20th century.

Thursday 3 Dec.

14:00-14:30
Welcome and Introduction: Sabine Zubarik (Erfurt)

Panel I: The Possibility of Simultaneity

14:30-15:30 Michael Rosenblum (Potsdam): Synchronization: A Universal Concept in Nonlinear Sciences
15:30-15:45 coffee break
15:45-16:45 Thomas Morgan-Evans (London): Simultaneity: A Potted Cultural History from 1960
16:45-17:30 Andreas Langenohl (Gießen): Financial Simultaneity: Between Risk-free Profits and Uncontrollable Uncertainties
17:30-18:00 snack break

Panel II: Reading Simultaneously: Text Formats

18:15-19:00 Christoph Schulz (Bochum): Simultaneous Books – Narrative Structures in Accordion-Books
19:00-19:30 Stefan Winter (Erlangen): Representation of Simultaneity in Narrative Media or: How to Circumvent Time

Friday 4 Dec.

Panel III: Simultaneity and History/Writing

9:00-9:30 Chris Vasantkumar (Sydney) [via skype conference]: Synchronicity without Simultaneity? Number and the “Dazzling Purity” of Date in Historical Perspective
9:30-10:30 Adrien Delmas (Paris): Contemporaneity, Simultaneity and Non-Simultaneity in World History Writing
10:30-10:45 coffee break
10:45-11:30 Sourav Kargupta (Kalkutta / Aarhus): Post-Colonial Simultaneities in Question: The Intervention of Louis Althusser
11:30-12:15 Janet Pearson (Sunderland): One and All: An Exploration of the Idea of Simultaneity in Hermann Broch’s The Death of Virgil
12:15-13:45 lunch break (university canteen)

Panel IV: Narrative Strategies of the Non-Linear

13:45-14:30 Kristin Rebien (San Diego): Ernst Bloch and the Representation of Simultaneity in Literature
14:30-15:15 André Schwarck (Kiel): “-‘Twill come out of itself by and bye.-“ Evading Simultaneity by Ongoing Succession in Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy
15:15-15:30 coffee break
15:30-16:15 Michael McGillen (Dartmouth): Non-Synchronous Simultaneity as Narrative Principle in Alexander Kluge’s Poetics
16:15-17:00 Dhrubajyoti Sarkar (Kalyani): Narrative Complexity of Ambient Knowledge: A Contrarian Case-Study of Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties”
17:00-17:30 coffee break

Panel V: Visual Simultaneities

17:30-18:15 Arkadiusz Misztal (Danzig): “Video Time”, Visual Simultaneity, and Temporal Multi-Layeredness in Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day
18:15-19:00 Kris Belden-Adams (Mississippi): N.A.S.A.‘s Whole Earth Digital Photographic Montages: Redefining the Complexity of Simultaneity in the Digital Age

Saturday 5 Dec.

Panel VI: Simultaneity in Film

10:00-11:00 Arthur Lizie (Bridgewater): Simultaneity in Film: Theory, Practice and Future
11:00-11:45 Irina-Gabriela Rus (Bukarest): Simultiplicy in the Films of Béla Tarr
11:45-12:30 snack break

Panel VII: Simultaneity in Physics and its Translation into Literary Studies

12:30-13:30 Claus Laemmerzahl (Bremen): Simultaneity in Relativity: Time Dilation, Twin Paradox and Time Travel
13:30-14:15 Klaus Mecke (Erlangen): Simultaneity and Synchronicity in a Relativistic Quantum World: Transfer of Concepts in Trading Zones between Physics and Literary Studies
14:15-14:30 coffee break
14:30-15:15 Aura Heydenreich (Erlangen): The Dirac-Equation as a Narrator? Quantum Field Theory and Superposition as Narratives for a Metabiography in Dietmar Dath’s novel Dirac

15:15-15:45 Final Discussion

Preliminary Reading Workshop
with Thomas Morgan-Evans (London)
Wednesday 2 Dec., 14:00 – 17:00, room: LG 4 D03
registration, reading material and information: mail to sabine.zubarik@uni-erfurt.de