The German Studies Association (GSA) in Oakland, California organizes its 34th Annual Conference from October 7th to 10th, 2010, dealing with the topic of DEFA Cinema. Deadline for submissions is January 31st. 

In recent years, scholarship about East Germany's film company DEFA has undergone a cultural turn. Barbara Eichinger, co-editor of the 2009 essay collection "Film im Sozialismus - die DEFA" (see description below), acknowledges a shift in GDR scholarship towards "transnationale und historiografische Perspektiven auf die kulturellen, soziologischen und politischen Gegebenheiten" (20). Among other conferences, the Fifth Biennial Summer Film Institute by the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst in 2009 looked at new approaches of "Rewriting (East) German Cinema: Issues in Film Methodology and Historiography".