The German Studies Association will hold its Twenty-Seventh Annual Conference from September 18 through September 21 at the downtown Radisson Hotel, 1500 Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana, 70112, telephone 504-522-4500. Conference Registration and Hotel Reservation Forms are included on this web site along with travel information. This is the first year that we will be using web conference registration and web hotel reservations. You will have a choice. Read the web registration procedure on this site as soon as it appears, and you will see how easy it is. We will only use web registration in future years, as do other organizations. It is easy, clear, and can be done from your home computer. This year only, you can either register on the web or by mailing or faxing in your forms, as in past years. For web registration and reservation, you can immediately print out your receipt, and the cost of the conference registration will be charged to your MasterCard or Visa. For the traditional method, by mail or by fax, you can choose personal check on a United States bank in United States dollars or MasterCard or Visa. The choice is yours.
New Orleans is a beautiful city, and our hotel is within walking distance of the famous French Quarter and down the street from the Four Seasons. All sessions will be held in our hotel. An airport shuttle will bring you to the hotel, and there is also a free shuttle to various sites in the French Quarter.
Room rates are: $119 single or double, plus applicable taxes. Check in time is 4PM and check out time is 11AM. We have a limited number of rooms in our room block, and it is always advisable to book early. Then, you are likely to get a room in the conference hotel. Those who wait may find the rate sold out. It is not possible to book directly with the hotel except for the official rates, and these are much higher than our negotiated rates. Therefore, it is necessary to make a hotel reservation ONLY through the German Studies Association. Then, you will get our rates. You can only reserve a room if you are also registered for the Conference.
It is no longer necessary to be a member of the Association in order to register for the Conference. However, conference fees have been adjusted to reflect this. If you are a member, rates have not changed. If you are not a member, you can choose either to join or to pay the non-member rates.
Once again, as with all GSA Conferences, you may only book a room at the Conference Hotel through GSA, and this only if you have paid a Conference Registration Fee. Our hotel rates are substantially discounted from the normal rate, and are exclusively available to participants in the GSA Conference. Therefore, we require registration in order to book a room. They are available on a first-come, first-served basis, and our room block will be cancelled if not filled by the deadline the hotel has set. While GSA may be able to obtain you a room after the room block has been filled or after the deadline set by the hotel, we cannot guarantee this. Consequently, it is important that you reserve a room as soon as you can do so.
If you wish to change the date of a hotel reservation arrival, or seek a different kind of room, this is something that you must take up with the hotel directly. If you wish to cancel a hotel reservation, this is something that you must do with the hotel directly. GSA does not cancel reservations for you. GSA attempts to persuade the hotel to confirm reservations. This is not always possible for a conference of this size. In very few cases, GSA can confirm a reservation we have made for you, but the best way to do so is to contact the hotel directly. The hotel does give us print-outs, but these are often late. We attempt to confirm the spelling of your name, to speed your check-in when you arrive. The way to find out if your hotel reservation has been made is to call the hotel directly. They will tell you if you are in their computer. However, if you have faxed GSA a reservation form, it makes common sense not to call the hotel the next day. GSA processes the reservation forms and sends them on in batches, not individually, where they might become lost. Thus, you should give the process a couple of weeks during the summer and a couple of days as the conference approaches. Please use common sense. Do not call the GSA Main Office every day once a week has elapsed. Do not send multiple e-mails (one registrant has already sent 8 e-mails and the reservation has only arrived two weeks ago). What this will do is to stop the entire process while the GSA staff answers e-mails and cannot process registrations because they are answering e-mails. Since our staff is very courteous and conscientious, each inquiry is researched carefully. This takes a good deal of time, especially since some participants are sending in their registration forms with incorrect credit card numbers and other errors and these all have to be attended to as well. If you want an instant confirmation, please use the on-line system. It provides instant confirmation. Some people are calling multiple times to find out if their fax has been received by our fax machine. Of course, the sending machine prints a report that says that the fax was received by the receiving machine. There is no need to telephone to find out if a fax arrived on the fax machine in our office. We have already received over 75 such telephone calls and e-mails.
GSA cancellation policy is fully explained on the web site in the section entitled "Call for Papers. Information. Important - Read First." There, it is explained, as it is explained in the Newsletter, that withdrawal of a paper presenter after April 1 without an excuse acceptable to the Executive Director means that that person is not eligible for participation in a GSA Conference for three years. The excuse must be offered, and must be acceptable. Otherwise, mandatory exclusion from three years of conferences is the case. This is a decision of the Executive Committee. Letters of withdrawal from paper presenters should be sent to the Executive Director at thegsa@yahoo.com.
Cancellation and Refund Policy is as follows: withdrawal more than ten days before the Conference begins will allow a refund of all fees less a $25 service charge. Withdrawal AFTER ten days before the beginning of the Conference (Thursday), will not permit a refund of any registration or meal fees. Meal tickets cannot be transferred by the Association. You must pick up your own meal tickets during the time that the Registration Desk is open. However, you can transfer a meal ticket to someone else if you wish. Two years ago, someone wanted to go to the Dinner and "did not have the time" to go to the Registration Desk to pick up a ticket. This is not possible. Tickets are required, and can only be distributed at the Registration Desk, not at the meal itself. We have no staff for that, and I did my best last year when called away from eating my dinner to help the poor lost soul, but we just cannot do that. So, please pick up your materials at the desk.
Refunds for any reason will be processed AFTER the Conference. Requests for refunds MUST be received before November 1. No refunds will be processed if the request is received after November 1. Refund requests may be made to thegsa@yahoo.com with inclusion of all necessary information. Alternatively, they may be mailed to the Association Main Office.
GSA Registration Badges are required for all sessions and meals. No one will be admitted without a badge. Persons without a badge will be asked to leave. Participation in the Conference is a shared-cost and those who try to attend without registering are responsible for higher registration fees for those who do. Admission to the exhibit area requires a badge. In Washington, GSA had a United States Marshal for security purposes. Naturally, only those with badges were allowed.
When you complete your order on line, you should understand that the name badge and university affiliation will be printed as you type them. In other words, if you do not capitalize your name, the name badge will be printed in small letters without capitalization for the first letter of your first name and last name. If you type your entire name without caps, it will be printed that way. Please take care to type your name the proper way for it to appear on a name badge. Although we can try to make corrections, we may miss some people.