[JFKI-News] WG: Newsletter August 2019

[John-F.-Kennedy Institute <administration@jfki.fu-berlin.de>]

Von: Catrin Gersdorf <executive_director@dgfa.de>
Gesendet: Samstag, 24. August 2019 08:34
An: jfki@zedat.fu-berlin.de
Betreff: Newsletter August 2019

 

Liebe Mitglieder der DGfA,

mit dieser Nachricht erhalten Sie den Newsletter für den Monat August. Vor allem der wissenschaftliche Nachwuchs sei daran erinnert, dass Einreichungen für das diesjährige PGF der DGfA noch bis zum 1. September möglich sind. Die Frist zur Einreichung von Workshop Proposals für die nächste Jahrestagung in Heidelberg ist wie üblich der 1. Oktober.

Mit herzlichen Grüßen

Ihre
Catrin Gersdorf
Geschäftsführerin

1. DGfA

1.1. Call for Papers: 30th Annual Conference of the Postgraduate Forum of the GAAS/DGfA: “Challenges of the Post-Truth Era in American Studies” at the University of Passau, December 5-7, 2019
Deadline: September 1, 2019

1.2. Call for Workshop Proposals, 67th Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS/DGfA): “Participation in American Culture and Society,” Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA), Heidelberg University, June 4-6, 2020
Deadline: October 1, 2019

1.3. Call for Papers: 2020 EAAS Conference “20/20 Vision: Citizenship, Space, Renewal,” Warsaw, May 1–3, 2020
Deadline: November 30, 2019

2. Ausschreibungen

2.1. Stellenausschreibung: Professur (W3) für Amerikanistik, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Fachbereich Neuere Philologien zum Wintersemester 2020/21
Deadline: September 26, 2019

2.2. Doctoral Fellowship for International Doctoral Students in American History/History of the Americas (German Academic Exchange Service, Graduate School Scholarship Program) Class of Culture and History, Graduate School Language & Literature Munich, University of Munich (LMU)
Deadline: September 30, 2019

2.3. Doktorandenprogramm Fulbright Germany: Doktorandenstipendien für deutsche NachwuchswissenschaftlerInnen
Deadline: October 1, 2019

3. Veranstaltungen und Call for Papers

3.1. Call for Papers: Teaching Human-Animal Studies Symposium, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, January 23-25, 2020
Deadline: August 26, 2019

3.2. Call for Papers: UdS American Studies Graduate Forum “Liquid Trajectories: Flight, Mobility, and Migration” November 29-30, 2019, Universität des Saarlandes, Graduate Center C 9 3
Deadline: September 1, 2019

3.3. International Conference Announcement: “Canonizing David Lynch – Audiovisual Aesthetics and Shocking Standards” at the University of Siegen
Date: September 5-6, 2019

3.4. Call for Papers: BAAS (British Association for American Studies) Postgraduate Conference 2019 – Communicating the United States – British Library, London, 6th and 7th December
Deadline: September 8, 2019

3.5. Call for Papers: Symposium “Haunted Nature” at the University of Würzburg, November 8-9, 2019
Deadline: September 8, 2019

3.6. Call for Proposals: “Hip Hop Ecologies”– A Workshop at the University of Konstanz, June 26-28, 2020
Deadline: September 30, 2019

3.7. Conference Announcement: “Beyond Narrative: Literature, Culture, and the Borderlands of Narrativity” at Leipzig University
Date: October 10-12, 2019

3.8. Call for Papers: “Playing the Field III: American Studies, Video Games, Immersion” at the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany, 20/5 - 23/5/2020
Deadline: October 15, 2019

3.9. Call for Papers: Conference Auto/Biography and Reputation Politics, February 6 and 7, 2020 at the University of Vienna
Deadline: October 15, 2019

3.10. Call for Papers “Our Trump? – German Identity Politics and The Trump Presidency” at Justus Liebig University Giessen, July 3-5, 2020
Deadline: October 15, 2019

3.11. Call for Papers: aspeers, graduate-level peer-reviewed American studies journal
Deadline: October 27, 2019

3.12. Call for Papers: Heidelberg Center for American Studies 17th Annual Spring Academy Conference, Heidelberg, Germany, 23–27 March, 2020
Deadline: November 15, 2019

**************************

 

1. DGfA

1.1. Call for Papers: 30th Annual Conference of the Postgraduate Forum of the GAAS/DGfA: “Challenges of the Post-Truth Era in American Studies” at the University of Passau, December 5-7, 2019

Deadline: September 1, 2019

Since its inception in 1989, the PGF has been a platform for early career researchers in the field of American studies to present their current work and engage in critical conversations with scholars working in similar fields. The organizers of the 2019 Postgraduate Forum are pleased to announce the call for papers for the 30th anniversary conference hosted at the University of Passau from December 5-7, 2019.

CONFERENCE FORMAT
In addition to the regular panels, a poster session, the annual PGF conference meeting, and a Q&A with the editors of the COPAS journal (Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies), we want to provide participants with further opportunities to take part in group discussions and strengthen their social networks by offering two interactive workshop sessions, during which we will engage with the fundamental skills and practices of our field. In a session on “Critical Theory and Practice in American Studies,” we invite all interested participants to discuss a previously circulated secondary text on a topic, theme, or theoretical approach relevant across all disciplines of American Studies. We welcome suggestions for such a text or topic. The workshop “Teaching Media Literacy in American Studies” will be led by experts from the University of Passau’s interdisciplinary research project on teacher training (SKILL), who will engage participants in select exercises geared towards advanced skills in media, knowledge, and information systems management as well as ways to impart these competences to students. In order to specifically engage our conference’s topic as well as its widespread relevance, we are also planning a panel discussion with experts from the fields of American studies, politics, journalism, and education, which will bridge the gap between academia and the local public, encouraging exchange outside the alleged ivory tower of university research.

APPLICATION
We look forward to receiving applications from scholars of all disciplines of American Studies interested in presenting their post-graduate, doctoral, or post-doctoral works in progress within one of the following frames:
1. Individual papers: We invite proposals for individual 15-minute papers, which will be grouped into thematic panels with collective Q&As.
2. Posters: We additionally accept proposals for posters, which will be exhibited in a session separate from the remaining panels. Presenters will have the opportunity to engage head-on with audiences and answer specific questions about their projects in a more hands-on setting.

We encourage especially very early career scholars to apply for this format as it allows for an even more relaxed Q&A-setting. Applications for papers and posters should consist of an abstract of 250-300 words and a short biographical note (approx. 150 words) in a single PDF file. Please send all proposals to pgf@dgfa.de by September 1, 2019. For further information, please visit our conference website: pgf2019.wordpress.com.

We look forward to seeing you in Passau soon! Alexandra Hauke, Bettina Huber, and Thomas Stelzl
PGF Conference Team 2019

CfP on the DGfA Homepage: https://dgfa.de/wp-content/uploads/CfP-PGF2019.pdf

 

1.2. Call for Workshop Proposals, 67th Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS/DGfA): “Participation in American Culture and Society,” Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA), Heidelberg University, June 4-6, 2020

Deadline: October 1, 2019

Local Organizers: Manfred Berg (History), Ulrike Gerhard (Geography), Günter Leypoldt (Literature and Culture), Margit Peterfy (Literature and Culture), Jan Stievermann (Religious History), Martin Thunert (Political Science), Welf Werner (Economics)

Participation is a core value of American citizenship and at the same time one of the nation’s most ambivalent concepts. In colonial America, a larger share of white males had the right to vote than in any other society in the world. The Federal Constitution of 1787 was a milestone in the history of political participation because it tied political power to national elections. In the nineteenth century, universal white manhood suffrage gave rise to the first electoral mass democracy worldwide. The struggle of women, racial and ethnic minorities, and immigrants for full participatory rights has been a major theme in U.S. history and remains a challenge today and into the future. This challenge reaches far beyond the realm of politics and encompasses full and equal access for groups and individuals to participate in a wide variety of social, cultural, religious, and economic activities. Exclusion from participation based on class, race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation is indeed part and parcel of the nation’s heritage. In recent years, fears of a backlash against participation and inclusion are mounting as economic inequality is growing and American society is becoming more segmented and polarized. Ironically, social media, once believed to usher in a brave new world of easy and universal participation, drive the emergence of parallel worlds and echo chambers. At the political level, attempts to undermine the right of minorities and the poor to vote are reminiscent of racist disfranchisement during the age of Jim Crow.

Thus, our conference theme is an important and timely topic that also speaks to the full range of disciplines represented in the GAAS. We invite scholars of American Studies to explore the manifold expressions of and obstacles to participation in American culture and society, including but of course not limited to
- Manifestations of participation and exclusion in literary works and cultural production
- Literature and art as vehicles for articulating claims to inclusion and participation
- Access to literary publishing and cultural production
- Social media and participation
- Participation in social movements, religious communities, voluntary associations
- Political participation from the Colonial Era to the present
- Social capital and social participation
- Women’s suffrage and minority voting rights
- Urban planning and citizen participation
- Income, inequality, labor market participation and the welfare state

Proposals for workshops need to include two speakers who have been contacted in advance. In addition, proposals should allow for two to three more speakers to apply after the proposal has been accepted by the Advisory Board of the German Association for American Studies.
Please remember that workshops can only be organized by members of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA). Similarly, except for North American speakers, all speakers in these workshops have to be members of the DGfA or its sister organizations such as the European Association of American Studies (EAAS) by the time of the convention.

Please send workshop proposals to executive_director@dgfa.de.

The deadline is October 1, 2019.

 

1.3. Call for Papers: 2020 EAAS Conference “20/20 Vision: Citizenship, Space, Renewal,” Warsaw, May 1–3, 2020

Deadline: November 30, 2019

The EAAS 2020 Conference coincides with the 400th anniversary of the establishment of the Plymouth Plantation. Falling on the quadricentennial, EAAS 2020 invites broader contemplations of American history, politics, and culture. The conference seeks to underscore questions of optics, distance, and acuity. The concept of “20/20 vision,” an optical term denoting “normal” visual clarity and sharpness of sight, invites a reflection on historical distance, focal points, visibility and invisibility of socio-historical, cultural, and literary aspects of American citizenship, space, and renewal until today.

Citizenship

The first thematic scope of “20/20 Vision” is citizenship. We thus welcome papers targeting the idea of citizenship from various historical, political, ethical, and aesthetic perspectives, and addressing questions about the archaic, residual or emergent forms, styles and norms of being a citizen. Papers and pre-formed panels may focus on the following problem points:
• the evolution or devolution of the idea of a democratic citizen in American politics
• legal fiction, the citizen, and citizenship in history and literature
• the problems of citizenship and agency in the days of the early Republic
• the relation between citizenship and economy
• citizenship and mobility
• citizenship and migration
• citizenship and slavery
• citizenship and disability
• citizenship and the changing idea of freedom
• citizenship and community
• civil rights
• limits of responsibility
• limits of engagement

Space

The second theme “20/20 Vision” addresses is space, a general umbrella term for the issues related to the environment:
• land exploration and exploitation in the US
• American history of land property
• US borderland issues
• US problem of natural resources
• climate change and the US policy
• climate change and the American landscape
• pollution and toxic waste
• ecological disasters
• space exploration

The theme of space also relates issues connected with spatiality on a different dimension such as the issues of
• private vs public space
• social media and internet space
• architecture, mortgage problem
• rural vs. urban space
• utopias in American history, politics and literature
• dystopias in American history, politics and literature
• American heterotopias

Renewal

The last focus area of “20/20 Vision” is perhaps the broadest of the three: the idea of renewal. While strongly related to the issues of citizenship and space, where it may also serve as a reflective angle, the theme of renewal on its own relates to a strong appeal in the American culture of the discourse of rebirth, reawakening, and revolution. Long before “make it new” became the slogan of the modernist artists on both sides of the Atlantic, making things new and resetting the parameters had always been part of the American life ethos. We welcome individual papers as well as pre-formed panels.

Submissions
We welcome abstracts and proposals in a range of formats, including individual papers; complete three-paper sessions (do note that a proposed session cannot feature scholars from the same institution and the same country); roundtables; and workshops. Individual paper abstracts should be no longer than 350 words (excluding bibliography, if you choose to have one). Session proposals must include a short description of the session as well as the title and abstracts of all three papers.
Deadline for abstracts: November 30, 2019
Acceptance notifications: December 15, 2019

Mail: eaas.warsaw@gmail.com
American Studies Center & American Literature Department
University of Warsaw
Al. Niepodleglosci 22
02-653 Warsaw
Poland
http://eaas2020.eu/

 

2. Ausschreibungen

 

2.1. Stellenausschreibung: Professur (W3) für Amerikanistik, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Fachbereich Neuere Philologien zum Wintersemester 2020/21

Deadline: September 26, 2019

An der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main ist am Fachbereich Neuere Philologien zum Wintersemester 2020/21 folgende Stelle im Beamten- bzw. im Arbeitsverhältnis zu besetzen:
Professur (W3) für Amerikanistik

Es wird erwartet, dass das Fach Amerikanistik mit dem Schwerpunkt amerikanische Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft in seiner ganzen Breite in Lehre und Forschung vertreten wird. Zu den gewünschten Feldern der literatur- oder kulturwissenschaftlichen Spezialisierung gehören Ästhetik, Literaturtheorie oder Mediengeschichte. Wir suchen Persönlichkeiten mit einem international sichtbaren Forschungsprofil, das sich in Publikationen in international führenden Veröffentlichungsorganen niederschlägt.

Erwartet werden die Beteiligung an/Initiierung von Forschungsprojekten mit anderen Forschenden am Fachbereich, die Mitgestaltung der Gremienarbeit sowie die erforderliche Präsenz für die Teilhabe am universitären Leben des Fachbereichs. Die Professur ist eingebunden in die Lehre der BA- und MA-Studiengänge „American Studies“, des MA-Studiengangs „Ästhetik“ und sämtlicher fachrelevanter Lehramtsstudiengänge. Da die Professur auch an der Lehrerbildung beteiligt ist, werden Erfahrungen und Konzepte zur Vermittlung der Fachinhalte an Schulen begrüßt.

Die Goethe-Universität strebt eine Erhöhung des Anteils von Frauen am wissenschaftlichen Personal an und fordert daher Frauen nachdrücklich auf, sich zu bewerben. Bewerbungen von schwerbehinderten Menschen werden bei gleicher Eignung bevorzugt berücksichtigt.
Details zu den rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen der Einstellungsvoraussetzungen finden Sie unter: www.vakante-professuren.uni-frankfurt.de

Wenn Sie in Forschung und Lehre exzellent ausgewiesen sind und international sichtbare Forschungsleistungen belegen können, sind Sie eingeladen, Ihre Bewerbung mit den üblichen Unterlagen (tabellarischer Lebenslauf, Kopien der Zeugnisse und Urkunden, Schriftenverzeichnis, Nachweise über die bisherige Lehrtätigkeit, Angaben zu Forschungsaufenthalten im Ausland und zu eingeworbenen Drittmitteln) bis zum 26.09.2019 per E-Mail an die Dekanin des Fachbereichs Neuere Philologien an der Goethe-Universität zu richten: service@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de

 

2.2. Doctoral Fellowship for International Doctoral Students in American History/History of the Americas (German Academic Exchange Service, Graduate School Scholarship Program) Class of Culture and History, Graduate School Language & Literature Munich, University of Munich (LMU)

Deadline: September 30, 2019

Start of Program: April 20, 2019
The Graduate School Language & Literature at Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (Germany) offers a doctoral fellowship for excellent international students wishing to pursue a doctoral degree in American History/History of the Americas. The fellowship is sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service’s Graduate School Scholarship Program (GSSP).

The American History doctoral program of the Amerika-Institut at Ludwig-Maximilians Universität München (LMU Munich) offers graduate students the opportunity to study major
issues in the history, culture, media, politics, and society of the United States, Canada, and the Americas, including the Caribbean. The program is integrated into the Graduate School Language & Literature Munich as its Class of Culture and History (CoHist). While the class aims to overcome the traditional division between North and Latin America, it foregrounds the study of the U.S.- and Canadian experiences. Yet, it seeks to frame the American continents beyond their colonial and nation-state boundaries by situating them as a region of global interdependencies.
The program is systematically structured and research-oriented, offering doctoral candidates the opportunity to present and discuss their individual research projects in seminars, student conferences, and workshops with guest professors. It offers an ideal environment for doctoral candidates since it provides access to a network of internationally renowned scholars and is embedded in LMU’s outstanding institutional and research-driven infrastructure.
For more information on the program’s structure please visit: www.lmu.de/gsll/history
More information on the Amerika-Institut at LMU can be found here: https://www.en.amerikanistik.uni-muenchen.de/index.html

Fellowship Information:
• 4-year fellowship
• € 1200 per month
• Travel lump sum depending on the country of origin
• Eligibility for monthly rent subsidy
• Annual research allowance of € 460
• Start in April 2020. If a German language course is needed, the fellowship’s start can be postponed to October 2020.

See also: https://www.daad.de/deutschland/stipendium/datenbank/en/21148-scholarshipdatabase/?detail=57034100

Application Requirements:
• Academic excellence
• Master degree (or equivalent) in a related field (accomplished within the last six years
prior to the fellowship’s start in April 2020; thesis graded with at least „good“)
• Non-German nationality
• Residence in Germany not before August 2018
• English language skills (C1)
• German language skills (B2). However, candidates less proficient than B2 are eligible for a German language class prior to the fellowship through the German Academic Exchange Service.
Application Documents (in German or English):
• Research project proposal (max. 5 pages)
• Abstract of your proposal (max. 1 page)
• Schedule for your project including information about possible stays outside of Germany (i.e. archival and other research trips)
• 2 letters of recommendation (professors/lecturers from your home university), to be sent directly to nadine.klopfer@lmu.de until Sept. 30, 2019. Please use the following form:
https://www.daad.de/medien/deutschland/stipendien/formulare/recommendation.doc
• Curriculum vitae
• Letter of motivation
• BA and MA degree certificates with transcripts of records including grades (please include your home university’s grade scale)
• Documents certifying knowledge of English and German

Application Process:
• First round: Please send the above documents as one PDF to nadine.klopfer@lmu.de until Sept. 30, 2019. Professors should send the recommendation forms separately.
• Second round: Interviews at LMU will take place in October 2019; successful candidates will then be nominated to the German Academic Exchange Service
• Final round: Final decision by German Academic Exchange Service based on submitted documents
Should you have further questions, please do not hesitate to contact the program’s coordinator Dr. Nadine Klopfer: nadine.klopfer@lmu.de

 

2.3. Doktorandenprogramm Fulbright Germany: Doktorandenstipendien für deutsche NachwuchswissenschaftlerInnen
Deadline: October 1, 2019

Fulbright Germany schreibt zur Frist 1. Oktober 2019 Doktorandenstipendien für deutsche NachwuchswissenschaftlerInnen aus, die ab dem 1. Mai 2020 ein vier- bis sechsmonatiges Forschungsprojekt an einer U.S.-Hochschule planen.

Die Stipendienleistungen beinhalten die Finanzierung der Lebenshaltungskosten in Höhe von 1.600 Euro/Monat und der internationalen Reisekosten sowie eine Unkostenpauschale (300 Euro), die Kranken- und Unfallversicherung, die kostenfreie Beantragung des Fulbright J-1 Visums und die Aufnahme in das internationale Fulbright-Netzwerk.
 

 

3. Veranstaltungen und Call for Papers

3.1. Call for Papers: Teaching Human-Animal Studies Symposium, Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, January 23-25, 2020

Deadline: August 26, 2019

From January 23 to 25, 2020, the Institute of English Studies at Leuphana University Lüneburg will host a symposium on the teaching of human-animal studies.
Please send your abstract (in English or German) of no more than 300 words and a brief biography to teaching.has@leuphana.de by August 26, 2019.
For more information, click on https://www.leuphana.de/en/institutes/ies/north-american-studies/teaching-human-animal-studies-symposium.html

 

3.2. Call for Papers: UdS American Studies Graduate Forum „Liquid Trajectories: Flight, Mobility, and Migration,“ November 29-30, 2019, Universität des Saarlandes, Graduate Center C 9 3

Deadline: September 1, 2019

In cooperation with the German-American Institute Saarland, the Chair of North American Literary and Cultural Studies at Saarland University (UdS) will hold a 2-day American Studies Graduate Forum that invites advanced Master students, doctoral candidates, as well as junior and senior scholars to present their current work-in-progress in a workshop-style setting. The forum will offer participants a chance to discuss their research with peers as well as with more advanced scholars. This year, we invite submissions dealing with issues of mobility, migration, and the sea.
Historically, oceans have been spaces of movement, peopled by fishers, pirates, seafarers, tourists, offshore workers, scientific investigators, coast guards, castaways, and refugees. Under the pressure of current developments and global movements, oceans and the oceanic have received renewed attention. In an era marked by increased migration, oceans have become the site of intense media scrutiny and scholarly debate. The UdS American Studies Graduate Forum 2019 offers a setting in which a decidedly humanities-driven, cultural studies and literature studies approach to issues of flight, mobility and migration in relation to oceanic spaces will be discussed. Focusing on stories of flight, mobility, and migration, this workshop seeks to highlight the imaginaries of the seas and oceans in cultural representations.

Topics can include but are not limited to:
o Entangled histories of oceans with regard to the Black, Red and White Atlantic and Pacific
o Fugitive writings and refugee stories
o Oceans as sites of resistance
o Diverse forms of mobility across oceans
o Oceans as boundaries or as transcending boundaries
o Oceans as relational ecospaces
o Oceanic myth-making

Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Lynn Itagaki (U of Missouri), Massimiliano Demata (University of Turin), and Nicole Poppenhagen (U of Flensburg)

Presentations should be approximately 20 minutes in length and will be followed by a discussion and feedback round with all participants and experts. Saarland U will seek to offer assistance in travel funding to selected presenters; recipients of the funding will be selected based on their proposals.
In order to submit a proposal, please send an email, including a title, a 250-word abstract and a short biographical note to
amerikanistik@mx.uni-saarland.de by September 1, 2019.

Mehr Info: http://www.amerikanistik.uni-saarland.de/index.php?id=198

3.3. International Conference Announcement: “Canonizing David Lynch – Audiovisual Aesthetics and Shocking Standards” at the University of Siegen

Date: September 5-6, 2019

Web: http://www.uni-siegen.de/phil/anglistik/news/871406.html

With films like Blue Velvet (1986) and Wild at Heart (1990), David Lynch was hailed as one of the defining artists of postmodern cinema in the late 1980s and early 1990s. His further works like Twin Peaks (1989-2017), Lost Highway (1997), and Mulholland Drive (2001) are even considered to be paradigmatic examples of employing cinema as a medium of philosophical imagination and exploration. In his works, Lynch transgresses both narrative and genre structures as well as gender roles. Also, the Fine Arts and his defining work as a sound artist add to Lynch's status as an agent provocateur during the 1990s and the turn of the century.  
  
The assessment and impact of Lynch’s œuvre currently strive towards a more conservative reconsideration of canonization, musealization, authorship, and archiving without taking into account the transgressive and thought-provoking implications of the larger transmedia picture framing the different networks. Regressive trends of nostalgia and retromania are challenged and at the same time subverted by the director’s latest work: Twin Peaks – The Return.
Using this point-of-(re)entry this interdisciplinary and international conference will revisit methods and theoretical perspectives from distinct academic disciplines providing new perspectives on the œuvre of David Lynch as a larger transmedia network. Further, it ponders the position Lynch holds in current debates about creative control, the fine arts, and cinema. The individual papers of this conference encompass perspectives from musicology, American studies, film studies, media studies, art history, cultural studies, media sociology, and literary studies. This conference attempts to provide a theoretical road map for pop-cultural research and reflection beyond postmodernism and damn fine deconstruction.
Speakers: Eckhardt Pabst, Mads Outzen, Marcus Stiglegger, Andreas Rauscher, Willem Strank, Tom Simmert, Peter Niedermüller, Thomas Klein, Marcel Hartwig, Bernd Zywietz, Jannik Müller, Gunter Süß, Chris Bakkane
Keynotes by Constantine Verevis (Monash U), Anne Jerslev (U of Oslo), Lindsay Anne Hallam (U of East London)

The conference is organized by the Department of British and American Studies (Siegen University), the Department of Media Studies (Siegen University) and the Department of Musicology (Johannes-Gutenberg-University Mainz). For more information or participation in the event, please get in touch with Dr. Marcel Hartwig (hartwig@anglistik.uni-siegen.de).

 

3.4. Call for Papers: BAAS (British Association for American Studies) Postgraduate Conference 2019 – Communicating the United States – British Library, London, 6th and 7th December

Deadline: September 8, 2019

Throughout the history of the United States, various media have been employed as mediums of national and international communication. From presidents, to journalists, to civil rights organisations and beyond, visual, textual, and sound media have provided modes by which groups and individuals have conveyed their ideas, beliefs, and understandings about the U.S. Whether it be books, photographs, paintings, music, films, or a president’s ramblings on Twitter, conflicting and complimentary forms of media have helped make meaning of the “American experience.” Throughout the centuries, events occurring within the United States have captured the attention of both domestic and overseas audiences. Neo-colonial expansion, the Black Freedom Struggle, and America’s wars – along with contemporary issues including Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and anti-abortion legislation – have inspired local, country-wide, and transnational commentary. Different media genres have played and continue to play a vital role in the diffusion of news and opinions to the nation and to the world. In the fitting setting of the British Library – which houses collections ranging from George III’s personal library, to multi-media sources such as image and sound archives – this conference seeks to understand how the United States has been communicated across mediums and across borders.

The 2019 BAAS Postgraduate Conference invites participants from all disciplines and fields to explore media forms produced by and about America and Americans, both historically and in the present day. How has the United States been described to itself and to the world, and how have internal and overseas citizens responded? How have scholars, activists, politicians, soldiers, or artists sought to represent themselves through different mediums? How have media cultures been utilised by social movements as an agent of change or for the status quo? How has the digital age altered America’s relationship with media forms? What is the role of international actors and networks in cultivating the image of America? This conference invites an interdisciplinary approach to the employment of media as a mode of communication.
Potential topics for papers and panels include, but are not limited to:
• Print and visual culture
• Theatre, music, and performance
• Film and television
• Journalism and photojournalism
• Digital and social medias
• Race and racism
• Ethnicity, migration, and diaspora
• Protest, activism, and social movements
• Dynamics of gender, sex, and sexuality
• Issues of class and labour
• Domestic and international identities
• Images and imaginings of America
• Indigenous communities
• Religion and belief
• Environmental and climate studies
• Memory, memorialization, and commemoration
• Vast Early America

Abstracts for individual papers should be no more than 300 words. Panel proposals should include details of each individual paper, along with a panel description. All submissions are to include the speaker’s name, institutional affiliation, email address, and a short biographical profile. The deadline for submissions is Sunday 8th September. Please submit all applications to baaspgrconference2019@gmail.com.
BAAS is dedicated to fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion. We will give preference to panels that reflect the diversity of our field in terms of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and institutional affiliation. Historically women have been disproportionately underrepresented on panels and BAAS is taking positive action, as permitted under s.158 Equality Act 2010, to enable and encourage the participation of women. For this reason all-male panel proposals will not be accepted. BAAS may constitute an all-male panel or other presentation where absolutely necessary (but any such consideration will be other than via the call for papers procedure).
Travel bursaries will be available along with subsidies to support your own childcare provision. Please complete the funding application form, and submit it along with your proposal, if you wish to be considered.
Follow us on Twitter: @baaspgr2019
Co-organisers: Lauren Eglen, University of Nottingham; Tim Galsworthy, University of Sussex

 

3.5. Call for Papers: Symposium “Haunted Nature” at the University of Würzburg, November 8-9, 2019

Deadline: September 8, 2019

For our symposium on “Haunted Nature” to take place at the University of Würzburg from November 8-9, 2019, we are looking for a few additional papers / work-in-progress relating to the intersection of gothic literature/culture and ecology. Research on the relation between nature and settler colonialism, land and Indigenous cosmologies, nature and indigenous agency and resistance is of particular interest, but any related questions are welcome. Please see a longer description and the list of participants here http://www.anglistik.uni-wuerzburg.de/abteilungen/amerikanistik/research/conferences/international-symposium-haunted-nature/.

Please send proposals (500 words maximus exclusive of references) plus a short academic biography to sladja.blazan@uni-wuerzburg.de and alexandy@mit.edu by September 8, 2019. Notice of acceptance will be given by September 15, 2019.
The symposium is organized by Sandy Alexandre (Literature Section, Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and Sladja Blazan (American and English Studies, University of Würzburg).

 

3.6. Call for Proposals: “Hip Hop Ecologies” – A Workshop at the University of Konstanz, June 26-28, 2020

Deadline: September 30, 2019

Hip hop is one of the globally most successful forms of cultural production today. Since its emergence in the African American and Latino neighborhoods of 1970s New York City, it has spread around the world and exerted a considerable impact not only on pop culture, but on societal debates around race, class, public safety, nationality, gender, and a range of other issues. The rapidly expanding field of hip hop studies has examined its artistic development and cultural significance from a variety of angles. What has remained almost entirely absent from scholarly debate is the relationship between hip hop and the environment.
 As a predominantly urban phenomenon, hip hop does not pursue an environ-mentalist agenda in any narrow sense. Its focus is on social rather than natural life, on the city rather than the country. Nevertheless, an environmental perspective on hip hop promises to enrich our understanding of the ways in which popular cultural forms shape and are shaped by environmental concerns. Such an approach can direct our attention to important dimensions of hip hop that have remained marginal to public and scholarly debate. Conversely, hip hop offers unconventional vistas that challenge narrow conceptions the environment and of the academic field of Environmental Studies.

 The workshop wants to provide a form for critical discussion and open-ended exploration of these issues. Contributions might draw on various elements of hip hop culture in any local or national setting to address the following aspects or others:
• depictions and negotiations of nature in hip hop
• environmental approaches to (urban) space in hip hop
• hip hop and urban ecology
• rural hip hop and its environmental dimensions
• material environments of hip hop production and reception
• environmentally aware or embedded hip hop cultures
• hip hop in/and environmental activism
• environmental framings in debates around hip hop
• hip hop and the posthuman
• hip hop and the natural sciences

While the workshop will be held in English, contributions on non-anglophone hip hop are expressly invited. If you would like to participate, please send a 250-word proposal and a short biographical note as pdf files to the organizer by September 30, 2019.

A leading peer-reviewed journal of Environmental Studies has expressed interest in publishing the results of the workshop as a special issue. Submissions are invited from both workshop participants and outside contributors; the deadline will be in the fall of 2020. There will be travel bursaries for workshop participants who submit an essay for the special issue. Feel free to inquire if you are interested in this option.

Organizer:
Prof. Dr. Timo Müller
American Studies
University of Konstanz, Germany
timo.mueller@uni-konstanz.de

 

3.7. Conference Announcement: “Beyond Narrative: Literature, Culture, and the Borderlands of Narrativity” at Leipzig University

Date: October 10-12, 2019

This international conference aims to map the borderlands of narrativity. It asks how the narrative and the non-narrative--tied to symbolic forms such as database, play, spectacle, network, or the lyric--work together in instances of cultural _expression_. The conference takes place at Leipzig University on October 10-12, 2019, as part of a DFG network on "Narrative Liminality and/in the Formation of American Modernities."

Featured keynotes: Jared Gardner (Ohio State), Caroline Levine (Cornell, remotely via Zoom), and Maurice S. Lee (Boston).

For more information and a full program, please see the conference website: http://www.narrative-liminality.de/conference

 

3.8. Call for Papers: “Playing the Field III: American Studies, Video Games, Immersion” at the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies, Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany, May 20-25, 2020

Deadline: October 15, 2019

Organizer: Damien Schlarb

We proudly invite proposals for academic papers for the third installment of “Playing the Field,” an international conference where scholars consider video games from an American Studies perspective. This year’s conference focuses on a signature characteristic of video games that invites considerations that reach far beyond their immediate context: immersion.

Even casual observers appreciate the ability of video games to provide compelling experiences. Consider passengers who play on their phones during their morning train commute; college students holding Mario Kart tournaments in their dorms; professionals unwinding after-hours; or children playing learning games on their parents’ tablet computers. To be immersed means inhabiting fully a space where the rules of behavior and modes of being are completely apparent. Compared to navigating the social world, being immersed in mediated environments—digital or otherwise—affords an intensified, optimal experience. Yet immersion also constitutes an ambivalent state of being, simultaneously connoting the intensification and narrowing of cognitive abilities. Immersive experiences promise authenticity but may also engender addiction.

In 2018, over 60% of Americans age 13 and older self-identified as gamers, with rates rising annually (Nielsen Company poll). Americans seem to flock to immersive, mediated experiences. They seek out overtly designed spaces like video games, theme parks, malls, and cruise ships but also supposedly natural (yet still framed and mediated) environs like national parks and metropolitan green belts. Considering immersion from an American Studies perspective means contemplating questions about the political and aesthetic significance of immersive experiences in the context of contemporary American life and its media history and forms:
- How do games involve players in specifically American narratives of personal or national exceptionalism, social and geographic mobility (e.g. e/immigration), market-centered economic and religious outlooks, as well as ethnic, gendered, and embodied typologies?
- Which identitarian and embodied experiences are (over-)represented, marginalized, or omitted (e.g. gender, gay and lesbian, trans and queer, disability)?
- How does immersion intersect with various forms of imperialism (cultural, economic, and military) as well as bio-political, environmental, and other institutional and political practices?
- How do immersive experiences perpetuate or debunk such ideas to allow critical reflection?
- How are players typed, empowered, coerced and implicated in these ideologies and practices during play?
- Is immersion itself culturally coded, when we consider, for example, depictions of American characters, geographies, and cultural themes within games produced in different or trans-national and -cultural contexts?
- How do games curtail or expand the spectrum of (mainstream) media experiences (e.g. serious games That Dragon Cancer)?
- What makes games immersive, absorbing, or even addictive, and how do we differentiate between these states?

To address these and other questions, we welcome paper proposals that focus but are not limited to specific games, genres, design principles, and player bases, but also papers that think and rethink games through established analytical paradigms in American and Cultural studies, such as mass culture, hegemony, ideology, gender, ethnicity, disability, as well as queer and LGTBQ studies.

Please send a 350-word abstract (MS Word or PDF format) and a short biographical blurb including your institutional affiliation (350 words) to schlarbd@uni-mainz.de by 15 October.

 

3.9. Call for Papers: Conference Auto/Biography and Reputation Politics, February 6-7, 2020 at the University of Vienna

Deadline: October 15, 2019

Collaboration of Character Assassination and Reputation Politics (CARP) Research Laboratory, George Mason University, Viriginia, and Department of English and American Studies, University of Vienna

In the earliest documents of the genre transmitted from antiquity, biography and its reception are already associated with the creation of positive or negative personal reputations of politicians, artists, scientists or military leaders. Autobiography, in turn, whether spiritual since late antiquity or generally secular since the Enlightenment, has also been used to publicly create and negotiate reputations of its narrators and protagonists. The relation of such reputations created in biography and autobiography to the author figures and historical persons has produced long-standing scholarly and popular debates in terms of fictionality or nonfictionality, semiotic constructedness, and reliability. In the past decades, however, life writings – including biography and autobiography as much as diaries or letters and, more contemporarily, life narratives and egodocuments in media such as painting, cinema, graphic novels, digital formats and photography, for example – have been critically discussed in terms of cultural and national significations, affective patterns, psychologically and legally coded constructions – relating to trauma studies, witnessing and testimonials – or narratological conventions including perspectives, temporalities or individual and collective memory. The discussion of life narratives and their genre conventions, patterns and protocols as established means of creating and destroying reputations appears to have met with only minor interest in the field.

At this juncture, Auto/Biography Studies and Reputation Politics Studies might benefit mutually and strongly from an interdisciplinary collaboration. For a range of studies of reputation politics and reputation management in psychology, communication studies, political sciences and historical science, contemporary methodologies and theories of life writing and life narrative in literary, cultural and media studies provide refined terminologies and tested approaches in respect of the determining effects of generic and narrative conventions, semiotic materiality and medial intransparency, as well as questions of agency, relationality and network structures; and, reversely, for the study of auto/biography, the recently developed categories and critical methods in the study of reputation politics provide new ways for ethical consideration of life narratives by addressing the creation or destruction of life stories in public.

Through reputation politics studies, as an emerging field that is revitalizing interests of rhetorical studies and political sciences since antiquity, human-rights approaches or memory studies in life writing research, for example, may be further detailed by address to the evaluative strategies behind the creation of specific structures of personalities and narrated characters and lives and, for example, the seemingly returning attraction in these days of isolating identity images and discourses long considered defunct. The critical discussion of the textually produced relations between the individual and the communal or collective in the age of populist revival and resurging nationalism benefits from the joint address to life narratives and reputation politics. Conceivable for discussion, among others, are the following questions:
• Has the term reputation lost relevance in the contemporary age of intense and deep mediatization and rapid globalization of life stories and their ever-changing, elusive evaluative reception?
• If processuality and relationality of agencies in production and reception of works of culture as well as the intransparency of the medium have become of guiding interest in contemporary auto/biography studies, how might the medial production of a reputation be systematically considered in processual terms?
• What is the benefit of the continuing address to the ancient category of character in discussions of ‘character assassination’? Who or what is a character in relation to personality, self, individual, protagonist, narrator, author?
• Has the term reputation become part of an elitist discourse that collides with precepts of the race-class-gender and further categories of cultural-studies critiques? If there is an intersectionality of reputation, is there a transversality, as well?
• When politicians write autobiographies, how do the self-images created in these autobiographies relate to historiography and biography?
• How are fiction and non-fiction in auto/biography and autofiction as well as their discussion related to reputation constructions and their criticism?
• What are the relations of private and public practices of life writing with reputation building?
• How is the discussion of the mediality of works of auto/biography freshly challenged by consideration of the multimodality of the medial channels and materialities through which reputations are generated and put to political use?
• How does historiography as a genre that is still often determined by descriptions of individual lives and personalities rather than relational perspectives, and as such still committed to its derivation from protocols of biography in antiquity, benefit from the critical combination of methods and theories of Auto/Biography and Reputation Politics Studies?

For a principal orientation regarding the two fields, respectively, and as a common ground for initiation of methodological discussion, we suggest Routledge Handbook of Character Assassination and Reputation Management, ed. Sergei Samoilenko, Martijn Icks, Jennifer Keohane and Eric Shiraev (Routledge, in print, fall 2019), or Samoilenko, Shiraev, Keohane and Icks, “Character Assassination (general)” in The Global Encyclopedia of Informality, ed. Alena Ledeneva (UCL Press 2018) 441–445, and Handbook of Autobiography/Autofiction, ed. Martina Wagner-Egelhaaf (De Gruyter 2019). Please also see the websites of IABA, the International Auto/Biography Association, and of CARP Research Lab, https://sites.google.com/ualberta.ca/iaba/home and https://carplab.wordpress.com.

We welcome interdisciplinary and methodologically explicit papers that address critical questions across an international variety of works, genres, media and practices, with attention to theoretical premises of both Auto/Biography Studies and Reputation Politics Studies. Conference language will be English. Several publishers, including Macmillan, Sage, Routledge, and Taylor & Francis, have expressed interest in the publication of a volume comprising the results of the conference. Please send proposals (600 words maximum exclusive of references) plus a short academic biography to nadja.gernalzick@univie.ac.at and eshiraev@gmu.edu by October 15, 2019. Notice of acceptance will be given by October 30, 2019.

The conference is co-organized by Nadja Gernalzick, Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of Philological and Cultural Studies, University of Vienna, and Eric Shiraev, George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia, U.S.A, with the assistance of Edwina Hagen, University of Amsterdam; Martijn Icks, University of Amsterdam; Jennifer Keohane, University of Baltimore, and Sergei Samoilenko, George Mason University.

 

3.10. Call for Papers “Our Trump? – German Identity Politics and The Trump Presidency” at Justus Liebig University Giessen, July 3-5, 2020

Deadline: October 15, 2019

Conference organizers: Greta Olson and Birte Christ

When Barack Obama spoke in 2008 at the Siegessäule in Berlin, 200,000 Germans came to see him. A wave of “Obamania” swept the country that only intensified after Obama became president. Since Donald Trump was elected in 2016, an equally intense dislike of the president has become something that Germans largely agree on. US American presidents, especially those who are as polarizing as Obama and Trump, serve as screens for anti- and pro-American sentiments. They function as central vehicles for articulating German cultural politics. Right now, during the current Trump era, what it is to be German is often defined in terms of how it is not American, whether the issue is gun laws, immigration, hate speech, environmental protection, or LGBTQI* and women’s rights.

This conference investigates how the Trump presidency is impacting German cultural politics. It also asks about what it means to look at American politics from a uniquely German perspective. Specifically, the conference asks:
- What and how are anti- (and pro-) American sentiments being expressed in Germany right now?
- How does this impact US American business people and cultural institutions in Germany?
- How do Trump-inspired affects play out in artistic, political, and media discourse?
- How are comparisons with the United States employed to articulate what German identity is?
- What kind of identity formation transpires in these comparisons?

Contributors are asked to consider how the Trump presidency influences how Germans think about themselves and impacts German cultural politics in specific ways. Speakers are invited to reflect on their positions as Americanists working in Germany, or as US Americans living in Germany. Transnational American Studies involves considering the situatedness of American Studies outside the US and asking what issues this situatedness allows one to address. The organizers invite case studies on the impact of the Trump presidency on German arts, representations of Trump and the United States in Germany, and on German identity politics, political discourse, and specific policy issues.

The main focus of the conference is the impact of the Trump presidency on German identity politics. Yet we are also interested in contributions that investigate other non-US cultural engagements with Trump. Other topics include the practical implications of the Trump presidency for US citizens and business people in Germany. 

Please send a short proposal and brief bio to the conference organizers by October 15, 2019.
Greta.Olson@anglistik.uni-giessen.de; Birte.Christ@anglistik.uni-giessen.de

 

 

3.11. Call for Papers: aspeers, graduate-level peer-reviewed American studies journal

Deadline: October 27, 2019

aspeers, the first and currently only European graduate-level peer-reviewed journal for American studies, calls for papers for its thirteenth issue by October 27, 2019.
As in previous years, aspeers calls for general submissions of excellent academic work by MA-level students, as well as for work specifically focused on this year's topic of "Pride and Shame in America."
For more information, please refer to the following URLs:
* General Submissions:
http://www.aspeers.com/sites/default/files/cfp_2020_general.pdf
* Submissions on "Pride and Shame in America":
http://www.aspeers.com/sites/default/files/cfp_2020_topical.pdf
We kindly ask all American studies faculty to forward these two calls to their MA-level students and to keep an eye out for outstanding MA-level work when grading seminar papers this summer.
aspeers is a unique opportunity for students to get published early on in their career and to gain experience with the process of publishing academic work. The deadline for all submissions is October 27, 2019. If you have any questions, please consult http://www.aspeers.com/2020 or get in touch with us directly via editors@aspeers.com. Thank you very much for your help!

 

3.12. Call for Papers: Heidelberg Center for American Studies 17th Annual Spring Academy Conference, Heidelberg, Germany, 23–27 March, 2020

Deadline: November 15, 2019

The seventeenth HCA Spring Academy on American Culture, Economics, Geography, History, Literature, Politics, and Religion will be held from March 23-27, 2020. The Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) invites applications for this annual one-week conference that provides twenty international Ph.D. students with the opportunity to present and discuss their Ph.D. projects.

The HCA Spring Academy will also offer participants the chance to work closely with experts in their respective fields of study. For this purpose, workshops held by visiting scholars will take place during this week.

We encourage applications that range broadly across the arts, humanities, and social sciences and pursue an interdisciplinary approach. Papers can be presented on any subject relating to the study of the United States of America. Possible topics include American identity, issues of ethnicity, gender, transatlantic relations, U.S. domestic and foreign policy, economics, as well as various aspects of American history, literature, religion, geography, law, musicology, and culture.

Participants are requested to prepare a 20-minute presentation of their research project, which will be followed by a 40-minute discussion. Proposals should include a preliminary title and run to no more than 300 words. These will be arranged into ten panel groups.
In addition to cross-disciplinary and international discussions during the panel sessions, the Spring Academy aims at creating a pleasant collegial atmosphere for further scholarly exchange and contact.
Accommodation will be provided by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies.

Thanks to a small travel fund, the Spring Academy is able to subsidize travel expenses for participants registered and residing in developing and soft-currency countries. Scholarship applicants will need to document the necessity for financial aid and explain how they plan to cover any potentially remaining expenses. In addition, a letter of recommendation from their doctoral advisor is required.
START OF APPLICATION PROCESS: August 15, 2019
DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: November 15, 2019
SELECTIONS WILL BE MADE BY: January 2020
PLEASE USE OUR ONLINE APPLICATION SYSTEM: www.hca-springacademy.de
MORE INFORMATION: www.hca.uni-heidelberg.de
FOR FURTHER QUESTIONS: ibahmann@hca.uni-heidelberg.de

 

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