[JFKI-News] WG: Newsletter September 2019

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

Von: Catrin Gersdorf <executive_director@dgfa.de>
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 25. September 2019 20:28
An: jfki@zedat.fu-berlin.de
Betreff: Newsletter September 2019

 

Liebe Mitglieder der DGfA,

mit dieser Nachricht erhalten Sie den Newsletter für den Monat September. Auf zwei Dinge möchte ich Sie ganz besonders hinweisen:
a) Die Frist für die Einreichung von Workshop-Proposals für die DGfA-Jahrestagung 2020 läuft demnächst ab. Alle Vorschläge, die das Postfach bis 1. Oktober 2019, 24 Uhr erreichen, werden in der Herbstbeiratssitzung zur Diskussion gestellt.
b) Im Anhang zu dieser E-Mail finden Sie diesmal neben der PDF-Version des Newsletters ein Schreiben des DGfA-Präsidenten Philipp Gassert zu den anstehenden DFG-Wahlen.

Mit herzlichen Grüßen

Ihre
Catrin Gersdorf
Geschäftsführerin

1. DGfA

1.1. 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

1.2. 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. 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

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

2.3. Ten Doctoral Fellowships for Doctoral Students in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Medicine and Life Sciences (DFG Research Training Group „Life Sciences – Life Writing“; Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and JGU Medical Center Mainz
Deadline: October 13, 2019

2.4. Stellenausschreibung: Research Fellow ("Wissenschaftliche*r Mitarbeiter*in"), 65% part-time-employment (E 13 TV-L), DFG project "Liminal Whiteness: Rednecks, Hillbillies and Crackers in American Culture"
Deadline: October 23, 2019

2.5. Helmut Schmidt Fellowship 2020 Call for Proposals
Deadline: November 30, 2019

3. Veranstaltungen und Call for Papers

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

3.2. 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

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

3.4. 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

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

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

3.7. Call for Papers: International Symposium – Un-Faced: Facial Disfigurement in American Literature, Film, and Television; Department of American Studies University of Innsbruck, Austria; May 7-8, 2020
Deadline: December 9, 2019

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

 

1. DGfA

1.1. 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.

 

1.2. 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. 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

 

2.2. 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.

 

2.3. Ten Doctoral Fellowships for Doctoral Students in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Medicine and Life Sciences (DFG Research Training Group „Life Sciences – Life Writing“; Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and JGU Medical Center Mainz

Deadline: October 13, 2019

The DFG research training group 2015/2 “Life Sciences- Life Writing’’ is advertising, starting April 1 2020
ten Doctoral Fellowships in Medicine and the Humanities (m/f/d)
Reference 50065927.
The position ends on March 31 2023.
Further information: https://www.grk.lifesciences-lifewriting.uni-mainz.de/application/

 

2.4. Stellenausschreibung: Research Fellow ("Wissenschaftliche*r Mitarbeiter*in"), 65% part-time-employment (E 13 TV-L), DFG project "Liminal Whiteness: Rednecks, Hillbillies and Crackers in American Culture"

Deadline: October 23, 2019

Job description: Scientific Research Services within the research project “Liminal Whiteness: Rednecks, Hillbillies and Crackers in American Culture", funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG); organization of project-related workshops, conferences and publications; research on an independent project with the aim of obtaining a PhD in the field of American literature and culture since the 1960s, with a focus on Southern Studies and Critical Whiteness Studies.
Requirements: Masters degree or equivalent in American Studies; experience with organizing workshops and conferences

Application: Please send your application (including cover letter, CV, certificates, summary of M.A. thesis (max. 2 pages), a brief proposal that describes your intended doctoral project (max. 3 pages)), and quoting the reference number DR/160/19, to Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Linguistics and Literary Studies Faculty – Department of English and American Studies, Prof. Dr. Evangelia Kindinger, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany or preferably in electronic form as one PDF-file to evangelia.kindinger@hu-berlin.de

HU is seeking to increase the proportion of women in research and teaching, and specifically encourages qualified female scholars to apply. Severely disabled applicants with equivalent qualifications will be given preferential consideration. People with an immigration background are specifically encouraged to apply. Since we will not return your documents, please submit copies in the application only.
Please visit our website www.hu-berlin.de/stellenangebote, which gives you access to the legally binding German version.
Application deadline: 23 October 2019

 

2.5. Helmut Schmidt Fellowship 2020 Call for Proposals

Deadline: November 30, 2019

As a long-standing member of the board of trustees of the ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius, German statesman Helmut Schmidt was a role model in word and deed. In his honor, the ZEIT-Stiftung and The German Marshall Fund of the United States (GMF) first announced the Helmut Schmidt Fellowship in 2016. This prestigious position commemorates Helmut Schmidt’s life, service, and legacy by supporting the work of individuals who have shown excellence in the academic and/or policy spheres and demonstrate a commitment to advancing the transatlantic relationship and/or European integration. After selecting three outstanding German fellows to visit the United States, ZEIT-Stiftung and GMF have decided to expand the Helmut Schmidt Fellowship as an exchange program starting in 2020 to further our efforts toward U.S.-German cooperation. The fellowship will be granted to one senior German fellow and one next-generation American fellow to work on issues related to the transatlantic relationship and the European Union, focusing either on foreign and security policy or economic and financial issues.

Fellowship Description – German fellow
The German fellow will be based at GMF in Washington, DC. S/he will be fully integrated into GMF’s policy work, conducting and publishing research and analysis, participating in meetings and events, and contributing to discussions on programmatic strategy. The fellow will have access to GMF’s network and resources, as well as to contacts in the academic, think-tank, and policy communities. S/he will also have opportunities to participate in DC-based programming, including meeting with officials and policymakers, as well as representatives of the diplomatic and nonprofit sectors.
The fellow will work closely with GMF staff and fellows across all offices. The length of the fellowship will be five months and will start in August 2020.

Research Themes
The Helmut Schmidt fellow will examine several themes related to how the roles of Germany and the United States in Europe and the world are evolving, as well as the implications of these developments for bilateral and wider transatlantic relations, for the future of Europe, and for global affairs.

The ZEIT-Stiftung and GMF invite proposals for research on one or more of the following questions:
• Transatlantic cooperation in the field of security, foreign policy, defense
• Transatlantic economic and financial relations
• Europe in transatlantic relations
• New challenges to the transatlantic relationship

Eligibility
We seek a German individual who has excelled in academia, policy, and/or journalism and is committed to studying and/or advancing the transatlantic relationship and/or European integration. Senior academics, think tankers, and journalists applying for this position must be based in Germany and are expected to have a strong publication record and regular high-level media exposure. Policymakers applying for the fellowship are expected to have a proven record in advancing European integration and/or transatlantic relations and the readiness to engage actively in the policy debate on European and transatlantic issues.

How to Apply
To apply, please submit a CV with a list of publications, a letter of motivation of no more than 750 words, and a summary of the research proposal of no more than 900 words below.
The deadline for applications is November 30, 2019.

For submissions or more information, please contact Carolin Wefer (cwefer@gmfus.org, +49 30 2888 1362).
See also: www.zeit-stiftung.de; www.gmfus.org
 

 

 

3. Veranstaltungen und Call for Papers

3.1. 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

 

3.2. 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.

 

3.3. 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.

 

3.4. 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

 

3.5. 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!

 

3.6. Workshop „Konfliktnarrative: Bürgerkriege, Generationenkonflikte, identitäts-politische Auseinandersetzungen“ (Universität Augsburg, 6./7. Februar 2020 )

Deadline: November 1, 2019

Organisation: Prof. Dr. Marcus Llanque (Politische Theorie), Prof. Dr. Katja Sarkowsky (Amerikanistische Kultur- und Literaturwissenschaft)

Konflikte zwischen Individuen oder Gruppen sind nicht nur Ereignisse divergierender Interessen; sie gewinnen eine über das Ereignis hinausgehende Bedeutung durch ihre narrative Verarbeitung. Als Konfliktnarrative sind sie unabdingbarer Bestandteil gesellschaftlicher Selbsterzählungen und stehen als solche wiederum mit anderen Konfliktnarrativen in Konkurrenz. Dabei verstehen wir Konfliktnarrative nicht nur als Bericht über eine Auseinandersetzung, sondern vielmehr als Rahmung der Ereignisse und Bedeutungszuschreibung vor dem Hintergrund eines bestimmten gesellschaftlichen Selbstverständnisses. Den Narrationen (erzählerische Manifestationen, insbesondere konkrete Texte beispielsweise aus Literatur, Geschichtsschreibung oder Reportage) von Konflikten liegen somit Konfliktnarrative zugrunde. Wir verstehen Konfliktnarrative als Interpretationsschemata von Auseinandersetzungen, deren Ereignisse und Abläufe als ein bestimmter Konflikt erzählt wird. Narrative konstituieren also Konflikte, indem sie Ereignisse auf eine bestimmte Weise erzählen, Konfliktkonstellationen und Konfliktdynamiken identifizieren.

Dieser Workshop wird im Rahmen des interdisziplinären Projektes „Der Antigonistische Konflikt“: Begräbnispolitik und die Grenzen des Selbstverständnisses mo¬derner Gesellschaften (Amerikanistik und Politische Theorie, gefördert von der VW-Stiftung) abgehalten. In diesem Projekt wird das Konfliktnarrativ untersucht, das von der Sophokleischen „Antigone“ bis zu gegenwärtigen Verarbeitungen des Antigone-Stoffes in Literatur und Gesellschaftstheorie thematisiert wird: der „Antigonistische Konflikt“ als ein komplexes Konfliktnarrativ der Auseinandersetzung zwischen den Geschlechtern, zwischen unterschiedlichen Rechtsauffassungen, des Loyalitätskon¬flikts von Staat und Familie, nicht zuletzt auch als Streit über die Lösung eines voran¬gehenden Konflikts (Bürgerkrieg). Die weiterhin anhaltende Provokation des „Antigonistischen Konfliktes“ besteht auch darin, dass er die Grenzen liberaler Deutungen der modernen Gesellschaft aufzeigt, mit diesen Konflikten umzugehen.
Dabei fokussiert der Workshop selbst nicht auf den Antigone-Stoff, sondern auf andere Konfliktnarrative in Narrationen aus den drei Themenfeldern Bürgerkriege, Generationenkonflikte und identitätspolitische Auseinandersetzungen in Gegenwart und Geschichte. Der workshop wird sich aus einer interdisziplinären Perspektive u.a. mit folgenden Fragen beschäftigen: Wie sind Narrationen über Bürgerkriege, Generationenkonflikte oder identitätspolitische Auseinandersetzungen als Konfliktnarrative aufgebaut? Lassen sich Konfliktkonstellationen, Konfliktlinien und Konfliktdynamiken identifizieren? Gibt es ein Wechselspiel von Bedeutungszuschreibung und Berichterstattung der als Konflikt verknüpften Ereignisse und wie funktioniert dieses Wechsel¬spiel? Welches gesellschaftliche Selbstverständnis wird in solchen Konfliktnarrativen erkennbar, ausgehandelt, umkämpft?

Die Diskussion im Workshop wird auf max. 10 Impulsreferaten (gestützt auf die vorher zirkulierenden Papers der Vortragenden) von je 10 Minuten und vorbereitender (von den Veranstaltenden vorgeschlagener) Theorielektüre aufbauen.
Interessierte an einem Impulsreferat reichen bitte bis zum 1. November 2019 eine Skizze ihres Vorschlag zu einem der drei Themenfelder 1) Bürgerkriege, 2) Generationen¬konflikte und 3) identitätspolitische Auseinandersetzungen im Umfang von etwa 500 Wörter per Email ein an politische.theorie@phil.uni-augsburg.de und sekretariat.amerikanistik@philhist.uni-augsburg.de. Teilnahmezusagen werden bis zum 15. November verschickt. Die Reise- und Unterbringungskosten werden übernommen.

 

3.7. 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

 

3.8. Call for Papers: International Symposium – Un-Faced: Facial Disfigurement in American Literature, Film, and Television; Department of American Studies University of Innsbruck, Austria; May 7-8, 2020

Deadline: December 9, 2019

The face is a person’s foremost marker of identity. It harbors four of our five senses, and it is a crucial tool of communication. What goes on in the brain is performed on the stage that is the face, which can be read to a certain extent. It reveals but also conceals.

When the face is disfigured, all of its major capacities are affected. Moreover, because it is visible (in most cultures) and deviates from the norm, it often evokes shock, disgust, shunning, and ridicule in people. This is emphasized by the fact that facial disfigurements have had a long history of mostly negative associations: disfigured equals evil, villainous, or criminal; it may be the result of God’s punishment; it is a medical curiosity and challenge; it marks the ultimate other. From Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark,” to The Dark Knight’s Joker and Two-Face, to The Hound in Game of Thrones, it is no wonder that the disfigured face has attracted writers, filmmakers, and showrunners alike.

CONTRIBUTIONS
In this symposium, we look forward to discussing the disfigured face in its fictional representation – in literature, film, as well as television (or web) series. Possible areas for contributions include but are not limited to facial disfigurements
- in Gothic films and literature
- as manifestations of the grotesque
- in the context of “freak shows”
- as a medical curiosity and challenge
- through the lens of disability studies
- with their sociological, psychological, and ethical ramifications
- in the context of diversity and representation
- within the history of superstitious beliefs
- as the extra-ordinary and mysterious other
- in comparison to animals

We call for proposals that investigate these and other aspects as they occur within film and media studies as well as literature. We welcome media-specific as well as intermedial approaches and invite submissions that range from individual case studies to more comprehensive analyses with a macro perspective.

ORGANIZATION
This symposium is organized by Gudrun M. Grabher and Cornelia Klecker with the Department of American Studies at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

PUBLICATION
A selection of essays based on the conference papers will be published as an anthology edited by Gudrun M. Grabher and Cornelia Klecker.

SUBMISSIONS
Please send a 300-word abstract plus a short CV in one file to:
- Cornelia Klecker (cornelia.klecker@uibk.ac.at) and
- Gudrun M. Grabher (gudrun.m.grabher@uibk.ac.at).

Deadline for submissions is December 9, 2019.
“Un-Faced: Facial Disfigurement in American Literature, Film, and Television”
Department of American Studies
University of Innsbruck
Innrain 52
6020 Innsbruck, Austria
Tel: +43 (0)512 507 4171 (Secretary’s Office)
www.uibk.ac.at/amerikastudien/


 

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