Call for Papers – Transcending Boundaries – Interdisciplinary Insights in Transpacific Studies 🗓

Call for Papers – Transcending Boundaries – Interdisciplinary Insights in Transpacific Studies 🗓

Call for Papers

Transcending Boundaries Interdisciplinary Insights in Transpacific Studies

***EXTENDED DEADLINE: 20 September 2023***

Transpacific Studies Network Hybrid Conference
February 9-10, 2024
Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

We seek contributions that explore connections across national and regional borders in and along the Pacific. The presentations (no format restrictions) should not exceed 20 minutes. The event will serve as a space to discuss early stage-research and on-going projects in this field. We welcome papers deploying new and innovative practices in Transpacific Studies and encourage in particular emerging scholars (current PhD candidates and recent graduates) to apply.  This call, however, is not limited solely to scholars, we also welcome artists and practitioners who engage with the region in their work.

Possible topics may include:

  • Film and television that culturally crosses the pacific ocean
  • Literary works (novels, memoirs, poems, etc.) from and about (Trans)pacific regions
  • Representations and/or performances of gender in (Trans)pacific regions
  • (Trans)pacific mobilities and migration, including policy
  • The Pacific and the blue humanities
  • Climate change and the environment in (Trans)pacific regions
  • (Trans-)Pacific issues of collective memory
  • Understandings of geography/space/territory in relation to (Trans)pacific regions
  • Negotiating cultural hybridity
  • Revitalizations of (Trans)pacific traditional ecological epistemologies
  • Reflections on practices and imaginations of borders/bordering in the Pacific

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted along with a 100-word biography to transpacificstudiesnetwork@gmail.com by 20 September 2023. Selected participants can expect to be notified by early October 2023.

For further information, please see the Call for Papers document or contact Sandra Meerwein.

Juneteenth: OI Advisory Board Member Elizabeth West on CNN 🗓

Juneteenth: OI Advisory Board Member Elizabeth West on CNN 🗓

On June 19, 2023, Obama Institute Advisory Board Member Dr. Elizabeth West (Georgia State University) appeared on OneWorld CNN with Zain Asher:

June 29 – Exhibition “Migration and Graphic Fiction” 🗓

June 29 – Exhibition “Migration and Graphic Fiction” 🗓

June 29, 2023
Thu, 14:00-16:30
Landesmuseum Mainz (Forum)

Große Bleiche 49-51, 55116 Mainz

Exhibition

“Migration and Graphic Fiction”

Comic-Romane oder „Graphic Fiction“ gelten heute längst als ernstzunehmende Literatur. Aber wie verändert sich unsere Wahrnehmung von Themen wie Migration, Gender oder Trauma, wenn diese Geschichten in Form von Graphic Fiction erzählt werden? Diese Ausstellung betrachtet, wie Comic-Romane Geschichten von Einwanderung und Kulturkonflikt auf ganz besondere Weise erzählen. Damit fragt die Ausstellung nicht zuletzt, ob US-amerikanische Ansätze zu kultureller Hybridität nicht auch auf Deutschland anwendbar sind.

Die Veranstaltung ist kostenfrei und öffentlich. Everyone welcome!

14:00 Eröffnung | Grußworte | Einführung
Prof. Dr. Mita Banerjee (Kursleiterin und Organisatorin der Ausstellung)
Prof. Dr. Alfred Hornung (Sprecher des Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies)

anschließend Ausstellung Projektarbeiten | Sektempfang

Topics, among others:

  • The Portrayal of the Shoah in Art Spiegelman’s Maus
  • BatMAN – The Hero Unmasked
  • Behind The Scenes – Interview with Graphic Novel Author Eric Schwarz
  • Inked Insanity – Comic Books Between Superpowers and Supersexism
  • Graphic Groove – Whose Dream Is it Anyways? Reviewing the American Dream and Identity in Malaka Gharib’s Graphic Memoir

Die hier ausgestellten studentischen Beiträge beruhen auf einem Projektseminar mit dem Titel „Migration and Graphic Fiction“, das im Sommersemester 2023 an der Universität Mainz in der Amerikanistik unter der Leitung von Prof. Dr. Mita Banerjee (mita.banerjee@uni-mainz.de) stattfand.

 

You can download the poster for the exhibition here.

4th of July – Lectures, Exhibition, Get-together, Food and Drinks 🗓

4th of July – Lectures, Exhibition, Get-together, Food and Drinks 🗓

4th of July Events at the Obama Institute

July 4, 2023, 4-8 p.m., P1 & Philo-Wiese (Philosophicum)

What might the 4th of July mean to Americans and foreigners in general and especially in 2023?

From insights into the U.S. Senate’s social fabric to an “American Way of Death” to students’ takes on the meaning of the holiday: Join us in discussing the day’s importance and possible criticism but also in celebrating an informal Obama Institute summer get-together of students, faculty, and friends.

Food and drinks will be provided!

4-6 p.m. I Guest Talks I P 1

The Social Fabric of the U.S. Senate
Professor Sean Theriault
The University of Texas at Austin

Selling “The American Way of Death”
PD Dr. Jan Logemann
JGU Mainz/Uni Göttingen

6-8 p.m. I (Graduate) Student Project Exhibition
with Food and Drinks

Posters and performances by students from Dr. Bailey Moorhead’s courses

Pizza, Snacks, and Drinks

You can download the poster for the event here.

June 27 – Guest Lecture “Playing at a Distance” 🗓

June 27 – Guest Lecture “Playing at a Distance” 🗓

Sonia Fizek
(Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln)

Playing at a Distance

June 27, 2023, 2:15pm, P 207 (Philosophicum)

 

Do we play video games or do video games play us? Is nonhuman play a mere paradox or the future of gaming? And what do video games have to do with quantum theory? In the talk based on her recent book Playing at a Distance (MIT Press 2022), Fizek will engage with these questions, proposing new ways to think about games and play that decenter the human player and explore a variety of play formats and practices that require surprisingly little human action. Idling in clicker games, wandering in walking simulators, automating gameplay with bots, or simply watching games rather than playing them— Fizek will argue that these seemingly marginal cases are central to understanding how we play in the digital age. Introducing the concept of distance, she will reorient the view of computer- mediated play. To “play at a distance”, as will be argued, is to delegate the immediate action to the machine and to become participants in an algorithmic spectacle. Distance has been conceptualized as a media aesthetic framework that may enable us to come to terms with the ambiguity and aesthetic diversity of play.

 

Sonia Fizek is a media and games scholar. She holds a professorship in Media and Game Studies at the Cologne Game Lab at TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences. Fizek is also a visiting professor at the University of Lower Silesia in Wroclaw (Poland) and a co-editor-in-chief of the international Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds. In her latest book Playing at a Distance (MIT Press 2022), she explores the borderlands of video game aesthetic with focus on automation, AI and posthuman forms of play. Fizek’s current research concentrates on the environmental aspects of video game development. Since 2021 she has been a principal investigator of “Greening Games” (greeninggames.eu), an international project on the sustainability of video games (funded by the German Academic Exchange Service EU/DAAD).

 

You can download the poster for the event here.