Feb 9-11 – Conference: Transcending Boundaries – Interdisciplinary Insights in Transpacific Studies 🗓

Feb 9-11 – Conference: Transcending Boundaries – Interdisciplinary Insights in Transpacific Studies 🗓

Conferences, Events, News

Transcending Boundaries – Interdisciplinary Insights in Transpacific Studies

Transpacific Studies Network Hybrid Conference
February 9-11, 2024

Zoom link in program.

Download the program here.

February 9 & 10 (Fri & Sat)
Aulagebäude/Alte Mensa (1. OG, Linker Saal) Gebäude 1312
Johann-Joachim-Becher-Weg 3-5
55128 Mainz

February 11 (Sun)
Philosophicum II (EG 00.212)
Jakob-Welder-Weg 20
55128 Mainz

 

We explore connections across national and regional borders in and along the Pacific. The event will serve as a space to discuss early stage-research and on-going projects in this field.

Topics 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

The conference is organized by Sandra Meerwein and the Transpacific Studies Network (TPSN). The TPSN was established in the fall of 2022 with the goal of exploring Pacific cultures, ecologies, histories, literatures, politics, and societies in an interdisciplinary, multi-lingual, and, importantly, transregional manner.

The organizers would like to thank the following organizations for their support:

                    

Jan 31 – Student Conference “Human Enhancement” 🗓

Jan 31 – Student Conference “Human Enhancement” 🗓

Conferences, News, Opportunities

Jan 31, 2024 – 16.00-18.00 (s.t.) – Student Conference

“Human Enhancement: Ethics, Life Sciences, and the Human Body in Cultural Representations”

P6 (Philosophicum)

Human enhancement has become the topic of an increasingly controversial cultural, scholarly, and political discussion. Alberto Giubilini and Sagar Sanyal define human enhancement rather broadly as “any kind of genetic, biomedical or pharmaceutical intervention aimed at improving human dispositions, capacities, and well-being even when there is no pathology to be treated” (1). Using this definition as a point of departure, our student conference seeks to approach grey areas inherent in debates surrounding human enhancement through the lens of narrative ethics, using cultural representations as the focus of our discussion.

Our student panel includes the following talks:

  • “Marry Shelly’s Frankenstein: A Cautionary Tale or an Overused Trope?”
    (Norhan Mohamed)
  • “Ethical Discourse and Social Impact on Human Enhancement: A Conservative Perspective”
    (Haerin Park)
  • “Human Enhancement in Superhero Movies: Why Is Captain America’s Origin Story Morally Acceptable and What Is Special about It?”
    (Jill Reuter)
  • “The Implications of ‘Human Enhancement’ in the Discussion Surrounding Trans-Athletes”
    (Ayishat Aluko)

Everyone is welcome!

This conference is part of Dr. Julia Velten’s course “Cultural Studies VI: Human Enhancement: Ethics, Life Sciences, and the Human Body in Film.” If you have further questions about the event, please contact Dr. Julia Velten: juvelten@uni-mainz.de

Giubilini, Alberto and Sagar Sanyal. “Challenging Human Enhancement.” The Ethics of Human Enhancement: Understanding the Debate, edited by Steve Clarke, et al., OUP, 2016, pp. 1-24.

 

Jan 26 – Phd/Postdoc Book Launch 🗓

Jan 26 – Phd/Postdoc Book Launch 🗓

Career Talks, Events, News, Opportunities

Jan 26, 2024 – 17.00-19.00 – PhD/Postdoc Book Launch – Fakultätssaal (Philosophicum, 01-185)

Join us in celebrating…
the most recent publications, dissertations, and more by young scholars from the Obama Institute:

  • Bassimir, Anja-Maria. Evangelical News. Politics, Gender, and Bioethics in Conservative Christian Magazines of the 1970s and 1980s (Religion and American Culture). Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2022.
  • Scott, Daniel. Atheism and Theism in Contemporary Fantasy Fiction. Heavens of Invention. Peter Lang Verlag, 2023 (Mainzer Studien zur Amerikanistik 77).
  • Velten, Julia. Extraordinary Forms of Aging. Life Narratives of Centenarians and Children with Progeria. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2022.
  • Seibert, Johanna. Early African Caribbean Newspapers as Archipelagic Media in the Emancipation Age. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2023.
  • Evans, Vanessa and Mita Banerjee (eds). Cultures of Citizenship in the Twenty-First Century: Literary and Cultural Perspectives on a Legal Concept. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2023.
  • Scheiding, Oliver and Sabina Fazli (eds.). Handbuch Zeitschriftenforschung. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 2023.
  • Corrigan, John, Melani McAlister and Axel R. Schäfer (eds.). Global Faith, Worldly Power. Evangelical Internationalism and U.S. Empire. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2022.

Come and discuss…
plans for publications and careers after graduation.

Meet and mingle…
with current and former PhD students, postdocs, and professors as well as students, faculty, and friends.

Everyone is welcome!

Contact
Prof. em. Dr. Winfried Herget
herget@uni-mainz.de

Jan 16 – Guest Lecture “twen. Zum Design von Literaturbeiträgen in einem Zeitgeistmagazin der frühen Bundesrepublik” 🗓

Jan 16 – Guest Lecture “twen. Zum Design von Literaturbeiträgen in einem Zeitgeistmagazin der frühen Bundesrepublik” 🗓

Lectures, News

Philipp Pabst
(Universität Münster)

“twen. Zum Design von Literaturbeiträgen in einem Zeitgeistmagazin der frühen Bundesrepublik”

Jan 16, 2024, 4:15pm, 00-212 (Philo II)

Das Zeitgeistmagazin twen war in den 1960er-Jahren tonangebend in Fragen moderner Lebensführung für junge Menschen. Vor allem als Ikone des Zeitschriftendesigns ist die von Willy Fleckhaus gestaltete Zeitschrift noch heute bekannt. Weniger weiß man über die literarischen und literaturkritischen Beiträge, die einen festen Bestandteil in jedem Heft bildeten. Das ist insofern verwunderlich, da namhafte Autor:innen wie Alfred Andersch, Arno Schmidt, Simone de Beauvoir und Allen Ginsberg in twen publizierten. Der Vortrag geht diesem Bereich exemplarisch nach und fragt dabei, wie Literatur und Literaturkritik im Medium Zeitschrift in Szene gesetzt werden.

Dr. Philipp Pabst studierte Germanistik, Geschichte und Philosophie an der Universität Münster sowie der Universitá degli Studi di Napoli Federico II. 2019 Promotion mit einer Arbeit über das Populäre in der Literatur der frühen Bundesrepublik. Seitdem Postdoc am Germanistischen Institut der Universität Münster. Arbeitsschwerpunkte: Literatur und Populärkultur, kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschriftenforschung, televisuelle Serialität sowie Weltanschauungen in der deutschsprachigen Literatur um 1800 und um 1900.

You can download the poster for the event here.

Dec 11 – Symposium with Chinese Delegation: Chinese and Western Literary and Artistic Thoughts 🗓

Dec 11 – Symposium with Chinese Delegation: Chinese and Western Literary and Artistic Thoughts 🗓

Events, News

Symposium with Chinese Delegation:

The comparative study of Chinese and Western literary and artistic thoughts in the light of interacting civilizations

 

Monday, 11 December, 10 a.m.-12 noon & 2-4 p.m.

Philo II, room 02.102, Jakob-Welder-Weg 20

 

A high potential delegation from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Institute of Literature, will visit the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies from Dec. 10-13, 2023.

The symposium is open to students, colleagues and friends interested in exchanging ideas with these Chinese experts and relating our knowledges to non-Western thought patterns. The visit of the Chinese delegation will also include information and advice for exchanges with China.

The symposium on „The comparative study of Chinese and Western literary and artistic thoughts in the light of interacting civilizations” will feature presentations on the fields of research by the six directors and scholars from the elite institution of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing: Literatures in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao, Early Modern Literary Studies, Folk Literary Studies, and Digital Information Studies. In the discussions these presentations will be linked to forms of literature and culture in the West, especially Europe and North America.

The interdisciplinary platform of the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies is especially qualified for entertaining these interactions between different civilizations.

Please see below for the flyer or click here to open it.

Professor Alfred Hornung will host this event. If you have further questions about the event, please contact him at hornung@uni-mainz.de.