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

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

Lectures, News

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.

 

 

Pathfinders Wanted! Independent Studies/Internship Opportunity (July-Dec) 🗓

Pathfinders Wanted! Independent Studies/Internship Opportunity (July-Dec) 🗓

News, Opportunities

Internship/Independent Studies

PATHFINDER Program

July – December, 2023

We are looking for

students who will assist incoming exchange students from the U.S. in all organizational matters prior to their stay and during their first weeks in Germany.

Your tasks will include

helping our exchange students to:

  • apply for a visa
  • find their way around Mainz and JGU campus • set up a bank account and health insurance
  • register with the city
  • get a sim card

You will also:

  • accompany incomings to JGU’s International Office’s Info Days and other JGU events
  • help with course registration paperwork
  • introduce them to student life in Mainz
It’s your chance to receive

credit for Independent Studies in the American Studies B.A./M.A. program as well as an official certificate. While there is no credit opportunity, B.Ed./M.Ed. Students are also very welcome to apply.

You are the perfect Pathfinder

if you are highly motivated, organized, and eager to contribute to a smooth process for our incoming students. In order to provide the necessary support, we ask applicants to be ready to accompany the process from July to December.

How to apply

Please send your application, including a CV and a letter of motivation to both
Dr. Julia Velten (juvelten@uni-mainz.de) and Nina Heydt, M.A. (niheydt@uni-mainz.de)

Deadline

June 15, 2023

June 20 – Guest Lecture “The Racial Sellout: Language, History, and Popular Culture” 🗓

June 20 – Guest Lecture “The Racial Sellout: Language, History, and Popular Culture” 🗓

Lectures, News

Associate Professor Ian Afflerbach
(University of North Georgia, USA)

“The Racial Sellout: Language, History, and Popular Culture“

June 20, 2023, 4:15pm, 00.212 (Philo II, Jakob-Welder-Weg 20)

 

What does it mean to “sell out” your race? This talk will examine the history of such accusations in the United States, moving from early 20th century debates over black leadership to contemporary scandals in popular culture. It will explain why ideas about racial “authenticity” and “solidarity” are so controversial, yet so vital. And it will explore both the unique language used to identify race traitors, such as “Uncle Tom” and “house Negro,” as well as the ways this anxiety about racial loyalty reflects a broader American anxiety with the idea of “selling out.”

Ian Afflerbach is Associate Professor of American Literature at the University of North Georgia, where his research and teaching focus on the history of ideas, modernist studies, African American literature, and popular periodicals. He recently completed his first book, Making Liberalism New (Johns Hopkins 2021) and has begun work on a second project—a cultural history of “selling out” in modern America. He is currently a fellow at the University of Regensburg, Germany.

You can download the poster for the event here.

 

June 18 – Interstellar – Ein Menschlicher Blick auf das Universum 🗓

June 18 – Interstellar – Ein Menschlicher Blick auf das Universum 🗓

Events, News

„Interstellar – Ein Menschlicher Blick auf das Universum“

Filmvorführung und Gespräch im Rahmen der Reihe „Akademie Trifft Kino im Wissenschaftsjahr ‚Unser Universum‘“
 

Am Sonntag, den 18. Juni 2023, 15.30 Uhr, zeigen wir im CAPITOL Mainz Christopher Nolans Kinofilm „Interstellar“ mit Matthew McConaughey und Anne Hathaway, in dem es u.a. darum geht, wie ein künftiges Leben im Weltall aussehen könnte. Doch wie viel Wissenschaft steckt sich hinter der spannenden und spektakulären Handlung des Science-Fiction-Filmes? Und was sagt dieser Blick auf das Universum über die Menschheit? 

Der Amerikanist Dr. Jens Temmen und der Physiker Prof. Dr. Matthias Neubert erörtern in einem einführenden Gespräch diese und andere Fragen.

Die Vorführung wird von der Jungen Akademie | Mainz in Kooperation mit Prisma+ und dem CAPITOL organisiert. Eintrittskarten sind zum Sonderpreis von 7,- € an der Kinokasse erhältlich, nähere Informationen: 

https://www.adwmainz.de/fileadmin/adwmainz/veran23/2023_06_18_Einladungsflyer_Interstellar.pdf

 
 
June 14 – Reading: FAMILY MATTERS – Of Life in Two Worlds 🗓

June 14 – Reading: FAMILY MATTERS – Of Life in Two Worlds 🗓

Events, News

FAMILY MATTERS – Of Life in Two Worlds

A Reading with American Studies Mainz Alumna Martina J. Kohl

Co-organized by the Obama Institute and the Atlantische Akademie Rheinland-Pfalz

June 14, 6 pm
P 4 (Philosophicum)

Jakob-Welder-Weg 18, Mainz

FAMILY MATTERS follows the traces of a German family that, over generations, continues to cross the Atlantic in both directions. Like Elizabeth and Henry who, at the beginning of the 20th century, are forced to leave their beloved New York to return to the old country; the violinist Clara who can only live her passion for music in the American of the suffragettes; the war bride Toni, who courageously follows a G.I. to Nebraska after World War II; and, finally, the student Iris who is trying to find her place in both worlds in the 1980s. Looking back, they all ask the same question:  „What if . . . ?”  What if they had not gone to America, or back to the old country? If they had not fallen in love? What if they had taken that other road and pursued their dreams a bit more forcefully?

FAMILY MATTERS takes ordinary, yet memorable characters out of the yellowed pictures in the photo albums, gives them a voice and places them in their own time. Martina J. Kohl revives the past. She shows that today cannot be understood without the yesterday. And that migration, uprooting and the search for belonging are universal themes.

Martina J. Kohl worked in the Cultural Section of the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, Germany, for many years. She developed and organized numerous programs, but especially loved the literature series. Writing has been a passion ever since she taught at the University of Michigan. It is part of her seminars that she teaches regularly at Humboldt University Berlin and defined her work as editor of the American Studies Journal. As an advisory board member of the Salzburg Global American Studies Program, she continues to engage in transatlantic dialogue. Among her academic publications, FAMILY MATTERS is her first book-length fictional work.

martinajkohl.com/