Workshop Series

U.S. Urban History and Urban Studies

Nov 9-10, 2026

Workshop Session
Nov 9, 4-6 pm, 02.102 (Philo II, Jakob-Welder-Weg 20)
This workshop session will endeavor to place U.S. arguments over urban sprawl within transnational trends in and debates over urban form.

Guest Lecture
Nov 10, 12-2 pm, P 1 (Philosophicum, Jakob-Welder-Weg 18)
The lecture will review the long history of the suburb as the location of the American dream, the place that nurtures and the space that sustains the middle-class, consumer society of American myth and aspiration.

Colloquium Session
Nov 10, 2-4 pm, kl. Bibl. 01-618 (Philosophicum, Jakob-Welder-Weg 18)
The colloquium will connect current U.S. debates over housing affordability and other obstacles to the middle-class aspiration to long-standing arguments over the suburbs and what they are meant to accomplish.

Alan Lessoff is University Professor of History at Illinois State University. An authority on U.S. and comparative urban history, he is the author, co-author, or editor of six books, most recently Where Texas Meets the Sea: Corpus Christi and Its History (Austin, 2015). From 2004 to 2014, he edited the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. His spring 2016 Obama fellowship began an ongoing collaboration with the Obama Institute. More recently, he was a summer guest researcher from 2021 to 2024 with History of Architecture and Urban Planning program at the TU Delft in the Netherlands, engaged with a project on port cities and petroleumscapes.

Contact/Registration
If you are interested in attending any or all of the sessions and would like access to the preparatory reading materials, please contact: Ylva Kreye (kreyeylv@uni-mainz.de)

Workshop
Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies

Supreme Court Amendments and Evangelicals

July 16, 2026
2-4 p.m.

Obama Institute conference room (02.102)
Philo II, Jakob-Welder-Weg 20

Please join us for our Workshop on Supreme Court Amendments and Evangelicals.

We are happy to welcome doctoral student Alexander Brackebusch from the University of Munich, and Associate Professor of History and Politics, Emma Long, from the University of East Anglia. Alexander Brackebusch will introduce us to his research, and we will facilitate a conversation between Alexander, Emma Long, Axel Schäfer and Anja-Maria Bassimir.

Alexander Brackebusch is writing his thesis on “Morality Amendments” to the Constitution, asking “why political actors continue to propose these amendments despite their exceedingly low likelihood of success.” He is especially interested in proposed amendments by actors associated with the Christian Right.

Emma Long has worked on two main topics – the Constitution and Supreme Court; and Evangelicals. In her forthcoming book, Lobbying for the Lord: The National Association of Evangelicals and the Growth of Post-war Evangelical Political Activism, Emma explores Evangelical politics in the 1940s and 50s. She has also studied Supreme Court decisions, especially in connection with reproductive rights, as in her articles “Reproductive Care and Justice” (2024) and “Last Word: Will Abortion Sway the 2024 US Presidential Election?” (2024).

To join the workshop, please sign up with Anja-Maria Bassimir via e-mail: bassimir@uni-mainz.de