May 23 – Town Hall Meeting with U.S. Consul General James Herman 🗓

May 23 – Town Hall Meeting with U.S. Consul General James Herman 🗓

The Future of Transatlantic Relations: A Town Hall Meeting

James W. Herman (U.S. Consul General, Frankfurt)

May 23, 2018, 4-6 p.m., P 5 (Philosophicum)

 

 

The Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies invites all students and faculty to a open-mike hall meeting with U.S. Consul General James W. Herman (U.S. Consulate, Frankfurt), centered on the question of what the future of transatlantic relations are. With a format geared towards open discussion and a question and answer approach, this town hall meeting gives everyone an opportunity to get an idea of where U.S.-German relations, and the transatlantic exchange in general, stand today, and where they may end up in the future, from one of the most important U.S. representatives in Europe.

Jim Herman assumed charge of the U.S. Consulate General in Frankfurt on August 14, 2015. A career Foreign Service Officer, he is the Ambassador’s representative to the German states of Hessen, Rhineland-Palatinate, Baden-Württemberg, and Saarland. As such, he leads the largest U.S. consulate in the world.
May 11 – A Break from Nation Time: Anarchist Utopias in the  Black Arts Movement 🗓

May 11 – A Break from Nation Time: Anarchist Utopias in the Black Arts Movement 🗓

Sean Lovitt, M.A. (University of Delaware)

May 11, 2018, 10-12 a.m., P 103 (Philosophicum)

 

The Black Arts Movement is normally associated with Black Nationalism, which, although a crucial influence, cannot account for the heterogeneity of the social movements that animated Black Arts in 1960s America. An unexpected anarchist influence persists in the nation-building fantasies of the Black Arts Movement, which upholds an anti-authoritarian and transnational utopian vision within their art and literature. Through archival research, I trace the connections between anarchism and Black Arts Movement works like Amiri Baraka‘s Slave Ship.

For more information see the poster

Interns Wanted!

Interns Wanted!

Studentische Unterstützung amerikanischer und kanadischer Austauschlektor*innen

Sie studieren BA AMERICAN STUDIES im Kernfach und möchten sich im Wintersemester 2018/19 ein Praktikum am Obama Institute als „Independent Studies“ anrechnen lassen?

Ihre Aufgaben:
Sie unterstützen die Austauschlektor*innen bei:

  • Behördengängen (z.B. Gang zu Einwohnmeldeamt, Krankenversicherung, Eröffnung eines Bankkontos)
  • der Einfindung in das soziale und akademische Leben in Mainz
  • der Orientierung auf dem Campus (UB, Campusführung, Jogustine, etc.) und
  • der Vorbereitung der Lehrveranstaltungen (Recherchearbeiten, Zusammenstellung und Organisation des Readers, etc.)

Ihre Voraussetzungen:

  • Sie haben Interesse an interkulturellem Austausch
  • Sie sind organisiert und zuverlässig
  • Sie sind kommunikativ und kontaktfreudig
  • Sie sind ortskundig und zeitlich flexibel
  • Sie sprechen Deutsch auf muttersprachlichem Niveau und haben sehr gute Englischkenntnisse
  • Sie sind sicher in Wort und Schrift im Umgang mit Behörden

Wir bieten:

  • ein Praktikum äquivalent zu einem Betriebspraktikum von 4 Wochen (Selbststudium 160 Stunden, 5LP = „Independent Studies“, Modul GMK4: Cultural Studies and Professional Orientation)
  • Einblicke in die Arbeitsabläufe wissenschaftlichen Arbeitens und akademischer Professionalisierung
  • die Möglichkeit Ihre interkulturelle (Übersetzungs-)Kompetenz zu trainieren

Interesse? Dann senden Sie bitte (1) ein kurzes Motivationsanschreiben (inkl. Kontaktdaten; max. 1 Seite) und (2) einen tabellarischen Lebenslauf per Email an Herrn Dr. Damien Schlarb (schlarbd@uni-mainz.de). Einsendeschluss ist der 15. Juni 2018. Wir werden Sie dann zu einem persönlichen Auswahlgespräch Ende Juni einladen.

May 3 – Beautiful Deceptions: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Early American Novel

May 3 – Beautiful Deceptions: Aesthetics, Politics, and the Early American Novel

Philipp Schweighauser (University of Basel)

May 2, 2018, 10-12 a.m.,  P 10

This talk starts with a brief overview of the three main subgenres of the early American novel—the picaresque, the gothic, and the sentimental—before zooming in on deception. The stories these novels tell abound in con men, seducers, and deceivers that consistently dupe their victims. Yet deception happens not only within these texts; deception is also what fictions do as they hoodwink readers into taking fictional worlds as the real thing. When the first American novels were published, no one noticed this more clearly than the detractors of the anti-fiction movement, who denounced fictions as lies. I take these attacks seriously as I read deception both as a subject matter and a literary function. I aim to supplement dominant political readings of these novels with aesthetic readings. Understanding aesthetics both as a theory of art and beauty and „the science of sensuous cognition,“ I argue that these novels‘ negotiations of deception respond as much to shifts in the social order as they do to reconsiderations of the place of literature, art, and sensory perception in the early republic.

 

Philipp Schweighauser is Professor in the Department of English at the University of Basel, CH.

 

Jan 12-14 – 3-day Workshop on Narrative Medicine 🗓

Jan 12-14 – 3-day Workshop on Narrative Medicine 🗓

“Narrative Medicine Workshop”

3-day workshop organized by faculty members of the Obama Institute and Columbia University’s Narrative Medicine Program
January 12-14, 2018, Alte Mensa (rechte Aula)

 

This intensive weekend workshop, organized together with core faculty from Columbia University’s Narrative Medicine program, offers rigorous skill-building in narrative competence. Participants will learn effective techniques for attentive listening, adopting others’ perspectives, accurate representation and reflective reasoning. Small group seminars offer first-hand experience in close-reading, reflective writing, and autobiographical exercises. Participants will receive a packet of readings prior to the week- end that will include seminar articles in the filed of narrative medicine by leading educators. The target audience is health care professionals and scholars in- terested in narrative medicine.

The plenary lectures are open to the public. The small group seminars are reserved for registered workshop participants.

 

For more information see the workshop poster and the workshop schedule.

Dec 4, 5 & 7 – Lectures by Dorota Filipczak (ERASMUS exchange lecturer from the University of Łódź) 🗓

Dec 4, 5 & 7 – Lectures by Dorota Filipczak (ERASMUS exchange lecturer from the University of Łódź) 🗓

Series of lectures
by ERASMUS exchange lecturer
Dorota Filipczak (University of Łódź)

Disrupting the Textual Monolith: Malcolm Lowry’s Through the Panama as a Precursor of a Multimodal Novel
Monday, December 4, 2017
12-2 p.m., 02-432 (SB II) and
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
12-2 p.m., P 106 (Philosophicum)

Speaking Identity Through Trauma: Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
4-6 p.m., P 101 (Philosophicum)

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood as a Cautionary Text on the Oppression of Women
Thursday, December 7, 2017
10-12 a.m., 01-611 (GFG)

You can download the series’ poster here.