(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA)
“Attention Shoppers: American Retail Capitalism and the Rise of the Amazon Economy”
April 25, 2023, 4:15pm, Fakultätssaal (01-185, Philosophicum)
American Retail Capitalism traces the origins of the Amazon economy to the late 19C as large-scale retailers capitalized on the uniquely permissive regulatory landscape of the American political economy to outgrow the capacity of the government to regulate them. Thelen’s explanation focuses on features of the legal context, in particular a uniquely congenial competition regime, and on the impact of a fragmented regulatory landscape that invited regulatory arbitrage and outright rule-breaking. As they grew, America’s large retailers were able to assemble an ever- growing political support coalition that could be weaponized to head off the regulatory efforts they faced.
Kathleen Thelen is Ford Professor of Political Science at MIT. Her work focuses on the origins and evolution of political-economic institutions in the rich democracies. She is the author, among others, of Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity (2014) and How Institutions Evolve (2004), and co-editor of The American Political Economy: Politics, Markets, and Power (with Jacob Hacker, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, and Paul Pierson, 2022). Thelen has served as President of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Chair of the Council for European Studies, and as President of the Society for the Advancement of Socio- Economics. Thelen is General Editor of the Cambridge University Press Series in Comparative Politics, and a permanent external member of the Max Planck Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung in Cologne, Germany.
(Anthropology/ Religious Studies, McGill University)
“Materialism and Consumption: Circulating Christian Love with American Things”
March 21, 2023, 3.00-4.30pm, 02.102 (Philo II, Jakob-Welder-Weg 20)
Please join us for a short presentation and discussion with Prof. Hillary Kaell (Anthropology/Religious Studies, McGill University) of the chapter “Materialism and Consumption: Circulating Christian Love with American Things” from her book Christian Globalism at Home: Child Sponsorship in the United States (Princeton University Press, 2020).
Materialism and Consumption: Circulating Christian Love with American Things
For two hundred years, Christians have run charitable projects to “sponsor” children abroad. Through these plans, individuals in the Global North—notably in the United States–send money to support an individual child in need. The popularity of these plans rested, in part, on how they offered donors what amounted to consumer choice: one could choose what type of child to support. However, by the 1970s Christian donors began to worry about their own “materialism” and its effects on child sponsorship. Based on my recent book Christian Globalism at Home (Princeton University Press, 2020), this presentation will explore the tight link between sponsorship and early forms of capitalism, along with the “anti-materialist” tactics that sponsors use to soften the ambivalence inherent in this form of global charitable giving.
Students and faculty are invited to a student lecture series on cinematic representations of slavery in recent American feature films, Fridays, 10:15-11:45 in lecture hall P1 (Philosophicum).
Historical films on slavery such as 12 Years a Slave provide fictionalized accounts of historical events and introduce audiences to the experiences of enslaved individuals in the past. In this series of student lectures, presenters will investigate significant and/or contentious aspects of a film’s reconstruction of slavery and its history.
This series is part of Dr. Frank Obenland’s course Cultural Studies VI “Screening the Past – American Slavery in Film”. If you have further questions about the event, please contact Dr. Frank Obenland.
Fri, Jan 13
10:15-11:45, Lecture Hall P1 (Philosophicum) Georgia Conti and Tobias Waßmund Amistad (1997) – Spielberg’s Representation of Slave Rebellion and the Middle Passage
Only very few major Hollywood films on the history of slavery have directed their focus beyond the United States. One such film is Stephen Spielberg’s retelling of the Amistad Rebellion, a cinematic representation of the often forgotten horrors of the middle passage. In this lecture, we will examine how Amistad (1997) tells a historical story of resistance and generational trauma.
Fri, Jan 20
10:15-11:45, Lecture Hall P1 (Philosophicum) Frederica Hrdina and Jonas Salz 12 Years a Slave (2013) as Cinematic (Neo-)Slave Narrative
Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave retells the story of a free Black man who was kidnapped from the North and sold into slavery. An adaptation of Solomon Northup’s autobiographical slave narrative, McQueen’s movie depicts the horrors of the daily life of an African American slave. While many films on slavery fail to provide a realistic portrayal of slavery, 12 Years a Slave introduces the first-hand experience of Solomon Northup’s original narrative to a contemporary audience.
Fri, Jan 27
10:15-11:45, Lecture Hall P1 (Philosophicum) Amé Beert and Milosz Zbikowski History as Biopic: The Underground Railroad and Fugitive Slaves in Harriet (2019)
Harriet (2019) is the first mainstream production about the life of former slave and female abolitionist Harriet Tubman. For historical films – and in this case a biopic – it is always hard to decide between staying true to history or prioritizing historical education or offering captivating entertainment. That is why in this lecture we will examine the changes to the historical events in Harriet and how they help to shed light on the historical reality of the Underground Railroad and fugitive slaves.
Fri, Feb 3
10:15-11:45, Lecture Hall P1 (Philosophicum) Elias Apel and Milena Traumann Memory and Trauma – The Psychological Effects of Slavery in Beloved (1998)
The cinematic adaptation of Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved does not so much bring a realistic depiction of the living conditions and dehumanization of the enslaved to the screen. It rather explores the traumatic character of remembering slavery and bondage. This lecture will discuss Beloved as an exceptional example for the cinematic portrayal of slavery by discussing the story of Sethe and her family, and the ways their past continues to affect them individually and in their relationships.
What does it mean to say that an artist has “sold out”? Where did this expression come from, and why has it gained such widespread currency? This talk explores the history of “selling out,” which emerges as a cultural anxiety during the Gilded Age, when Americans began to worry that personal success and financial gain might come at a moral cost. We will see how “selling out” spread from the realm of “high” art in the late nineteenth century, to popular art forms like punk rock and hip-hop today.
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.
Prof. Dr. Brigitte Johanna Glaser (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)
November 22, 2022, 9:40am, N.106 (Stufenhörsaal)
“Margaret Atwood’s Venture into Graphic Novels: The Angel Catbird Trilogy and the War Bears Series”
Professor Glaser’s research focus is in Canadian Studies, Globalization and Transcultural Literature, Postcolonial Studies as well as 18th-Century Literature and Culture. Her publications include the co- edited volumes Shifting Grounds: Cultural Tectonics along the Pacific Rim (2020) and Transgressions / Transformations: Literature and Beyond (2018). Since February 2021, she has been the president of the Association for Canadian Studies in German-Speaking Countries.
Please join us for our annual Obama Lecture on Thanksgiving, where we will celebrate 70 years of American Studies at JGU Mainz, with contributions from three professors who helped shape what has eventually become the Obama Institute. In addition, we will learn more about the current management of the USA library collection and award the Obama Dissertation Prize as well as the Galinsky Prize for outstanding student theses.
