In a 2014 interview for the National Endowment for the Arts Works Blog, Javier Zamora states, “I think in the United States we forget that writing and carrying that banner of ‘being a poet’ is tied into a long history of people that have literally risked [their lives] and died to write those words.”
Join us for an evening of poetry withJavier Zamora, acclaimed author of the full-length poetry collection Unaccompanied (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), featuring poetry written about his experience travelling without documentation from El Salvador to the United States to be reunited with his parents at the tender age of 9. Zamora will read from this collection as well as some newer material and discuss the writing process. At the end of the reading, there will be time for a short Q&A with the poet.
Currently, Javier Zamora is engaged at JGU leading “ReWriting Migrant Integration: Creative Writing as a Chance for Intercultural Exchange,” a seminar and creative writing workshop, together with Dr. Eva Klein and Ana Elisa Gomez Laris as part of this semester’s Studienprogramm Q+ course offering. Alongside Q+ students, two students from the Obama Institute are also taking part in this course. More information on this course may be found here.
Zamora holds a BA from UC Berkeley and an MFA from NYU. Over the years, he has been the recipient of the 2015 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the 2016 Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a 2016-2018 Wallace Stegner Fellowship, the 2017 Lannan Literary Fellowship, and the 2017 Narrative Prize. His memoir, Solito, is slated to be published by Random House in 2022.
For questions about Javier Zamora’s reading or on the The Poetry Reading Series in general, please contact Prof. Dr. Florian Freitag or Ana Elisa Gomez Laris (both from the University of Duisburg-Essen).
DFG (German Research Foundation) approves €10m in funding for a new Collaborative Research Center on “Human Differentiation” (SFB 1482)
The Obama Institute proudly confirms its participation in the new Collaborative Reseach Center “Human Differentiation” (SFB 1482), which has recently been approved for funding by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The Center will be established in July 2021 with an initial funding period of four years and potential renewals for up to twelve years.
The Center brings together a multitude of different research areas from the Social and Cultural Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz (JGU) in order to explore categories of human differentiation. It will also build and establish a theoretical framework for the analysis of processes of categorization.
Dear colleagues, this year the annual conference of the historians within the GAAS/DGfA must move online. We hope you will join us for the meeting on Zoom on February 26, 2021. (Links will be posted here closer to the time of the event.)
Conference Program
14:00 CET Introduction
14:30–16:00 CET Keynote Julie Greene “Workers of the World: U.S. Empire, Class, and Capitalism” followed by responses by Andreas Etges and Mischa Honeck
(15 minute break)
16:15–17:45CET Keynote Eileen Boris “Neither Free Nor Slave: Migrant Domestic Workers, The Employment Agency, and Reproductive Labor Under Capitalism” followed by responses by Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson and Silke Hackenesch
(15 minute break)
18:00–19:30 CET Business Meeting
Login Information (For keynotes only. The business meeting will be held for eligible members, who have received separate communication about it.)
Time: 26. Feb., 2021, 02:30 PM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rom, Stockholm, Wien
The journal Early American Literature (UNC Press) has published a conference review of the Obama Institute’s 2018 conference “Transatlantic Conversations: New and Emerging Approaches to Early American Studies”.
Research Group “Transnational Periodical Cultures”
Beefcake: Male Bodies, Masculinity, and Community-Building in Pre-Stonewall Gay Magazines (Workshop X)
Jan 20, 2021, 4 – 6 p.m., Online (Zoom)
Please find below the invitation and Zoom link to access workshop X, “Beefcake: Male Bodies, Masculinity, and Community-Building in Pre-Stonewall Gay Magazines,” organized by Prof. Dr. Florian Freitag (University Duisburg-Essen).
Speakers will be:
Filippo Carlà-Uhink (U Potsdam), Florian Freitag (UDE) and David K. Johnson (U of South Florida), author of Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement (2019).
We look forward to continuing our conversations on magazines with you. Best wishes, Jutta Ernst, Sabina Fazli, Oliver Scheiding
On behalf of the faculty and staff at the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, we thank you – our supporters, colleagues, students, and friends – for another successful year filled with meaningful and inspiring projects, alas, pursued under Corona conditions.
We look forward to collaborating with you, hopefully in person, in 2021 and wish you and your loved ones: Happy Holidays and all the best for the New Year!
The Executive Board of the Obama Institute
(Univ.-Prof. Dr. Mita Banerjee, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Jutta Ernst, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Alfred Hornung, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Axel Schäfer, Univ.-Prof. Dr. Oliver Scheiding)
