Walter Benn Michaels
(University of Illinois, Chicago)
May 7, 2019
10 a.m.-12 noon, Philosophicum I, P109a
“The differentiation between left and right neoliberalism doesn’t really undermine the way it which it is deeply unified in its commitment to competitive markets and to the state’s role in maintaining competitive markets. For me the distinction is that ‘left neoliberals’ are people who don’t understand themselves as neoliberals. They think that their commitments to anti-racism, to anti-sexism, to anti-homophobia constitute a critique of neoliberalism. But if you look at the history of the idea of neoliberalism you can see fairly quickly that neoliberalism arises as a kind of commitment precisely to those things.” (Walter Benn Michaels)
Walter Benn Michaels is a Professor of American Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Michaels’s work has generated a set of arguments and questions around a host of issues that are central to literary studies: problems of culture and race, identities national and personal, the difference between memory and history, disagreement and difference, and meaning and intention in interpretation. He earned his Ph.D. in 1975 from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Michaels also taught at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Berkeley.
Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera
(University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez)
April 30, 2019
10 a.m.-12 noon, Philosophicum I, P109a
This talk is based on the monograph After American Studies, a timely critique of national and transnational approaches to community, and their forms of belonging and trans/patriotisms. Using reports in multicultural psychology and cultural neuroscience to interpret an array of cultural forms—including literature, art, film, advertising, search engines, urban planning, museum artifacts, visa policy, public education, and ostensibly non-state media—the argument fills a gap in contemporary criticism by a focus on what makes cultural canons symbolically effective (or not) for an individual exposed to them. The talk will address the limits of transnationalism as a paradigm, evidencing how such approaches often reiterate presumptive and essentialized notions of identity that function as new dimensions of exceptionalism.
Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera is a distinguished researcher and associate professor in the Department of Humanities at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez. He earned his Ph.D. in “Art, Literature, and Thought” from the Universidad Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. This semester he is Fulbright Distinguished Chair of American Studies at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.
As part of the university-wide open day on Jan 30, 2019, Dr. Nele Sawallisch, Dr. Damien Schlarb, and Julia Velten, M.A. (together with our student assistants Ana Elisa Gomez Laris and Amina Touzos) welcomed high school students to the Obama Institute and introduced them to the opportunities and study programs available here. Over coffee and cookies, the prospective undergraduates were able to engage with staff members and lecturers and got an impression of what studying English or American Studies at the Obama Institute has in store, from possible research topics to career options.
February 8, 2019
10 a.m.-12 noon, P 103 (Philosophicum)
Denise Uyehara was supposed to be a “good girl” from the suburbs, but instead she turned out “bad.” What went wrong — or right — depends on who you ask. In her talk, she describes work at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, exploring her Okinawan and Japanese heritage and U.S. military occupation, performance as 1/4 of the Sacred Naked Nature Girls, Shooting Columbus, and forthcoming adventures.
Denise Uyehara is an interdisciplinary performance artist, interested in telling a story by any means necessary. www.deniseuyehara.com
Interested in studying American art, working in museums, applying for research funding, or pursuing an academic career? In this unique workshop, speakers from the symposium International Perspectives on American Art will share their varied career paths in an informal discussion with students.
Speakers:
Dr. Christian Berger, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz/The Courtauld Institute of Art, London
Prof. Dr. Winfried Fluck, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin
Prof. Dr. Ursula Frohne, Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Eleanor Harvey, Ph.D., Senior Curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Anna O. Marley, Ph.D., Curator of Historical American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia
Susanne Scharf, M.A., Frankfurt am Main
Space is limited. Please register by email to Dr. Allison M. Stagg: allstagg@uni-mainz.de by February 1.
You can download the poster for the workshop here.
Title image: George Caleb Bingham, American, 1811–1879; The Wood-Boat, 1850; oil on canvas mounted on board; 25 1/8 in. × 30 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase 14:1951
