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

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

Events, Lectures, News

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-WĂŒrttemberg, 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 🗓

Events, Lectures, News

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!

Lectures, News

Studentische UnterstĂŒtzung 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 unterstĂŒtzen die Austauschlektor*innen bei:

  • BehördengĂ€ngen (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, CampusfĂŒhrung, 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 zuverlĂ€ssig
  • 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 Ă€quivalent zu einem Betriebspraktikum von 4 Wochen (Selbststudium 160 Stunden, 5LP = „Independent Studies“, Modul GMK4: Cultural Studies and Professional Orientation)
  • Einblicke in die ArbeitsablĂ€ufe 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 AuswahlgesprÀch 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

Lectures, News

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.

 

April 24 – Re-Mapping the Canon: Early American Newspaper Printers and Their Transnational Routes

April 24 – Re-Mapping the Canon: Early American Newspaper Printers and Their Transnational Routes

News

Mark Noonan (New York City College of Technology)

April 24, 2018, 6-8 p.m.,  P 103

In her recent book Through Other Continents: American Literature Across Deep Time, Wai Chee Dimock writes: “For too long, American literature has been seen as a world apart, sufficient unto itself, not burdened by the chronology and geography outside the nation 
 what we call ‘American’ literature is quite often a shorthand, a simplified name for a much more complex tangle of relations.” In part a response to Dimock’s claim, this talk addresses the transnational routes and roots of colonial era literature with a focus on three extraordinary printers: the English Quaker William Bradford, his German apprentice John Peter Zenger, and “liberty” printer John Holt. The talk incorporates the work of transnational scholars while adding theoretical concerns advocated by periodical scholars to further “thicken” and “lengthen“ our understanding of the American literary canon.