Lecture with Dr. Dr. h.c. Siri Hustvedt on June 18, 2016: “The Writing Self and the Psychiatric Patient'”

Lecture with Dr. Dr. h.c. Siri Hustvedt on June 18, 2016: “The Writing Self and the Psychiatric Patient'”

Events, Lectures

Lecture with

Dr. Dr. h.c. Siri Hustvedt

(Brooklyn)

The Writing Self and the Psychiatric Patient

June 18, 2016; 6 am (18 Uhr c.t.)
Alte Mensa, Atrium Maximum
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Drawing from my experiences as a volunteer writing teacher for psychiatric patients on the locked wards of the Payne Whitney Clinic in New York City, I ask how in an age of “biological psychiatry,” writing might be framed as a therapeutic activity for people diagnosed with mental illness. I argue that many of the current models in psychiatry are too rigid and/or confused to adequately address the subtle and beneficial effects writing has for individual patients. The objectification of inner thoughts, stories, and emotions in texts can help organize a person’s view of his or her subjectivity in ways that enhance reflection.

About Siri Hustvedt:
She is one of the most significant contemporary American writers. She received her PhD in English from Columbia University with a dissertation on Charles Dickens. With a body of work comprising 7 internationally received novels and 4 collections of essays, she has opened new ways of connecting fiction and literary criticism. In her work, she draws on philosophical, psychoanalytical, neuroscientific and gender theories in order to establish a reciprocal subjectivity connecting body and mind; a notion that also informs her work as a lecturer of psychiatry at Cornell University’s Weill Medical College. Siri Hustvedt is an associate member of the DFG-funded research training group “Life Sciences, Life Writing: Experiences at the Boundaries of Human Life between Biomedical Explanation and Lived Experience” (GRK 2015/1), at Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz.

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Lecture with Prof. Benjamin Fagan on 06/09/16: “Transnational Feminism and Freedom’s Journal”

News

Lecture with

Prof. Benjamin Fagan

(Auburn University, Alabama)

Transnational Feminism and Freedom’s Journal

Juni 09, 2016; 12 am – 2 pm
P10
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

This talk will focus on “Theresa, A Haytien Tale,” a short story published in the black newspaper Freedom’s Journal in the spring of 1828. The lecture will situate “Theresa” within the context of the newspaper in general, and especially the paper’s coverage of and commentary on women’s activism in the United States and Europe, exploring how the short story works as part of the newspaper’s broader attempts to imagine a transnational feminism.

Workshop “Religion and New Media” with Heidi Campbell, June 17, 2016.

Conferences, Events

Workshop Religion and New Media with Heidi Campbell

Organized by Anja‐Maria Bassimir and Oliver Scheiding as part of the research project
“Enterprising Evangelicalism: Distinction and Inclusion in Contemporary American Christian Religious Periodicals,” DFG Research Group 1939 UnDoing Differences: Practices in Human Differentiation

Friday, June 17, 2016
Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz
Kleine Bibliothek (Room 01‐618, access through room 01‐612), Philosophicum

Preliminary Program (last updated May 31, 2016)

Lecture with Dr. Allison Stagg on 06/08/16: “The Transatlantic Circulationof Political Caricatures in the Nineteenth Century”

News

Lecture with

Dr. Allison Stagg

(Technische Universität Berlin)

The Transatlantic Circulation of Political Caricatures in the Nineteenth Century

Juni 08, 2016; 6 pm (18 Uhr c.t.)
Georg Forster Gebäude, 02.521
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Between 1770 and 1830, a large number of caricature prints were published in London, resulting in a period that is referred to today by art historians as the “golden age of caricature”. These colorful caricatures were frequently sent from London to European cities such as Paris, Rome, and Berlin, sparking both negative and positive commentary in newspapers; the arrival of such imagery helped to shape a growing market in Europe for visual satire. In recent years academic scholarship has focused primarily on the movement of caricatures from London to Europe, ignoring the circulation of European caricatures to America. However, European caricatures were sent in large batches to America. These European images influenced an early tradition of early American caricature. This paper will approach the knowledge in America for European caricature by focusing on the American market for visual satire in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, drawing on the rich narrative of circulation of objects between London and early America.

 

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Lecture with Dr. Marion Rana on 06/14/16: “From the Inside Out: Crip Poetry’s (Re-)Claiming of Identity and Agency”

Events, Lectures, News

Lecture with

Dr. Marion Rana

(University of Bremen)

“From the Inside Out: Crip Poetry‘s (Re-)Claiming of Identity and Agency”

June 14, 2016; 4 pm (16 Uhr c.t.)
Fakultätssaal, Philosophicum
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

“[There’s] a new definition of disability and it includes power,” crip poet Chery Marie Wade proclaims in “Disability Culture Rap.” The political stance of crip poetry clearly reverberates in her call for disability artists to take the stage as “proud freedom fighters” and to talk abut disability “from the inside out.” As Rosemary Garland-Thompson has argued, disability is a specular moment. Spinning around the medical and social gaze that claims to identify disability, crip poetry successfully gives voice to a new disability identity and renegotiates the terms under which individuals with a disability are viewed. Placing crip poetry into its political and literary context, this talk will give an introduction into the genesis of the genre and its roots within the disability rights movement; it will further discuss how two of its main representatives, Cheryl Marie Wade and Jim Ferris, negotiate the community’s strife for identity and agency.

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Lecture with Dr. Patrick Erben on 06/15/16: Migration, Exile, Imperialism: The Non-English Literatures of Early America Reconsidered

General, Lectures, News

Lecture with

Dr. Patrick Erben

(University of West Georgia)

“Migration, Exile, Imperialism: The Non-English Literatures of Early America Reconsidered“

June 15, 2016; 10 am (10 Uhr c.t.)
S 1, Hörsaal des Sportinstituts

Since the early 2000s, American literary studies have witnessed a surge in textual and critical scholarship on the non-English literatures of early America and the Atlantic world. Yet, few non-English texts and authors enjoy true staying power in the pantheon of American literature courses and scholarship, with instructors clinging to the English-only canon.

The reluctance to teach and study the non-English literatures of early America goes beyond the lacking familiarity of U.S. based instructors with other languages. The field has not squarely faced a troubling question: what do Spanish, French, Dutch, German, and other early American writings have to offer beyond the familiar tropes of imperial conquest, and settler colonialism already dominating English-language texts? This lecture posits that reading the non-English literatures of early America as both diasporic and imperialist allows us to acknowledge that writers, texts, and communities may carry the guilt of conquest while espousing genuine sentiments of displacement, alienation, and loss of community.

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