The Obama Institute welcomes Prof. Hugh Sheehy, author and Professor for Creative Writing and Literature at Ramapo College, NJ. Prof. Sheehy will spend the winter semester 2021/22 as a teaching fellow of the German Academic Exchange Service (GAAS/DAAD) at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, where he will offer seminars on the American short story as well as a creative writing workshop.
Prof. Sheehy is the author of several award-winning short stories and two forthcoming novels. His collection of stories, The Invisibles (University of Georgia Press, 2011), has won the 2012 Flannery O’Connor Award and has since been translated into French. His fiction has appeared in magazines such as Five Points, The Cincinnati Review, The Kenyon Review, Glimmer Train, The Antioch Review, Crazyhorse, and Copper Nickel, as well as in The Best American Mystery Stories 2008. His critical work has been published in several outlets, including the L.A. Review of Books. He sits on the advisory board of the Hong Kong Review. In his teaching, Prof. Sheehy focuses on creative writing of long- and short-form prose as well as poetry.
The Obama Institute and Johannes Gutenberg University are excited to have Prof. Sheehy join our team this semester. We look forward to offering JGU students a unique round of courses and workshops that will allow them to engage with American literature in new ways, by approaching writing from a maker’s perspective. We thank the GAAS/DAAD for making this visit possible.
Call for Papers (abstract deadline 30 Sept. 2021):
Special Forum on Diagnosing Migrant Experience: Medical Humanities and Transnational American Studies
This special forum of the Journal of Transnational American Studies explores how Transnational American Studies and Medical Humanities can be mutually complementary. At their core, both disciplines work on, with, and beyond phenomena of multiple crossings of geographic, cultural, linguistic, epistemological, material, and physical borders.In doing so Transnational American Studies and Medical Humanities perpetually transgress their disciplinary borders. Hence, this special issue focuses on the crossroads of the two disciplines where each of these can fruitfully enhance the other.
In Medical Humanities approaches such as Narrative Medicine, the focus has been on the individual illness experience; migration-related questions such as racialization or trauma have only recently been coming to the fore. Here, migration is inextricably linked to questions of social justice. Seen from this perspective, Medical Humanities have been enriched through the perspective on migration studies. Similarly, issues of migration have also loomed large in Transnational American Studies. Work in this field has stressed the ways in which, through migrants’ perspectives, the US nation-state was seen from the outside and the inside simultaneously. At the same time, migrant experience has often been characterized by processes of racialized exclusion, economic poverty, and personal and collective trauma. These latter concerns have also centrally been investigated by the field of Medical Humanities. The current Covid-19 pandemic has once again shown that, in epidemiological terms, national boundaries cannot be policed. More than ever, there is a need for concepts and methodologies which enable us to think the medical and the transnational at one and the same time and ask for the role of literature and art within this process.
This special forum proposes that Transnational American Studies and Medical Humanities may fruitfully converge in reconfiguring different concepts of life. Through the lens of Transnational American Studies, this forum looks at how lives have been excluded by immigration bans and national border policing. In this context, Transnational American Studies emerges as a framework to make these lives visible by mapping them not only in a literal, but also in a figurative sense. Moreover, these border crossings often come at a price for those who cross the line in both a metaphorical and an actual sense: Migration and cultural invisibility can be accompanied by trauma and displacement. In this context, exhibitions and artworks on undocumented migration have emphasized the ways in which art and performance can go beyond narrative depictions of the traumas that can accompany forced migration and undocumented lives. At the intersection between migration and trauma, the borders that are being crossed are both land borders and waterways.
The experience of migration can also, quite literally, be combined with a lack of access to health care especially for undocumented migrants and unaccompanied minors. Seen from this perspective, migrant lives are in a form of double jeopardy as dramatically demonstrated, e.g., by the current distribution crisis of Covid-19 vaccines. In this context, literary narratives––novels, poems, short stories, biographies, and autobiographies––emerge as an alternative form of representation: First, they may resist both national policies of exclusion by literally writing migrant lives into the script of the nation. Second, they may defy a mere focus on medical diagnosis, especially where this diagnosis is divorced from cultural context. Defying these categories, these narratives may revolve around “unruly” subjects who refuse to be contained.
Linking illness, mental health, and trauma, such representations can also serve as a critique of health care systems. Nation-states can draw a line between those who are eligible for health care and those who are seen as “undeserving” of such care. Recent investigation as well as historical research has revealed that medical care and adequate nutrition can be withheld by state institutions. As forms of medical negligence or health injustice, such practices have been documented regarding residential schools for Native American children as well as vis-à-vis inmates of state prisons. In all these different contexts, Medical Humanities are closely connected to considerations of social justice and health equity. Instances of an absence of medical care, in turn, can be tied to the crossing of national or internal borders with which Transnational American Studies has also been concerned.
For this special forum, we seek contributions that explore the intricate connections between medical and migrant experiences and their cultural impact in past and present, such as
– Migration and mental health/trauma
– Migration and somatic manifestations
– Migration and challenges for health care systems
– Migration of medical knowledge
– Migration of medical professionals
– Migration and narrative medicine
– Migration and epi-/pandemics
– Migration and disability
– Migration and age
– Migration and global health/one health
– Migration and medical ethics
Please submit a 250-word abstract by September 30, 2021. The editors will review abstracts and invite full-length essays of 5,000–8,000 words. Please email abstracts and questions to Prof. Dr. Mita Banerjee (mita.banerjee@uni-mainz.de) and Dr. Davina Höll (davina.hoell@uni-tuebingen.de).
as you can imagine, planning for the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Historians in the German Association of American Studies (DGfA) has been difficult because of the ongoing pandemic. To provide the best possible experience under the circumstances, we have decided to move the conference “Labor and Capital in U.S. History” to a “digital plus” format. This means that all panels will take place online, with an option for those wanting to come to Mainz to attend in-person if the pandemic situation improves.
Accordingly, we are also reissuing the call for papers with these changed conditions in mind.
The DGfA conference will take place February 11–12, 2022, virtually via Zoom and Gather and, hopefully, with an in-person option at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. We are accepting applications for individual papers as well as panels, and we are opening the application for virtual poster presentations for doctoral students whose research topics do not fit the scope of the conference.
The new deadline for paper proposals and poster applications is November 30, 2021.
Please find the reissued call for papers as well as the application for doctoral poster presentations below:
Reissued Call for Papers: Labor and Immigration in U.S. History
Annual Meeting of the Historians in the German Association of American Studies (DGfA), February 11–12, 2022, Mainz and online
The transnational turn has introduced significant new perspectives on the history of labor and capitalism in the United States. While the state remains an important object of analysis, decentering the nation in labor history provides additional lenses that focus on circulations, interactions, and connections below or beyond the nation-state. According to Ian Tyrell, they focus attention on exchanges across national boundaries, the impact of asymmetrical power exerted by one nation, and networks of relations not contained by nation-states. In questioning a coherent, all-encompassing national narrative, the voices and visions of people and groups who have been marginalized in the context of a nationalist myopia are reclaimed. The experiences of non-citizens and migrants, labor sojourners and “birds of passage,” inhabitants of border regions, workers of international corporations, and new digital and remote workers help provide a more complete and more complex picture of what both labor and capital have meant in various historical contexts. Negotiations of labor rights, property rights, the rights of capital or corporate personship from the emergent nation-state to globalization accounts for different appraisals of labor heroes or radicals, benevolent tycoons or robber barons. Historians such as Kiran Klaus Patel, for example, root the history of the New Deal in a global context, connecting the history of labor and capital to that of U.S. hegemony in the twentieth century. Others, such as Julie Greene, connect the immigrant experience with American empire. Likewise, Donna Gabaccia focuses on the migration world of Italian workers, and Mae Ngai traces the role of “impossible” illegal immigrant workers in the making of America.
This conference seeks to put into communication various strands of the recent historiography in labor history. To this end, we invite both individual papers and panel proposals on topics including:
the changing world of labor (industrialization, urbanization, post-industrialization, digitalization, etc.)
labor strife
labor and gender
labor, race, ethnicity, and migration
internationalization of labor markets
working class culture and solidarity
changing forms of employment (small-self-employed farmers to employees and factory workers, to the new gig-economy)
labor and space (from home-production and small workshops, to industrial spaces, the open plan office, and call centers, to post-industrial co-working spaces, creative office playrooms, and work from home setups)
labor in different geographical contexts
the contemporary role and perception of capital and capitalists during a given historical era
Please send short CVs and abstracts for individual papers of no longer than 500 words and in the case of a panel proposal an additional introduction of no longer than 300 words to the organizers until November 30, 2021 at this address: dgfahist2022@uni-mainz.de
We encourage applications from scholars at all career levels. We invite doctoral students whose research is not related to the conference topic to join our virtual poster presentation. Please refer to the corresponding call for more information.
The DGfA conference will take place February 11–12, 2022, virtually via Zoom and Gather and, hopefully, with an in-person option at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. All presentations will take place online via Zoom. If the pandemic situation improves, we will offer you the opportunity to come to Mainz and live-stream your presentation from our conference venue. In this case, we will provide information on accommodations and other material to help you organize your stay in Mainz.
We are looking forward to receiving your paper proposal.
Axel Schäfer Anja-Maria Bassimir Torsten Kathke
Call for Doctoral Poster Presentations via Gather
The Annual Meeting of the Historians in the German Association of American Studies (DGfA) has long provided a forum for the presentation and discussion of ongoing PhD projects. While the pandemic complicates the organization, we want to continue that tradition, albeit adapted to the online environment. Accordingly, for the DGfA conference Labor and Capital in U.S. History from February 11–12, 2022, we are organizing a virtual poster presentation via Gather which will allow PhD students to exhibit their projects and discuss them with conference participants in individual virtual rooms.
Gather is a video-calling space that allows for virtual meetings and interactions. We will use this tool for a designated 2-hour time-slot during the conference as our forum for the poster presentations. Conference participants can wander around the virtual environment, look at the posters, and join PhD students in their individual virtual rooms for discussion.
We invite PhD students from the fields of American Studies and North-American History, especially those matriculated at a German University, to present their research.
The Gather format allows for the upload of posters with the following measures as JEPG files: portrait or landscape orientation, A0 format, at least 1000px x 600px, no transparent backgrounds, no more than 3MB. We need to collect the posters for uploading and accordingly you need to send us your finished poster by January 16, 2022, to the following e-mail address dgfahist2022@uni-mainz.de.
Please apply by sending us your name, academic discipline, and the name of the institution you are primarily affiliated with together with the title and a short description of your project not exceeding 500 words. Send your application to the following address by November 30, 2021: dgfahist2022@uni-mainz.de with the Subject line “Poster Presentation.”
The conference will take place online via Zoom and Gather. If the pandemic situation improves, we will offer you the opportunity to come to Mainz and join us at our conference venue. In this case, we will provide information on accommodations and other material to help you organize your stay in Mainz.
Prof. Dr. Mita Banerjee and her project team are looking for an American StudiesPhD student to join their project “Alter(n) als Leistung: Successful Aging, Best Agers und die Logik der Superlative,” which is part of the recently established SFB 1482 Humandifferenzierung at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. The Collaborative Research Centre is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) for an initial period of four years. The PhD will be employed as wiss. Mitarbeiter*in (65%, 4 years, EG 13 TV-L, starting Aug 1, 2021 or as soon as possible).
You can find further information and more details here or on the image below.
We are looking forward to your application!
(An extension to the deadline might be possible upon request.)
after this year’s annual meeting of the historians in the DGfA/GAAS had to move online, we hope that many of us will be able to come together next year for a more in-person event, though we are planning on virtual components for those who may still be kept from traveling.
The Annual Meeting of the Historians in the German Association for American Studies (DGfA) will take place February 11-13, 2022, at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany.
We are delighted to present you with a call for papers for this event:
Call for Papers: Labor and Immigration in U.S. History
The transnational turn has introduced significant new perspectives on the history of labor and capitalism in the United States. While the state remains an important object of analysis, decentering the nation in labor history provides additional lenses that focus on circulations, interactions, and connections below or beyond the nation-state. According to Ian Tyrell, they focus attention on exchanges across national boundaries, the impact of asymmetrical power exerted by one nation, and networks of relations not contained by nation-states. In questioning a coherent, all-encompassing national narrative, the voices and visions of people and groups who have been marginalized in the context of a nationalist myopia are reclaimed. The experiences of non-citizens and migrants, labor sojourners and “birds of passage,” inhabitants of border regions, workers of international corporations, and new digital and remote workers help provide a more complete and more complex picture of what both labor and capital have meant in various historical contexts. Negotiations of labor rights, property rights, the rights of capital or corporate personship from the emergent nation-state to globalization accounts for different appraisals of labor heroes or radicals, benevolent tycoons or robber barons. Historians such as Kiran Klaus Patel, for example, root the history of the New Deal in a global context, connecting the history of labor and capital to that of U.S. hegemony in the twentieth century. Others, such as Julie Greene, connect the immigrant experience with American empire. Likewise, Donna Gabaccia focuses on the migration world of Italian workers, and Mae Ngai traces the role of “impossible” illegal immigrant workers in the making of America.
This conference seeks to put into communication various strands of the recent historiography in labor history. To this end, we invite both individual papers and panel proposals on topics including:
Please send short CVs and abstracts for individual papers of no longer than 500 words and in the case of a panel proposal an additional introduction of no longer than 300 words to the organizers until July 23, 2021 to this address: dgfahist2022@uni-mainz.de
the changing world of labor (industrialization, urbanization, post-industrialization, digitalization, etc.)
labor strife
labor and gender
labor, race, ethnicity, and migration
internationalization of labor markets
working class culture and solidarity
changing forms of employment (small-self-employed farmers to employees and factory workers, to the new gig-economy)
labor and space (from home-production and small workshops, to industrial spaces, the open plan office, and call centers, to post-industrial coworking spaces, creative office playrooms, and work from home setups)
labor in different geographical contexts
the contemporary role and perception of capital and capitalists during a given historical era
Due to continuing uncertainties regarding travel and in-person meetings because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this conference will take place in a hybrid format at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and online. When applying, please indicate whether you plan on attending in person or joining us virtually. For those attending in person, we will provide information on accommodation, but please make sure to organize your own stay in Mainz.
We would like to invite everyone to the Obama Institute’s annual Fourth of July Lecture on July 5 (4 p.m.). Members of the OI Executive Board will start by briefly introducing the latest news in Research at the OI, including the recently established SFB 1482 “Humandifferenzierung”, which was approved for its first four years of funding by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) just a few weeks ago.
Then, we will welcome Professor Glenn T. Eskew from Georgia State University for a talk on “The Ongoing Ideological Struggle ‘To Redeem the Soul of America’ and the World” before Dr. habil. René Dietrich will give his Öffentliche Antrittsvorlesung on “Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Fiction and Being Committed in/to American Studies” in order to formally complete his Habilitation and receive his Venia Legendi.
Please see below or here for more details on the talks and our schedule.
Access
July 5, 4 – 8 p.m. You can join the event on MS Teams at any time for any or all talks by following the link on the poster or here: https://tinyurl.com/xrx8c9y2
An installation of the MS Teams application is recommended but not necessary. MS Teams will also let you access the meeting in a browser through its web client. Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge work best. Apple’s Safari is not fully supported!
RSVP to c.plicht@uni-mainz.de is welcome but not necessary. If you register, you will receive an email through MS Teams with the link and Teams calendar event prior to the event.
Program
4.00 – 4.30 p.m. Welcome and Introduction Latest OI Research News OI Executive Board Members
4.30 – 5.45 p.m. Fourth of July Guest Lecture with Q&A “The Ongoing Ideological Struggle ‘To Redeem the Soul of America’ and the World” Professor Glenn T. Eskew Georgia State University, USA
5.45 – 6.00 p.m. BREAK
6.00 – 8.00 p.m. Öffentliche Antrittsvorlesung “Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Fiction and Being Committed in/to American Studies” Dr. habil. René Dietrich JGU Obama Institute
Talks
“The Ongoing Ideological Struggle ‘To Redeem the Soul of America’ and the World” – Professor Glenn T. Eskew On January 6, 2021, the nation and world watched in horror as reactionaries attacked the United States Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of duly elected Joe Biden as the 45th President in the most extreme example of an ongoing conflict over the nation’s future. The violent clash of interests on display in Washington that day finds its roots extending fifty years into the past when postwar America’s ideological consensus began to crack. While fundamental changes in political economy, society, and culture have marked the decades since then, the United States has yet to recoalesce around a renewed ideology, although efforts have been made to do so in a landscape of competing memories. Increasingly cast as a geopolitical fight between autocracy and democracy, advocates of an inclusive American system harken back to the founding ideals of the nation in a bid to articulate a vision forward for global peace and prosperity.
“Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Fiction and Being Committed in/to American Studies” – Dr. habil. René Dietrich In a novel following the path of a Vietnamese Refugee veering between local drug gangs and leftist circles in Paris of the early 1980s, America might seem far from one’s mind. And yet, with the novel featuring a character naming himself “Le Cao Boi” (pronounced Cowboy), engaging the observation that American imperialism exists in alignment with European colonization, and asking how U.S. racism is used to excuse French racism inherited as part of its colonial legacy, America never seems far off the novel’s focus either. Thus, I want to show how The Committed, by Vietnamese-American Pulitzer price-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen can best be approached through an American Studies perspective that is itself committed to questions of the transnational, (anti-)imperial, and decolonial. Doing so, I am also exploring what it means to me to be committed to these principles of critical inquiry in my own approach to American Studies.
