Dec 10 – Book Talk “‘There Are No Natives Here’: Hannah Arendt and the Erasure of Native American Citizenship” 🗓

Dec 10 – Book Talk “‘There Are No Natives Here’: Hannah Arendt and the Erasure of Native American Citizenship” 🗓

David D. Kim
(University of California, Los Angeles)

 

“’There Are No Natives Here’: Hannah Arendt and the Erasure of Native American Citizenship”

 

Dec 10, 2024, 12:15, 00.212 (ground floor), Philo II

At the height of the Cold War, Hannah Arendt mapped out America’s exceptionalism in a world of modern nation-states. She told a moving account of this country as a consent-based republic. But it drowned out the cognitive dissonance of fighting for political freedom without abolishing chattel slavery. Therefore, the aim of this lecture is to examine how Arendt promulgates the notion that America is held together by consent and compliance as opposed to coercion and conformism. Based on Kim’s latest book, Arendt’s Solidarity: Anti-Semitism and Racism in the Atlantic World (Stanford University Press, 2024), it offers a critical inquiry into her erasure of Native American citizenship.

David D. Kim is Professor in the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies and Associate Vice Provost at the International Institute.
Professor Kim’s scholarly interests range from postcolonial, global and migration studies and community engagement to human rights, cosmopolitanism, solidarity and global literary histories. He is the author of Arendt’s Solidarity: Anti-Semitism and Racism in the Atlantic World (Stanford University Press, 2024), which tracks various manifestations of this concept in the political theorist’s archival documents, publications, and recordings. His other monograph is Cosmopolitan Parables (Northwestern University Press, 2017). It investigates how German writers represent memories of colonialism, Nazism, and communism in the post-Cold War world as cross-referential, cosmopolitan entanglements.

You can download the poster for the event here.

 
Dec 10 – Guest Lecture “The Defenders. The Popularist Attempt to Uphold Protectionism in the United States, ca. 1880-1930” 🗓

Dec 10 – Guest Lecture “The Defenders. The Popularist Attempt to Uphold Protectionism in the United States, ca. 1880-1930” 🗓

Fritz Kusch
(Universität Bremen)

 

“The Defenders. The Popularist Attempt to Uphold Protectionism in the United States, ca. 1880-1930”

 

Dec 10, 2024, 16:15, 01-618, kl. Bib. (Philosophicum)

The project examines the popularist agitation for protectionist tariff policies in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Since the 1880s, a spectrum of interest groups and industrial organizations, mostly backed by wealthy industrialists, formed. These organizations were dedicated to defending the existing protectionist system of high import tariffs which Republican governments had established since the Civil War against free trade criticism and moderate reform attempts. To this end, political campaigns were routinely conducted, pamphlets and leaflets were distributed by the millions, speakers were trained, and a far-reaching set of protectionist press outlets was established. The American Protective Tariff League in New York, the Home Market Club in Boston, the Industrial League and the American Iron and Steel Association in Philadelphia were among the most important organizations. The project analyses how the establishment of these popularist protectionist organizations, the strong influence they wielded within the Republican-protectionist coalition, and their established infrastructure of political communication contributed to an entrenchment of ultra-protectionist positions within American political discourse. Ultimately, this protectionist entrenchment was a major factor in perpetuating the United States’ protectionist tariff policy far into the twentieth century and defending it against the increasingly urgent calls for tariff reform.

Fritz Kusch is a PhD candidate at the University of Bremen, where he joined the history department and the CRC 1342 “Global Dynamics of Social Policy” in 2022. He received a bachelor’s degree in modern history and political science from the University of Freiburg (2017) and a master’s degree in history as well as a bachelor’s degree in Turkish studies from Free University Berlin (2021). Besides his PhD work in Bremen, Fritz Kusch works as a seminar host for visiting groups at the Berlin Wall Memorial in Berlin.

You can download the poster for the event here.

 
Nov 19 – Guest Lecture “Canada-US Borderlands: From Wallace Stegner to Thomas King” 🗓

Nov 19 – Guest Lecture “Canada-US Borderlands: From Wallace Stegner to Thomas King” 🗓

Astrid Fellner
(Universität des Saarlandes)

 

“Canada-US Borderlands: From Wallace Stegner to Thomas King”

 

Nov 19, 2024, 09:40 am, N.106 (Campus Germersheim)

 

Guest lecture as part of the lecture series “Diversity in Canadian Literature and Culture” by Prof. Dr. Jutta Ernst

Prof. Dr. Astrid Fellner is a Professor of North American Literary and Cultural Studies at the American Studies department of the Saarland University (Universität des Saarlandes). She specialises North American Literature and Culture – e.g. Latinx Literature and Canadian Literature – as well as Body Studies, American Pop Culture, Gender Studies and Border Studies. Among her numerous publications are the book Narratives of Border Crossings: Literary Approaches and Negotiations (2021) which she edited, as well as the article “‘To Live in the Borderlands Means…’: The Transcultural Poetics of Lee Maracle” (2019), published in Le Canada: une culture de métissage/Transcultural Canada.

You can download the poster for the event here.

 
Nov 21 – Obama Lecture with Obama Dissertation Prize & Galinsky Prize 🗓

Nov 21 – Obama Lecture with Obama Dissertation Prize & Galinsky Prize 🗓

Nov 21, 2024 – 10.00-13.00 – Obama Lecture – Fakultätssaal (Philosophicum, 01-185)

Please join us for our annual Obama Lecture a week after Thanksgiving, where we will highlight outstanding work in Transnational American Studies – with a contribution from our current Obama Fellow Dr. Renae Watchman (Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies, McMaster University, Canada) – and show appreciation for the work of young scholars by awarding the Obama Dissertation Prize as well as the Hans Galinsky Memorial Prize for student and graduate theses.

Everyone is welcome!

Please see the flyer below for details or download it here.

November 2024 – Guest Lectures by Obama Fellow Dr. Renae Watchman 🗓

November 2024 – Guest Lectures by Obama Fellow Dr. Renae Watchman 🗓

 

Obama Fellow Guest Lectures

Dr. Renae Watchman

Associate Professor, Indigenous Studies
McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada

Nov 5, 14-16 in P 109a (Philosophicum)

Indigenous Literary Arts in the German Studies Curriculum: Centering Otherwise.

Suggested reading: German Studies Review, 47.1 (2024): 145–158 and short story “In 1864” by Luci Tapahonso.

Nov 12, 16-18 in 00.212 (Philosophicum II)

Hane’tonomy (Narrative Autonomy) in Contemporary Diné Film and Young Adult Literatures

Nov 18, 10-12 in P 5 (Philosophicum)

Guest lecture in the lecture course “Life Writing”

Nov 21, 10-13 in 01-185 (Fakultätssaal, Philosophicum)

Hane’tonomy: Restoring/Re-storying Diné Presence and Futurisms with Hózhǫ́

Keynote lecture during the annual Obama Lecture event; more details on the event will follow.

 

You can download the poster for the series here.

Nov 12 – Guest Lecture “Spirituality in Black Independent Magazines” 🗓

Nov 12 – Guest Lecture “Spirituality in Black Independent Magazines” 🗓

Zoë Wydra
(JGU Mainz)

 

“Spirituality in Black Independent Magazines”

 

Nov 12, 2024, 18:15-19:45, P 109a (Philosophicum)

 

Magazines as bodies – human bodies. Alive. Breathing, moving. Preaching. In this lecture, we will look at Black independent magazines as spiritual bodies. In fact, magazines like CRWN, Womanly, and HANNAH become spiritual leaders whose teachings are ubiquitous in their pages, though not necessarily obvious.
In their missions to represent authentic Black women, these magazines depict as well as build a Black female community. This focus on strengthening the larger Black community sets the indies apart from mainstream publications, which tend to focus on individuals’ achievements and exceptionalism.
Based on Christian and African-based spiritualities, African Americans have forged a unique spirituality in which knowledge of the interwovenness of all things and beings, dead or alive, is crucial. Thus, we will see how selected Black independent magazines spiritually guide the Black individual into community, inspired by the belief that the self is most authentic, free and self-actualized when in relation.

You can download the poster for the event here.