Direct Exchange – Info Sessions 2024 for Programs in 2025/26 🗓

Direct Exchange – Info Sessions 2024 for Programs in 2025/26 🗓

Events, Exchange Programs, General, News, Opportunities

On Nov 6 the Obama Institute will hold an info session on its Direct Exchange programs. Please join us in room P 2 (Philosophicum) for more information about the exciting exchange opportunities!

Nov 6, 18:15-19:45
P 2 (Philosophicum)

Please find all details about the session on the flyer, which is available for download here and on the Exchange page, where you can also browse general information on the programs in order to get a headstart on what your options are and what an application would entail.

Looking forward to talking to you in person on Nov 6, when we will be happy to answer all your questions!

Anne Bull, Sandra Meerwein, Samira Deq, and Julia Velten

Election Night 2024 – Viewing Event 🗓

Election Night 2024 – Viewing Event 🗓

Events, News

Election Night 2024 at the Obama Institute

November 5, 2024, 8 p.m., meeting room 02.102, Philosophicum II

Join us in following the live coverage of the U.S. presidential election 2024!

During times of rising concerns about political stability and democratic integrity, not only in the United States but all over the world, observers anxiously await the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and expect a landmark event that will set the tone for the future of global politics and power relations. Let’s discuss the events as they unfold and check out U.S. and international reactions in a variety of news outlets and on social media.

Watch I Play I Discuss I Eat I (Sleep)

We will follow the live election coverage on CNN International and watch video messages (recorded specifically for our event) from colleagues and friends in the U.S. They will share with us their personal election insights and perspectives from their respective locations.

This will be a casual meet and mingle potluck event, including election night bingo and (shared) food and drinks. We will provide some snacks and welcome any and all contributions. Bring your friends and stay as long as you like. Sweatpants and sleeping bags allowed!

8 p.m. I Video Messages from the U.S.

Food and Drinks

Election Night Bingo

10 p.m. I CNN International Broadcast Starts

 

Contact
Dr. Julia Velten

You can download the poster for the event here.

 

Call for Papers – Being (In)Visible: Representations of Disability and Ableism in Popular Culture 🗓

Call for Papers – Being (In)Visible: Representations of Disability and Ableism in Popular Culture 🗓

Call for Papers, Conferences, News

Call for Papers

Being (In)Visible: Representations of Disability and Ableism in Popular Culture

Student Conference (Jan 16-17, 2025)

This conference will be organized by Ayishat Aluko, Jill Reuter, and Samira Schwarz, who are all M.A. students of American Studies at JGU’s Obama Institute. The conference is funded by the Gutenberg Lehrkolleg and the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies. The organizers invite contributions from Master’s students, early stage PhD students and advanced Bachelor’s students of all fields related to disability studies.

For further details, please take a closer look at the Call for Papers.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted along with a 100-word biography to disabilities.studentconference@gmail.com by 15 September 2024. Selected participants can expect to be notified by the end of September 2024.

For further information or questions please contact Ayishat Aluko (she/her).

Call for Papers – Transpacific Connections: Perspectives, Dialogues, Future Visions 🗓

Call for Papers – Transpacific Connections: Perspectives, Dialogues, Future Visions 🗓

Call for Papers, News

Call for Papers

Transpacific Connections: Perspectives, Dialogues, Future Visions


The Transpacific Studies Network (TPSN) was established in the fall of 2022 with the goal of providing new impulses in the research of Pacific cultures, ecologies, histories, literatures, politics, and societies in an interdisciplinary, multi-lingual, and, importantly, transregional manner. Following the successful conference Transcending Boundaries, held in February 2024 at the University of Mainz, Germany, the TPSN is planning to publish a collected volume on the broadly conceived theme of “Transpacific Connections.” To this purpose, we invite scholars, practitioners, and artists to share their research, art and insights concerning the transpacific to submit proposals for articles or artwork exploring connections across national and regional borders in, along, and related to what has been termed the Pacific Rim. We especially encourage suggestions and applications that entail original and alternative indigenous knowledge and scholarship approaches.

For further details, please take a closer look at the Call for Papers.

Proposals of no more than 300 words should be submitted along with a 100-word biography to transpacificstudiesnetwork@gmail.com by October 1, 2024.

For further information, please contact Sandra Meerwein.

July 8 – Guest Lecture “Go-To Lines: Reading Political Life Writing in America” 🗓

July 8 – Guest Lecture “Go-To Lines: Reading Political Life Writing in America” 🗓

Lectures, News

Irene Gammel
(Toronto Metropolitan University)

with Carlos Lozada (The New York Times)

 

Go-To Lines: Reading Political Life Writing in America

 

July 8, 2024, 15:10pm, N.206 (Campus Germersheim)

This event features Irene Gammel and Carlos Lozada discussing the role of life writing in political memoir and beyond. They delve into how these narratives address politicians’ lives under public scrutiny, particularly in the context of the Trump era, which has inspired a wave of books exploring personal and political identities and the shifts caused by the Trump era. Lozada focuses on the political aspects, while Gammel advocates for a feminist reevaluation of life writing, highlighting how personal narratives can embody political values such as care and empathy. They explore how personal stories, like those of #MeToo, can fuel resistance movements and how life writing narratives of public persons can reveal unexpected insights beyond their public personas.

Since coming to Toronto Metropolitan University in 2005, Dr. Irene Gammel has held positions as professor of English, Canada Research Chair in Modern Literature and Culture (2005; renewed 2011), and director of the Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre. She is the author and editor of fourteen books, including the internationally acclaimed Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity (MIT Press) and Looking for Anne of Green Gables (St. Martin’s Press), as well as over 50 peer-reviewed articles and chapters. Irene Gammel is well- known for her scholarship on gender and modernism. Her research has helped uncover the earliest roots of modern and feminist performance art, contributed to the consolidation of L.M. Montgomery Studies as an academic field, and claimed women‘s confessional discourses as a sub- discipline of autobiographical studies. As the Director of the Modern Literature and Culture (MLC) Research Centre, she has hosted and curated numerous exhibitions, symposia, and workshops; her passion is training students at all levels through experiential methods.

 

You can download the poster for the event here.

4th of July 2024 – Lectures, Exhibition, Get-together, Food and Drinks 🗓

4th of July 2024 – Lectures, Exhibition, Get-together, Food and Drinks 🗓

Events, Lectures, News

4th of July Events at the Obama Institute

July 4, 2024, 4-8 p.m., P4 & Foyer P2-P5 (Philosophicum)

What might the 4th of July mean to Americans and foreigners in general and especially in 2024?

From American Poetry to Money and American Identity to students’ takes on the meaning of the holiday: Join us in discussing the day’s importance and possible criticism but also in celebrating an informal Obama Institute summer get-together of students, faculty, and friends.

Food and drinks will be provided!

 

4-6 p.m. I Guest Talks I P 4

“World-losers elsewhere, conquerors here!”: The Fourth of July in American Poetry
Thomas Austenfeld
Université de Fribourg, Switzerland

Red, White, and Blue—and Greenbacks: Money and American Identity since the Civil War
Atiba Pertilla
German Historical Institute, Washington, DC, USA

 

6-8 p.m. I (Graduate) Student Project Exhibition
with Food and Drinks

Posters and other presentations by students from Dr. Claudia Görg’s and Dr. Allison Nick’s courses

Pizza, Snacks, and Drinks

 

You can download the poster for the event here.