Material Culture Studies at Mainz

This collaborative research initiative brings together numerous disciplines such as American Studies, Archaeology, Book History, History of Art, History, and Sociology. Related partner institutions are The Center for Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware. The initiative organizes conferences, collaborative publications, fellowships and workshops. It maintains an intense discussion group conducted by Professor Herbert Kalthoff and a junior researchers’ discussion group as well as a research training group funded by the university.

For an introduction into the initiatives’ theoretical, methodological, and empirical objectives see the forthcoming collection of essays:

Herbert Kalthoff, Torsten Cress, Tobias Röhl (Hg.): Materialität. Herausforderungen für die Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaften. München: Wilhelm Fink, 2016.

Research Projects and Programs

DFG Research Projects:

• Between Authenticity and the Market
• Biopolitics and Native American Life Writing
• Body and Metaphor in Medical Humanities
• Cultural Performance in Transnational American Studies
• Early American Short Narratives
• Life Writing in Early American Periodical
• Pedagogical Writing and Social Practice in the Age of American Romanticism
• Un/doing Differences. Praktiken der Humandifferenzierung

Further Projects:

• Early American Studies at Mainz
• Center for Comparative Native and Indigenous Studies
• DGF Research Training Group “Life Sciences – Life Writing”
• Political and Intellectual History
• Religion and American Culture
• Center for Social and Cultural Studies (SOCUM)
• Material Culture Studies at Mainz
• Historische Kulturwissenschaften Uni Mainz