North American Studies at Göttingen University
Welcome to the North American Studies Program!
Orientation Week North American Studies
Welcome to Göttingen University and the section of North American Studies! We're happy that you haven chosen to study with us.
Below please find the plan for the "orientation week", i.e. the week prior to the start of classes, a week, that is, which we would like to use in order to provide you with the necessary information about the structure of your studies, the way you should organize your schedule of classes etc.
Please be aware that the following information pertain to B.A. studies of North American Studies. If you are a student in your M.A. program of NAS, please contact Dr. Künnemann by email from October, 14-16.
- Monday, October 14, 2024
- approx. 11:15 am (or after the general introduction in the ZHG) until approx. 12:45 pm: Introduction to North American Studies for BA students (SEP Medienraum 0.244, Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3)
Please note: You will be picked up after the general introduction at 11 am in front of the entrance to lecture hall ZHG 011 and taken to the SEP Medienraum. - from 12:45 p.m.: Fachgruppe introduction, campus tour and lunch at the canteen
- from 8 p.m.: informal get-together in front of the English Department
- approx. 10:30 a.m. to approx. 12:00 p.m.: Introduction to North American Studies for BA students (SEP Medienraum 0.244, Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3)
Please note: Please arrive at 10:30 a.m. in front of the English Department at Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3 (brown wooden door on the right side of the building). You will be picked up there and guided to the SEP Medienraum. - from 12:00 pm: Fachgruppe introduction, campus tour and lunch at the canteen
- approx. 03:00 p.m. to approx. 04:00 p.m. campus tour (SEP 0.245)
- from 8 p.m.: informal get-together in front of the English Department
- from approx. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.: timetable consultation, breakfast and short tour of the English department; organized by the Fachgruppe (SEP 0.244, Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3)
Wednesday, October 16, 2024
Thursday, October 17, 2024
Orientation Week Faculty of Humanities (please choose "North American Studies" under "Ihr erstes Fach...")
Presentation Orientation Week
Courses for First Year Students WiSe 24/25
Hidden Among Us: Urban WildLife and Nonfiction Writing
September 19, 2024, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA
Prof. Babette B. Tischleder will give a talk at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: “Hidden Among Us: Urban WildLife and Nonfiction Writing".
For more information please see the abstract and the poster.
Course Descriptions Winter Term 24/25
The course descriptions for the winter term 24/25 are available now. Take a look at the courses offered in the B.A. program, the M.A. program, or browse the full list. For most classes, registration on Stud.IP starts on September 1st 2024.
Conference "Rethinking Cold War Literary Culture"
University of Göttingen, July 4-6, 2024
Papendiek 16, 37073 Göttingen
The collapse of the Soviet Union supposedly led to the end of not only the Cold War but also, as the political philosopher Francis Fukuyama famously declared, history itself. And yet recent events—the Obama, Trump, and Biden Presidencies, the annexation of Crimea, Russiagate, the expansion of NATO, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine—have prompted some observers to suggest that the Cold War never really ended. To what extent, then, have we been sleepwalking through history?
The question is a momentous one for scholars of U.S. literary studies, which, over the course of the last decade, has seen the development of new and exciting fields, such as “post-45” and “the contemporary,” organized around the Cold War and its aftermath. This seminar invites papers that (re)consider the relationship between U.S. literature and the Cold War in light of twenty-first-century events and/or new research in the field.
We welcome papers on such topics as the institutionalization and legacy of “Cold War modernism” in university creative writing programs; the valences of American literature to public diplomacy; the relationship between literary “schools” (the Beats, Black Mountain Poets, the Black Arts Movement, the New Journalism) or genres (the campus novel, the systems novel, creative nonfiction, jazz poetry) and Cold War politics; how the Cold War shaped the transition between the literary cultures of the Old and New Lefts; and the persistence of Cold War paradigms in contemporary U.S. literature and criticism. We are open to papers on works in any literary genre, including the novel, graphic novel, short story, poetry, drama, and song verse.
Participants:
- Jessica Bundschuh, University of Stuttgart
- Jesse McCarthy, Harvard University
- John Burt, Brandeis University
- Bill Demastes, Louisiana State University
- Kenneth Warren, University of Chicago
- James Dowthwaite, University of Jena
- Ellen Hinsey, University of Göttingen
- Ernest Suarez, Catholic University
- Andy Majeske, John Jay University
- Laura Bieger, University of Bochum
- Gábor Schein, Eötvös Lóránd University in Budapest
- Natalie Erkel, University of Bochum
- Jarosław Płuciennik, University of Lodz
- Andrew Gross, University of Göttingen
Information on the participants
Paper titles
CONFERENCE PROGRAM
Guest Lecture by Joel Pfister (Wesleyan University)
We'd like to invite you to the upcoming guest lecture by Joel Pfister (Wesleyan University) "Biting the Hand that Feeds You, Inc. American Movies on the “Incorporation” of Critique"
It will take place on Wednesday, June 19 at 17:00 s.t. in SEP 0.244 (Medienraum).
Reading by Peter Wortsman
We'd like to invite you to the upcoming reading by Peter Wortsman "The Tattooed Man Tells All"
It will take place on Thursday, June 06 at 17:00 s.t. in KWZ 0.601.
On Thursday the US Embassy will be supporting a visit by the American writer Peter Wortsman, whose play (in German translation) Der Tätowierte Mann premiered at the Deutsches Theater Göttingen in October 2021. The play is a dramatization of survivor testimonies that the author collected in Poland in the 1980s. These testimonies are stored in an archive at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC. Peter Wortsman will be reading from and answering questions about “The Tattooed Man Tells All” (the title in English) at 5pm s.t. in KWZ 0.601, where he will visit a seminar being taught by Andrew Gross. All interested students are welcome to attend.
Guest Lecture by Dr. Julius Greve (University of Oldenburg)
We'd like to invite you to the upcoming guest lecture by Dr. Julius Greve (University of Oldenburg) "Radioactivity and the Twittering Machine: Ezra Pound, Kanye West, and Reactionary Broadcasting" It will take place on Wednesday, May 15 at 17:00 s.t. in SEP 0.244 (Medienraum).
Guest Lecture by Michele Meek (Filmmaker and Professor at Bridgewater State University)
We'd like to invite you to the upcoming guest lecture by Michele Meek (Filmmaker and Professor at Bridgewater State University) "Regulating Adolescent Sexuality in U.S. Cinema". It will take place on Wednesday, April 17 at 17:00 s.t. in SEP 0.244 (Medienraum).
Course Descriptions Summer Term 2024
The course descriptions for the Summer Term 2024 are available now. Take a look at the courses offered in the B.A. program (information for second-semester BA students) and the M.A. program. For most classes, registration on Stud.IP starts on March 1st, 2024.
Course Descriptions Winter Term 23/24
The course descriptions for the winter term 23/24 are available now. Take a look at the courses offered in the B.A. program, the M.A. program, or browse the full list. For most classes, registration on Stud.IP starts on September1st 2023.
Keynote Lectures in Early American Studies. DFG Research Network “Voices & Agencies, America and the Atlantic, 1600-1865”
Phillip James Grider and the DFG Research Network “Voices & Agencies, America and the Atlantic, 1600-1865” warmly invite you to two keynote lectures in early American Studies. The lectures are accessible via zoom and take place on July 6th and 7th.
Prof. Dr. Julia Straub (Universität Fribourg) will speak on “Writing Literary Histories in Early America” On July 6th at 5:15pm CET.
Dr. Berta Joncus’ talk is titled “British Abolition Song Exported: Sounding Sentiment in Early America” and takes place on July 7th at 9:30am CET.
Please contact Phillip Grider phillipjames.grider@uni-goettingen.de to receive the Zoom link.
Guest Lecture by Christian Anderson (University of South Carolina)
We'd like to invite you to the upcoming guest lecture by Christian Anderson (University of South Carolina) "Influenza Goes to College: How American Higher Education Responded to the 1918 Pandemic" It will take place on Wednesday, June 21 at 17:00 s.t. in SEP 0.244 (Medienraum).
Program for the Tutorial "Writing Term Papers and Take Home Exams"
Sofija Popovska, M.A. student in our North American Studies program, is going to offer workshops and individual consultations for students who think they can still improve their skills in academic writing – with a special focus on some of the formats frequently encountered in our program, including term papers and take home exams. If you have pressing concerns or feel that a little extra input on writing and a chance to talk about writing-related questions with an experienced co-student can't hurt, please consult the flyer for further information or find the tutorial on Stud.IP (course no. 4509877).
Guest Lecture by Michael P. Taylor (Brigham Young University)
We'd like to invite you to the upcoming guest lecture by Michael P. Taylor (Brigham Young University) "Modern Indians in the Deutsche Reich: (Re-)claiming Indigenous American Self-Determination at the Turn of the Twentieth Century" It will take place on Wednesday, June 07 at 17:00 s.t. in SEP 0.244 (Medienraum).
More-than-Human Studies Symposium
May 16-17, 2023, Karlstad University, Sweden
Prof. Babette B. Tischleder will give a keynote at the More-than-Human Studies Symposium: “Coyotes in Chicagoland: Narrative Encounters in the More-than-Human City". Phillip Grider and Lisa Bölinger will present their papers.
For more information please visit the Symposium website
Guest Lecture by Miroslaw Miernik (University of Warsaw)
We'd like to invite you to the upcoming guest lecture by Dr. hab. Miroslaw Miernik (University of Warsaw) on "The 2007/2008 Financial Crisis and the Great Recession and its Impact on American Literature" It will take place on Wednesday, May 10 at 5 pm in SEP 0.244 (Medienraum).
Course Descriptions Summer Term 23
The course descriptions for the summer term 23 are available now. Take a look at the courses offered in the B.A. program, the M.A. program, or browse the full list. For most classes, registration on Stud.IP starts on March1st 2023.
University of Illinois, Fifth Annual Animal Studies Summer Institute, July 9-15, 2023
Call for Applications
The Center for Advanced Study (CAS) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign invites applications for the Animal Studies Summer Institute program for advanced graduate students and early career scholars pursuing research in Human-Animal Studies (HAS).
This interdisciplinary program, inaugurated in 2017, is focused on graduate students and those in the first few years post-Ph.D. or other terminal degrees and will enable up to 25
participants to work on their dissertations or publications at the University of Illinois, hosted by the Center for Advanced Study, for one intensive week. The 2023 Institute will take place from Sunday, July 9 through Saturday, July 15, 2023. For more details please consult the flyer
Voices & Agencies, America and the Atlantic, 1600-1865
The members and organizers of the DFG Research Network "Voices & Agencies, America and the Atlantic, 1600-1865" warmly invite you to three keynote lectures in early American Studies by Marisa Fuentes (Rutgers University), Frank Mehring (Radboud University, NL), and Kevin Modestino (Howard College). The three lectures are part of our upcoming workshop on "Archives & Theory," but they will be very much concerned with the intricacies and pitfalls of archival "practices" as well. Check out titles and times below and feel free to join us, we'll be happy to "see" you online. Please consult the flyer for further information.
Please contact Elena Furlanetto / elenfurlanetto@gmail.com to receive the Zoom link.
Program for the Tutorial "Writing Term Papers and Take Home Exams"
Iris Lassahn, M.A. student in our North American Studies program, is going to offer workshops and individual consultations for students who think they can still improve their skills in academic writing – with a special focus on some of the formats frequently encountered in our program, including term papers and take home exams. If you have pressing concerns or feel that a little extra input on writing and a chance to talk about writing-related questions with an experienced co-student can't hurt, please consult the flyer for further information or find the tutorial on Stud.IP (course no. 4510512).
Orientation Week North American Studies
Welcome to Göttingen University and the section of North American Studies! We're happy that you haven chosen to study with us.
Below please find the plan for the "orientation week", i.e. the week prior to the start of classes, a week, that is, which we would like to use in order to provide you with the necessary information about the structure of your studies, the way you should organize your schedule of classes etc.
Please be aware that the following information pertain to B.A. studies of North American Studies. If you are a student in your M.A. program of NAS, please contact Dr. Künnemann by email from 17-19 October.
Also, please note that due to the pandemic, there might be last minute changes in the following program (and possibly a switch to the info meetings being held online). So please check this space shortly before the respective meetings and gatherings. We strongly recommend wearing FFP2 face masks during live meetings.
- Montag, 17.10.2022
- ca. 11:15 Uhr (bzw. nach der allgemeinen Einführung im ZHG) bis ca. 12:45 Uhr: Einführung in das Studium des Fachs North American Studies für BA-Studierende (SEP Medienraum; 0.244 im Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3)
Bitte beachten: Sie werden im Anschluss an die allgemeine Einführung um 11 Uhr/11:15 Uhr vor dem Eingang des Hörsaals ZHG 007 abgeholt und in den SEP-Medienraum gebracht. - ab 12:45 Uhr: Vorstellung durch die Fachgruppe, Campustour und Mensen
- ab 20 Uhr: informelles Get-Together vor dem Englischen Seminar (Fachgruppe)
- ca. 11:00 Uhr bis ca. 12:15 Uhr: Einführung in das Studium des Fachs North American Studies für BA-Studierende (SEP Medienraum; 0.244 im Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3)
Bitte beachten: Bitte finden Sie sich um 11:00 Uhr vor dem Englischen Seminar im Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3 ein (braune Holztür rechts am Rondel). Dort werden Sie abgeholt und in den SEP Medienraum begleitet. - ab 12:15 Uhr: Vorstellung durch die Fachgruppe, Campustour und Mensen
- ab 20 Uhr: informelles Get-Together vor dem Englischen Seminar
- von ca. 10 bis 14 Uhr: Stundenplanberatung, Frühstück und Kurzführungen durch das Englische Seminar; organisiert durch die Fachgruppe Englisch (SEP Medienraum; 0.244 im Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3)
Mittwoch, 19.10.2022
Donnerstag, 20.10.2022
Course Descriptions Winter Term 22/23
The course descriptions for the winter term 22/23 are available now. Take a look at the courses offered in the B.A. program, the M.A. program, or browse the full list. For most classes, registration on Stud.IP starts on September1st 2022.
Symposium: Articulations of the Nonhuman Turn in Theory, Literature and the Arts
23 & 24 June 2022
Hosted by
Babette Tischleder (Göttingen) and Jane Desmond (Urbana-Champaign)
With
Zaia Alexander (Potsdam)
Lisa Bölinger (Göttingen)
Greta Gaard (River Falls, Wisconsin)
Lea Espinoza Garrido (Wuppertal)
Gesa Mackenthun (Rostock)
Maria Moss (Lüneburg)
Anthony Obute (Tübingen)
Susanne Opfermann (Frankfurt/Main)
Birgit Spengler (Wuppertal)
Venue: Historic Observatory
Geismar Landstraße 11, 37083 Göttingen
Note that the event is not open to the public, but a few audience seats are still available. If you are interested in attending, please send an email to Susanna Fitzsimmons:
susanna.fitzsimmons@uni-goettingen.de
For further information, please see here.
Iris Lassahn, M.A. student in our North American Studies program, is going to offer workshops and individual consultations for students who think they can still improve their skills in academic writing – with a special focus on some of the formats frequently encountered in our program, including term papers and take home exams. If you have pressing concerns or feel that a little extra input on writing and a chance to talk about writing-related questions with an experienced co-student can't hurt, please consult the flyer for further information or find the tutorial on Stud.IP (course no. 4509877).
The North American Studies Program cordially invites you to join us for “Border Crossings and Polar Bears: How Indigenous Hunting Rights in Canada Become Part of a Transnational Economy,” the first public talk by our Fulbright Professor Jane Desmond (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) at the English Department.
Meet us in SEP 0.244 (Medienraum, English Department, Käte-Hamburger-Weg 3, 37073 Göttingen) on Wednesday, 25 May 2022, at 4:15 p.m. or use the following link (Zoom meeting).
Topic: NAS Research Colloquium: Jane Desmond
Time: May 25, 2022 04:15 PM Amsterdam, Berlin, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna
On April 20, 2022, the New American Studies Journal: A Forum (NASJ) launched its first thematic issue "American Crises" with a new design and a new editorial board. The NASJ is also hosted by a new journal platform provided by Göttingen University Press.
Formerly the American Studies Journal (ASJ), the NASJ will build on a long tradition to address pressing issues in American studies and offer a forum for intellectual exchange.
We invite you to explore the relaunch issue which discusses contemporary crises, studies US publics and counterpublics, and considers the limitations of the concept “crisis”.
It features contributions by co-author of The Madwoman in the Attic Sandra M. Gilbert, US Poets Laureate Rita Dove and Robert Pinsky, Lecia Brooks of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Jane Desmond, Barbara Elias, Martín Espada, Matthew Feldman, Margaret Ferguson, Andrew Gross, Ellen Hinsey, Karen Korematsu, Jake Lamar, Andrew Majeske, Pap Ndiaye, Julia Nitz, Joel Richard Paul, Jennifer Reich, Kim Stanley Robertson, Andrea Ross, Jayson Gonzales Sae-Saueis, David Simpson, Niki Thorne, and Babette Tischleder.
Upcoming issues will incorporate additional forms of scholarly communication such as symposia, lecture recordings, and thematic podcasts.
The current Editorial Board members are Andrew Gross, Ellen Hinsey, Andrew Majeske, Karin Hoepker, Maria Moss, Gulsin Ciftci, James Dowthwaite, Julia Nitz, and Wiebke Kartheus. The journal runs on the open-source OJS software, and content is produced in SciFlow's innovative writing environment. Göttingen University Press, which SUB Göttingen runs as the university's own publishing house, is responsible for technical operation, dissemination in scholarly reference systems, and formal quality assurance. The team of the SUB Electronic Publishing Group has closely accompanied the migration process of the NASJ since 2015 and supported it on organizational, editorial, and technical levels.
The course descriptions for the summer term 2022 are available now. Take a look at the courses offered in the B.A. program, the M.A. program, or browse the full list.
For most classes, registration on Stud.IP starts on March 1st 2022.
Iris Lassahn, M.A. student in our North American Studies program, is going to offer workshops and individual consultations for students who think they can still improve their skills in academic writing – with a special focus on some of the formats frequently encountered in our program, including term papers and take home exams. If you have pressing concerns or feel that a little extra input on writing and a chance to talk about writing-related questions with an experienced co-student can't hurt, please consult the flyer for further information or find the tutorial on Stud.IP (course no. 4508915).
We invite you the upcoming keynote lecture by Lecia Brooks, Chief of Staff at The Southern Poverty Law Center, on "Black Lives Matter," followed by a discussion on the transnational dimension of the Black Lives Matter movement with a panel of local experts, including our section's Prof. Gross. The keynote will take place on Friday, November 26th, at 1pm. It is part of the Adam von Trott Ambassadors of Change International Alumni Program 2021 and if you are interested in attending the streamed event, check out their website and register here.
The course descriptions for the winter term 2021/22 are available now. Take a look at the courses offered in the B.A. program, the M.A. program, or browse the full list.
For most classes, registration on Stud.IP starts on September 1st 2021.
The course descriptions for the summer term 2021 are available now. Take a look at the courses offered in the B.A. program, the M.A. program, or browse the full list.
For most classes, registration on Stud.IP starts on March 1st 2021.
In connection with “American and British Walk Poetry from the Romantic Period to the Present” Donna Stonecipher will give a (virtual) reading of her poetry.t will take place on Thursday, July 16, 2020 from 10:15-11:45 a.m. via Zoom conference. Everyone is welcome to join this online session.
For a link to access it, please email Professor Andrew S. Gross: Andrew.gross@phil.uni-goettingen.de. For further information, please see here.
Due to the spread of the corona virus, as of 16 March 2020, per orders of the president's office, all work at the University of Goettingen should be conducted from home. The only exception is for services essential to the basic functioning of the university, like IT infrastructure, etc.
Accordingly, the SEP (incl. the secretaries' offices etc.) has been closed, and our faculty's office hours will be held via e-mail.
The term papers for classes in the WiSe 20/21 have a new deadline, which has been set to 15 May 2021. Please contact your instructors for further details. All term papers submitted prior to the new deadline are to be handed in electronically (as both PDF and word-files).
The section of North American Studies wishes all of you good health and much patience in these difficult times!
We'd like to invite you to the upcoming guest lecture by Prof. Martin Butler (University of Oldenburg) on "The Promise of Participation: On Forms of Audience Engagment and the Figure of the Amateur in Web 2.0 Environments." It will take place on Wednesday, January 29 from 4-6 pm in VG. 4.106.
We’d like to invite you to join us for a reading by Peter Wortsman, an American writer and translator, who will read from his latest book Stimme und Atem/Out of Breath, Out of Mind (Zweisprachige Erzählungen/Two-Tongued Tales).
Peter Wortsman is the author of novels, books of short fiction, plays, and travel memoirs. He is also a literary translator from German into English. He was a Fulbright Fellow in 1973, a Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellow in 1974, and a Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2010. His writing has been honored with the 1985 Beard’s Fund Short Story Award, the 2008 Gertje Potash-Suhr Prosapreis of the Society for Contemporary American Literature in German, the 2012 Gold Grand Prize for Best Travel Story of the Year in the Solas Awards Competition, and a 2014 Independent Publishers Book Award (IPPY). His travel reflections were selected five years in a row, 2008-2012, and again in 2016, for inclusion in The Best Travel Writing. His short fiction and essays have appeared, in German translation, in Manuskripte, Schreibheft, Cicero, the anthology AmLit: Neue Literatur aus den USA, published by the Druckhaus Galrev, Berlin, and in Die Welt and Die Zeit.
The event will take place next Wednesday, October 30 at 4:15 p.m. in SDP 1.245 (Seminar für Deutsche Philologie). For further information, please see here.
The North American Studies Program invites all new students to the Orientation Week starting October 14, 2019. For further the detailed program and further information, please see here.
We are excited to announce a poetry reading by Kate Daniels (Vanderbilt University).
Kate Daniels is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Vanderbilt University. She is the recipient of many awards, among them Best American Poetry 2010 and 2008. She has published several collections of poetry, including A Walk in Victoria's Secret (2010), Three Syllables Describing Addiction (2018), and In the Months of My Son's Recovery (2019). Her often lengthy, narrative poems engage themes of working-class experience, family, trauma, racism, and Southern culture. In Nashville, and other communities, she uses creative writing as an aspect of treatment for and recovery from drug addiction by teaching workshops on Writing for Recovery.
The talk will take place on Monday, July 08 at 7:30 p.m. in SEP 0.244 (Medienraum). For further information, please see here.
During the winter term 2018/19, Prof. Babette Tischleder was a Visiting Scholar in the English Department at the University of Chicago, where she was working on two different research projects. During her stay in Chicago, she presented her work in lectures at the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture, Univ. of Chicago, and at the Department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University.
We would like to invite you to the upcoming panel discussion on "Cultural Studies and Populism." The round table will feature Prof. Dr. Andrew Gross, poet Ellen Hinsey (author of the essay collection Mastering the Past: Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe and the Rise of Illiberalism [2017] as well as poetry collections such as The Illegal Age [2018]), Prof. Dr. Moritz Ege (Cultural Anthropology/European Ethnology), and Prof. Dr. Stefan Haas (Medieval and Modern History).
We hope that you can join us for this ZTMK event on Wednesday, January 30, at 6pm in ZHG 001!
This colloquium offers a forum to discuss current research projects of doctoral and postdoc candidates in the field of North American Studies, from both, Göttingen and other universities. We also invite scholars from different fields to present their work, and thus give us an opportunity to discuss interesting cutting-edge work and new approaches in the field. In addition, we are excited to offer literary readings throughout the term – from authros of literary fiction, memoir, and poetry alike. Join us on Wednesdays at 4.15 pm in VG 3.103! For the detailed program and further information, please see here.
The North American Studies Program invites all new students to the Orientation Week starting October 8, 2018. For further the detailed program and further information, please see here.
The American Studies Program invites you to an international symposium on “Poetry and Populism.“ convened by James D. Dowthwaite and Andrew S. Gross.
The event will take place from July 12-14, 2018 at the Heyne-Haus, Papendiek 16, 37073 Göttingen. For further the detailed program and further information, please see here.
In times of global deterritorialization and transnational cultural exchange, the prominence of local places of production and reception has become more, rather than less, significant. This conference intends to explore if the local and the global can still be perceived as conflicting concepts. Produced locally, but often distributed and read globally, are literary cultures characterized by the ways in which the global and the local interact and add to "glocal" practices? To learn more about the ways in which this conference will investigate the shifting interconnection between literatures and place in the twenty-first century on three intersecting planes – literary production, distribution, and reception – please see the conference website.
For H.P. Lovecraft, the weird conveys "a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe’s utmost rim." Taking its cue from Lovecraft’s enduringly influential conceptualization, this conference examines and broadens the notion of weirdness towards an ecology and geography of the weird as a new field of theoretical and practical resonances. For further information, please see the conference website.
Conservatism in the United States can seem perplexing from a European perspective. It is also under-theorized in many branches of the humanities, including literary and cultural studies. The international conference Cultures of US-American Conservatism will address both of these problems by bringing together scholars from the social sciences and the humanities to explore US-American conservatism from a cultural perspective. The goal of the conference is to interrogate this orientation by placing the multiplicity of conservative politics in relation to conservative lifestyles, beliefs, attitudes, discourses, markers of taste, media outlets, and social and familial roles.
For further information, please see the conference website
Babette B. Tischleder served as chair, panelist, and speaker at three international conferences in December and January 2017:
April 25 started early for a group of students and three faculty members of the English Department, who gathered on a platform in Göttingen at 6 a.m. to take a train to Hannover: The U.S. Consulate had invited a number of North American Studies students to attend Barack Obama's last speech as President of the U.S. on European ground. In his speech, Obama appealed to his audience to believe in a unified Europe, saying "that the United States, and the entire world, needs a strong and prosperous and democratic and united Europe."
The students from Göttingen were happy to be part of a select audience of just a few hundred people who received a personal invitation to the event. One of our students, Laura Cavallaro, even shook Obama's hand to bid him goodbye. So the three hours of waiting in order to go through security before being admitted to the venue was quickly forgotten - it was well worth it to experience President Obama live. Many thanks to the U.S. Consulate General in Hamburg for the invitation!
For more photos see here.
Ezra Pound was confined in a mental institution and facing treason charges when he won the first Bollingen Prize in 1949. Pound's defenders claimed that the prize proved artistic freedom to be alive and well in the United States. Only totalitarian regimes forced artists to tow the party line. The Pound Reaction explores how a number of writers responded to this free speech defense of Pound's poetry. The Pound Reaction was the winner of the European Association of American Studies Rob Kroes Publication Award in 2013.
Cultures of Obsolescence: History, Materiality, and the Digital Age (New York: Palgrave Macmillan), edited by Babette B. Tischleder and Sarah Wasserman is out now. Obsolescence is fundamental to the experience of modernity, not simply one dimension of an economic system. The contributors to this book investigate obsolescence as a historical phenomenon, an aesthetic practice, and an affective mode. Calling attention to the fact that obsolescence can structure everything from the self to the skyscraper, Cultures of Obsolescence asks readers to rethink existing relationships between the old and the new.
For the table of contents and further infos see the publisher's website; you can download the introduction "Thinking Out of Sync: A Theory of Obsolescence" as sample chapter.
Babette B. Tischleder's The Literary Life of Things: Case Studies in American Fiction is out now. Please visit the publisher's webpage: Campus International distribution by University of Chicago Press.
Engaging a great range of American literature from Harriet Beecher Stowe and Edith Wharton to Vladimir Nabokov and Jonathan FranzenThe Literary Life of Things illuminates scenes of animation that disclose the aesthetic, affective, and ethical dimensions of our entanglement with the material world. For more details, please see here.
We are happy to announce that Andrew S. Gross has been appointed Professor of North American Studies at the English Department of Göttingen University. In the summer term, Prof. Gross will offer the lecture course "A Cultural History of American Literature IV: From 1945 to the Present," and courses on William Faulkner, "The Clash of Civilizations in the Early Republic," and twentieth-century American poetry.
Prof. Gross is the author of Comedy, Avant-Garde, Scandal: Remembering the Holocaust after the End of History (Winter Verlag, 2010; with Susanne Rohr) and The Pound Reaction: Liberalism and Lyricism in Mid-Century American Literature (forthcoming: Winter Verlag, 2015). His research interests include captivity narratives and the literature of the Early Republic, modernist literature, nineteenth- and twentieth-century American poetry, representations of the Holocaust, representations of terrorism and 9/11, travel narratives, and the history of cultural theory.
The faculty of the North American Studies section at Göttingen University welcomes Prof. Gross aboard!
During the winter term 2014/2015, Babette B. Tischleder was on leave (Forschungssemester): She spent five months as a Fellow of the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture at the University of Chicago and presented current research in lectures in Chicago and at the Institute for Advanced Study of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. In February and March she will conduct research at the University of California, Berkeley. She will give a paper on "Serial Chronotopes: The Cultural Work of Narrative World Building in Contemporary Web and Television Series" at the 3rd International Berkeley Conference on Film & Media: "Serialities 1915/2015".
At the beginning of the winter semester 2014/15, new study regulations for our BA and MA degree programs will be in place. Please click here for further information and also check our website for possible updates. Contact the degree coordinator, Dr. Vanessa Künnemann, in case of further questions.
The conference, hosted by the English Department and the Lichtenberg Kolleg, took place in June 2013 in the Historic Observatory at Göttingen. It started with a keynote by Prof. Bill Brown of the University of Chicago on the topic of "The Obsolescence of the Human." Please see the conference website for pictures and more details.
Prospective students interested in our B.A. or M.A. program "North American Studies" can find detailed information on the curriculum, our research, and course offerings in this special section of our website. For individual counseling on the application process, course selections, and career opportunities, please contact Dr. Vanessa Künnemann.