Wednesday, July 6, 2022, 8 pm CET

Kino achteinhalb, Saarbrücken 

Introduction: Dr. Svetlana Seibel, Saarland University

Part of: Indigene Nationen Nordamerikas: Perspektiven und Einblicke

Sie könnten unterschiedlicher nicht sein: der unbeholfene Brillenträger Thomas und sein cleverer, gleichaltriger Freund Victor, Spielmacher des ortsansässigen Basketball-Teams. Die beiden Jugendlichen verbindet über ihr Alter und die Tatsache hinaus, daß sie noch nie ihre dörfliche Heimat verlassen haben, noch ein weiterer Umstand: Sie sind Indianer, Bewohner eines Reservates im Bundesstaat Idaho. Außerdem sind beide vaterlos bei Mutter bzw. Großmutter aufgewachsen. Als Victor eines Tages die Nachricht vom Tod seines Vaters in Arizona erhält, verlangt es die Tradition, dass er die sterblichen Überreste zurück in die Heimat holt. Eher widerwillig nimmt er Thomas’ Angebot in Anspruch, gemeinsam auf die Reise zu gehen. Da er pleite ist, bleibt ihm aber nichts anderes übrig; Thomas, von seinen Altersgenossen mitunter als »Medizinmann« gehänselt, scheint nämlich ganz versessen darauf, seine gesamten Ersparnisse in das Unterfangen zu investieren. So kann das Abenteuer seinen Lauf nehmen. In den folgenden Tagen werden sich die beiden jungen Männer nach anfänglichen Hindernissen mehr und mehr annähern und schließlich feststellen, dass ihre Lebenslinien noch enger miteinander verwoben sind, als sie dies bisher vermuteten.
Klassisches Roadmovie, das von einer authentischen Atmosphäre getragen wird und unaufdringlich die Frage thematisiert, ob Schuld vergeben werden kann. Wie entspannt die Filmemacher dabei mit ihrer Herkunft umgehen, spricht von großer Souveränität und macht Hoffnung auf mögliche Potenzen eines indianischen Kinos.
(Claus Löser, filmdienst.de).

In cooperation with: German-American Institute Saarland, Kino achteinhalb

Gilles Dupuis, Université de Montréal

"From Interculturalism to Transculturalism: Migrant Writings and Transmigrant Identities in Québec Literature"

Monday, July 4, 2022, 4 pm CET

Building B 3.1, Room 2.18

GENDERNAUTS - Eine Reise durch die Geschlechter

D 1999, R: Monika Treut, B: Monika Treut, K: Elfi Mikesch, M: Georg Kajanus, Sch: Eric Schefter

87 Min, FSK: 16, OmU, Documentary

Montag, 27. Juni – 20:00 Uhr

Including a film discussion with Dr. Monika Treut

Moderation: Prof. Dr. Astrid Fellner, Nordamerikanische Literatur und Kulturwissenschaften, Universität des Saarlandes und Waldemar Spallek, Kino achteinhalb

GENDERATION

D 2021, R: Monika Treut, B: Monika Treut, K: Elfi Mikesch, M: Pearl Harbour, Annette Humpe, Mona Mur, Sch: Margot Neubert-Maric, Angela Christlieb

91 Min, FSK: 0, OmU, Documentary

Dienstag, 28. Juni – 20:00 Uhr

Inclusing a film discussion with Dr. Monika Treut.

Moderation: Prof. Dr. Astrid Fellner, Nordamerikanische Literatur und Kulturwissenschaften, Universität des Saarlandes und Waldemar Spallek, Kino achteinhalb

Kooperationspartner:

Kino achteinhalb, Amerikanistik (North American Literary and Cultural Studies), Universität des Saarlandes, Ministerium für Soziales, Gesundheit Frauen und Familie des Saarlandes, FrauenGenderBibliothek Saar, LSVD Saar, Frauenbüro der Stadt Saarbrücken

June 27, 2022, 7 pm CET

Rathaus Sankt Johann, Saarbrücken 

"Perhaps We Too Shall Have a Trojan Ending" - Homer in der amerikanischen Literatur

Lecture by Dr. Svetlana Seibel, Saarland University 

In the lecture series

Homer und Homer-Rezeption

Saarbrücker literaturwissenschaftliche Ringvorlesung

Summer term 2022, Monday 7 pm CET

Tuesday June 21, 2022, 6:15 pm - 7:45 pm CET

Saarland University, building C4 7, Room 1.17 and online

Panel discussion from the event series "Krieg in der Ukraine – ein Krieg um ‚Europa‘?“

With: 

Dr. Julia Buyskykh, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Dr. Alina Mozolevska, Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University

Prof. Dr. Oleksandr Pronkevich, Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University

Dr. Viktor Sklokin, Ukrainian Catholic University

Host:

Prof. Dr. Astrid Fellner, Saarland University

Tuesday, 21 June, 4 pm CET

On Zoom: bit.ly/3N4Sdwk

Join Dr. Ewa Macura-Nnamdi for an interactive class on "How to Write a Thesis Statement."

June 11, 2022, 11 am CET

live on Zoom

Guest Lecture by Exile Di Brave: "Dancehall as Experience: Artists and Jamaican Popular Culture"

Night of the Profs 2022: Party on Campus

Friday, June 3, 2022, 10 pm CET

Foyer Audimax (B4.1), Campus Saarbrücken

Ticket sales at ASTA on campus 10 am - 1 pm (5€)/ at event (8€)

Come along and party with your professors! On the turntables:

22:00: DJ Moh
22:30: Prof. Dr. Moritz Weber
23:15: Prof. Dr. Antonio Krüger (Informatik)
00:00: Prof. Dr. Astrid Fellner (Amerikanistik)
00:45: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Maaß (BWL)
01:30: Prof. Dr. Sven Gottschling (Medizin) mit Co-DJ Philip
02:15: Prof. Dr. Annemarie Matusche-Beckmann (Jura)
03:00: Prof. Dr. Thorsten Lehr (Pharmazie)
03:45: DJ Moh

May 20, 2022, 9 am - 6 pm CET

live on site @ MUDAM Luxembourg and on-line
 

"Borderland Stories" meets "Riverine Borders"

Students from the Greater Region (Master in Border Studies and Master in American Studies at Saarland U) and from Ukraine (dept. of philology, Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University, Mykolayiv) present their joint projects which they created within the framework of the EVZ project "Borderland Stories."

The project website and all student projects can be found at borderland.online.

May 20, 2022, 9 am - 6 pm CET

live on site @ MUDAM Luxembourg and on-line
 

Symposium

Riverine Borders: On Rivers and Other Border Materialities

Waterways are essential components of the living and non-living world. They shape landscapes and serve as demarcation lines – as ‘natural borders’ – between states in many parts of the world. In addition to being lines that separate, rivers and streams are also lines that connect, and borderland territories are often particularly rich places of life, interaction, passage, porosity, cross-pollination and exchange.

Organised in the context of Zoe Leonard’s exhibition Al río / To the River, a series of lectures and the study day Riverine Borders: On rivers and other border materialities will focus on the materiality of these river borders from a territorial, geographical, and political point of view, and also from a metaphorical perspective, as arbitrary places where interests and ideologies overlap and clash.

A number of scholars and researchers in the fields of visual arts, cultural studies, history and geography will consider the riverine border in the North American and European contexts. Their interventions are both part and a continuation of contemporary debates on the status and the (symbolic) meanings of borders. These questions of borders have gained particular momentum in recent decades. The significance of borders as a response to the rise of burgeoning nationalisms or the ongoing migration management crisis in particular, has led to a forced digitalisation of border regimes, an increase in physical and digital surveillance and the multiplication of border installations worldwide.

This programme has been developed in conjunction with Zoe Leonard’s exhibition Al río / To the River (26.02–06.06.2022, Mudam Luxembourg – Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean) in collaboration with partners of the UniGR-Center for Border Studies: University of Luxembourg (Geography and Spatial Planning), Universität des Saarlandes (North American Literary and Cultural Studies) and Universität Trier (Trier Center for American Studies).

Schedule of the study day (20.05.2022):

09h00: Possibility to visit the exhibition, to discover the student project Borderland stories at Mudam Studio, and small breakfast at Mudam Café
09h45: Welcoming and small introduction
10h00: First section on the materiality of the river: Rebekka Kanesu, Dr. Ifor Duncan, Dr. C. J. Alvarez (30 minutes each + discussion)
12h30: Lunch break, possibility to visit the exhibition, and to discover the student project Borderland stories at Mudam Studio
14h00–16h30: Second section on the river as a metaphor: Elisabeth Lebovici & Catherine Facerias, Dr. Daniela Johannes, Prof. Dr. Astrid Fellner (30 minutes each + discussion)
17h00: Closing and final discussion

Please refresh the link mudam.com/stream-riverine-borders shortly before the discussion.

April 26, 2022, 6 pm CET

live on site @ Aula (bldg. A3 3), Campus, Saarland University
 

Roundtable Discussion (DE-EN interpretation)

The War in Ukraine - and its consequences for Saarland University | Krieg in der Ukraine – Was bedeutet das für die Universität des Saarlandes?

Der russische Angriffskrieg auf die Ukraine erschüttert Europa. Dieser Krieg, der sich auch gegen die Europa- bzw. Westorientierung der Ukraine richtet und auf dem Rücken der ukrainischen Bevölkerung ausgetragen wird, scheint dazu zu führen, dass ‚Europa‘ enger zusammenwächst. Zur europawissenschaftlichen Einordnung und Begleitung organisiert die Universität des Saarlandes im Sommersemester 2022 eine Veranstaltungsreihe zum Ukraine-Krieg und dessen Auswirkungen auf Europa.

Am Dienstag, 26. April von 18:15 Uhr bis 19:45 Uhr wird die Veranstaltungsreihe mit einer Podiumsdiskussion in der Aula der Universität (Geb. A3 3) eröffnet. An dieser Diskussion nehmen teil:

• Prof. Dr. Manfred Schmitt (Universitätspräsident der Universität des Saarlandes)
• Prof. Dr. Astrid Fellner (Universität des Saarlandes)
• Prof. Dr. Yuliya Stodolinska (Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University)
• Kateryna Pliss (Studierende, Universität des Saarlandes)
• Olha Slobodian (Studierende, Universität des Saarlandes)

Moderation: Dr. Johannes Abele
Mit Simultanverdolmetschung dt.-engl.

Die aktuelle Situation und ihre Folgen sowie die identitätsstiftende Funktion von ‚Europa‘ im Ukraine-Konflikt werden in den Folgewochen in weiteren Vorträgen und Podiumsdiskussionen unter anderem aus geschichtlichen, rechtlichen, medialen, ethischen und politikwissenschaftlichen Perspektiven beleuchtet; auch die Rolle des deutsch-französischen Tandems in der europäischen Außenpolitik wird diskutiert.

An der Veranstaltungsreihe beteiligten sich Wissenschaftlerinnen und Wissenschaftler der Universität des Saarlandes. Zudem sind internationale Gäste eingebunden, darunter auch vom Krieg betroffene Wissenschaftler und Studierende. Der Eintritt zu den einzelnen Veranstaltungen ist frei. Die interessierte Öffentlichkeit ist herzlich eingeladen.

Die Veranstaltungsreihe wird federführend vom Cluster für Europaforschung CEUS in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Europa-Institut, dem Rechtswissenschaftlichen Zentrum für Europaforschung und dem Frankreichzentrum der Universität des Saarlandes sowie dem Center for Border Studies der Universität der Großregion vorbereitet und in Kooperation mit dem EUROPE DIRECT Zentrum der Landeshauptstadt Saarbrücken durchgeführt.

Aktuelle Informationen zur Reihe und zu den jeweiligen Veranstaltungen finden Sie auf der Webseite des Clusters für Europaforschung CEUS.

“Dis/Ability als Teil von Diversity”

Raúl Krauthausen

April 4, 2022, 6 pm CET

Online on Zoom @ shorturl.at/dsRT7
 

Dis/Ability als Teil von Diversity

Vortrag und Gespräch: Inklusionsaktivist Raúl Krauthausen zur Frage: Wie halten wir es mit der Inklusion?

‚Diversity‘ benennt ein relationales Konzept, das als Leitmotiv für gleichberechtigte Strukturen in der Gesellschaft steht und sich auf die Zusammensetzung von Teams und Organisationen bezieht. Diversität umfasst verschieden Dimensionen (ethnische / soziale Herkunft, Geschlecht, geschlechtliche Identität, Alter, Religion oder Weltanschauung und Dis/Ability (Behinderung). Bei der Aufzählung dieser Diversitätsdimensionen wird Dis/Ability oft zuletzt genannt, vergessen bzw. unter "etc." subsumiert. Menschen mit Behinderung haben das Recht auf Inklusion und damit auf gleichberechtige Teilhabe und das Einbringen ihrer Perspektiven zu allen Themen, auch im Kontext akademischer Diskurse. Aktivistinnen und Aktivisten mit Behinderung setzten sich dafür ein, dass die Forderung auf eine gleichberechtigte Teilhabe an allen Diskursen auch umgesetzt wird. Eine der bekanntesten Inklusionsaktivisten ist der Autor und Herausgeber Raúl Krauthausen.

Das Graduiertenkolleg IRTG ‚Diversity: Mediating Difference in Transcultural Spaces‘ lädt am Montag den 04. April (18:00-19:00 Uhr s.t.) zum Gastvortrag und Gespräch mit Raúl Krauthausen zum Thema "Dis/Ability als Teil von Diversity" ein. Im Mittelpunkt seines Vortrages stehen folgende Fragen:

• Was bedeutet es, wenn Dis/Ability als Teil von Diversity nicht mitgedacht wird?
• Wo finden sich weiterhin Exklusionsmechanismen und wie kann diesen - jenseits von Lippenbekenntnissen - konstruktiv begegnet werden?
• Wer hat das Mandat, wenn es um Belange von Menschen mit Behinderung geht? Warum werden z.B. Wohngruppen von Menschen mit Behinderung in aller Regel von Menschen ohne Behinderung geleitet?

Im Anschluss an den Vortrag wird es die Gelegenheit für Fragen und Kommentare geben. Das IRTG Diversity lädt alle Interessierten herzlich zum Vortrag ein! Ausdrücklich möchten wir auch Studierende und Forschende mit Behinderung oder Beeinträchtigung zu einer Teilnahme an diesem Vortrag einladen und bitten darum, vorab Erfordernisse zur Barrierefreiheit mitzuteilen.

Die Veranstaltung ist hochschulöffentlich und findet online statt (Zoom). Bitte melden Sie sich unter folgendem Link an: shorturl.at/dsRT7

Upcoming Conference

“Border Renaissance: Recent Developments in Territorial, Cultural, and Linguistic Border Studies”

UniGR-Center for Border Studies

Check out the conference webpage for all news and the program: http://cbs.uni-gr.eu/en/project/conferences/conference-2022-border-renaissance

February 04-05, 2022

on-line and on-site

Register here: https://bit.ly/3A66BQ0

“Third-Country National Labour Workers' Mobility to and inside Europe During the Covid-19 Pandemic”

Prof. Dr. Birte Nienaber (University of Luxembourg)

January 27, 2022, 3:30 pm CET

Online on Zoom @ https://bit.ly/3JBs3B3
Meeting-ID: 825 0324 0436, Kenncode: Qxd2kx

Guest Lecture

Dr. Alina Mozolevska (Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University)

"Empowering the Voiceless in Contemporary Political and Media Discourse."

25 January 2022 - 2:15 pm CET

live on Zoom: https://bit.ly/3GRcfZ0

“Pacific Memories and Entanglements in Maori Literature”

Guest lecture in the lecture series "Memories of Diversity, Diversity of Memories"

Dr. des. Leonie John, a.r.t.e.s. Kolleg Köln

January 05, 2022, 10 am 

Online on TEAMS@ shorturl.at/bjyFI

“Reflections of Postcolonial Memory”

Guest lecture in the lecture series "Memories of Diversity, Diversity of Memories"

Dr. Sakiru Adebayo, University of British Columbia

December 15, 2021, 10 am

Online on TEAMS@ shorturl.at/bjyFI

''Traumatic Memory in Arab American Literature on the Global ‘War on Terror''

Guest lecture in the lecture series "Memories of Diversity, Diversity of Memories"

Dr. Katharina Motyl, University of Mannheim

December 8, 2021, 10 am

Online on TEAMS@ shorturl.at/bjyFI

Alle Veranstaltungen jeweils Dienstag, 19.30 Uhr im Kino Achteinhalb, Nauwieserstraße 19, Saarbrücken.

Eintritt frei.

07 December 2021

Pose (2018-2021)

Creators: Steven Canals, Brad Falchuk and Ryan Murphy

Referentin: Astrid M. Fellner (UdS)

Pose is a period drama that focuses on ballroom culture and queer/trans culture in New York City in the late 1980s. Reclaiming the heritage of LGBTQ people of color, it focuses on the competitive relationship between ball houses Abundance and Evangelista. Picking up the thread where Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning (1990) left off and offering a powerful queer/trans of color perspective to Judith Butler’s treatment of this documentary in her Bodies that Matter (1993), Pose, with its trans cast and crew, helps boost trans visibility and representation on TV.

Prof. Dr. Astrid M. Fellner is Chair of North American Literary and Cultural Studies at Saarland University. She is Vice-President of the German Association for Cultural Studies (KWG). Her main research areas are Latinx Studies, Border Studies, Gender/Queer Studies, and Popular Culture.

Körper als Bordertextur

Rhea Maria Dehn Tutosaus, M.A., Technische Universität Darmstadt

01. Dezember 2021, 17:00-18:30 Uhr

Online, Zoom

Randa Maroufis Kurzfilm Bab Sebta (2019) inszeniert die spanisch- marokkanische Grenze der Enklave Ceuta als langsam ausgeführte Choreographie täglichen Agierens und grenzüberschreitender zyklischer Bewegungen. Besonders sichtbar in diesemReenactment sind die Porteadoras. Frauen, die sich Waren und Textilien um den Körper binden, bis sich ihr Umfang verdoppelt, oder sich als Paket auf den Rücken schnüren, um sie über die Grenze zu schmuggeln. Die Grenze materialisiert sich in den Körpern, wie es Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) einführte. Sie schreibt sich in das Fleisch ein, in jede Schicht des beweglichen weiblichen Körpers und wird wortwörtlich von den Frauen getragen. Der Schmuggel wird in der Videoarbeit zu einem ästhetischen Prozess des Faltens und Umwickelns, der kontinuierlichen Ent/Grenzung, in welchem sich Körper und Grenze über das Textile im Agieren der Porteadoras miteinander verweben.

Organisiert von der interregionalen Arbeitsgruppe „Bordertexturen“ im Rahmen des UniGR-Center for Border Studies.

Anmeldung: http://atelier.bordertextures.org

Weitere Informationen:  www.bordertextures.org

Twitter @bordertextures

“Transoceanic Spaces as Memory Regions”

Guest lecture in the lecture series "Memories of Diversity, Diversity of Memories"

Dr. Hanna Teichler, Goethe University Frankfurt

December 1, 2021, 10 am

Online on TEAMS@ shorturl.at/bjyFI

Alle Veranstaltungen jeweils Dienstag, 19.30 Uhr im Kino Achteinhalb, Nauwieserstraße 19, Saarbrücken.

Eintritt frei.

30 November 2021

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018-2020)

Creator: Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa

Referentin: Svetlana Seibel (UdS)

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina premiered on Netflix in 2018, a much-anticipated release in which the audience invested great expectations. Created by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the show is based on an Archie Comics comic book series of the same title, also written by him. At the same time, however, the new series has entered a much-beloved franchise established by the 90s sitcom Sabrina, the Teenage Witch that set the tone for the Sabrina storyworld and influenced its reading for a generation of viewers, which had an impact on the show’s reception. Yet Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is not so much a remake of the 90s version as it is a reinterpretation of the entire storyworld as a dark coming-of-age story. Interviews with the show’s cast and creative team as well as the promotional teaser material released in advance of the show stipulated a series that has closer ties to the horror tradition of the 60s and 70s than to teenage comedy, which is evident not only in the show’s storylines, but also in its visuals and aesthetic. In addition, the show stands out by virtue of its eclectic engagement with the topic of witches and witchcraft, in terms of historical events such as the Salem witch panic of 1692 as well as contemporary occultism and lore based on the ideas of Wicca and their ties to discourses on gender, sexuality, and social justice. Although generally well-received, particularly in its first two seasons, the show also garnered considerable criticism, especially for its unexpected and problematic finale. These and other aspects of the show will be the subject of this talk.      

Dr. Svetlana Seibel is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Chair of North American Literary and Cultural Studies at Saarland University and an adjunct lecturer at the American Studies Institute at the University of Konstanz. She studied North American Literary and Cultural Studies, British Literary and Cultural Studies, and Classical Archaeology at Saarland University. She completed her PhD on the topic of Indigenous popular culture as a member of the International Research Training Group “Diversity: Mediating Difference in Transcultural Spaces.”

“Relocation, Internment, Concentration Camps: Multidirectional Memories of Japanese Americans during WWII”

Guest lecture in the lecture series "Memories of Diversity, Diversity of Memories"

Prof. Dr. Lynn Itagaki , University of Missouri

November 24, 2021, 10 am.

Online on TEAMS@ shorturl.at/bjyFI

Jurisdictional Incongruences and Flexible Imperial Borders: An American Studies Perspective

Jens Temmen, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf

15 November 2021, 4:30pm
Online, Zoom

Recent scholarship in American studies has centered the ways in which US imperialism today and in the past is characterized by the flexible reshaping of the allegedly rigid notions of territory, sovereignty, jurisdiction - a reshaping that frames the US as a semi-permeable and multilayered space that enables the expansion of its borders and colonial rule while simultaneously curbing postcolonial resistance within this space (cf. Temmen; cf. Goldstein). This notion of a strategic jurisdictional incongruence in the US context touches upon the very foundations of the model of the Westphalian nation-state. Based on this research, my contribution to the Atelier Bordertextures aims at exploring how flexible territoriality applies to other (post)colonial contexts such as Germany or the European Union and, for example, their discursive framing of migrant transit centers inside and outside European territory (cf. “Fiktion der Nichteinreise“).

Organized by the interregional working group “Bordertextures” (UniGR-Center for Border Studies)

Alle Veranstaltungen jeweils Dienstag, 19.30 Uhr im Kino Achteinhalb, Nauwieserstraße 19, Saarbrücken.

Eintritt frei.

16 November 2021

Love, Death & Robots (2019 –)

Creator: Tim Miller

Referentin: Isis Luxenburger (UdS)

The adult animated Netflix anthology series Love, Death & Robots (since 2019) unites stand-alone episodes of animated shorts. These independent episodes are produced by different animation studios from all over the world and have different directors. They vary strongly in runtime and style but all of them present either a utopian or a dystopian setting—can be characterized as science-fiction. Within the sci-fi genre, many links to other works can be found—reaching from recent Disney/Pixar productions like WALL•E (2008) over Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) back to Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). While some episodes contain implicit or explicit social criticism, others are merely meant to entertain, to explore the medium of animated film or to stand for themselves as works of art. While the format of very short individual and fully independent episodes seems like an invitation to binge-watch Love, Death & Robots, many episodes—as animated shorts—offer food for thought, creating a contradiction. Hence, despite this invitation, the series also questions the commonplace practice of non-stop consumption of streamed series without taking time to digest and reflect the cinematic input.

Isis Luxenburger is a doctoral researcher in the International Research Training Group “Diversity. Mediating Difference in Transcultural Spaces” at Saarland University, the University of Trier and the University of Montreal. Her research interests include the cultural studies of (industrial) films and, in general, investigating research subjects rooted in other disciplines—especially Film Studies, Game Studies, Border Studies and Translation Studies—from a Cultural Studies perspective. She is currently working on her interdisciplinary dissertation project on the mediation of industrial culture in films on the heavy industry in the Canadian province of Quebec and the Greater Region Saar-Lor-Lux.

Alle Veranstaltungen jeweils Dienstag, 19.30 Uhr im Kino Achteinhalb, Nauwieserstraße 19, Saarbrücken.

Eintritt frei.

09 November 2021

The Terror (2018-2019)

Creators: David Kajganich, Max Borenstein and Alexander Woo

Referent: Marc-Oliver Frisch (UdS)

In May 1845, an expedition under the command of Captain Sir John Franklin, consisting of 134 men aboard two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, set sail from England. Its objective: to find the Northwest Passage through the Arctic. By October 1846, the ships were trapped in the ice. By May 1848, Franklin himself was dead and Erebus and Terror had been abandoned by their crews. And by 1852, both vessels and the men that had sailed upon them had vanished. In the following years, the remains of several of the sailors were found, but it was not until 2014 and 2016 that the wrecks of the ships were located. What happened to the expedition remains largely unknown and has been a subject of speculation. In 2018, the critically acclaimed first season of the American television series The Terror, developed by screenwriter David Kajganich and based on a 2007 novel by Dan Simmons, offered a fictional account of the expedition’s fate. Starring Jared Harris, Tobias Menzies, Adam Nagaitis, and Nive Nielsen, The Terror combines classic horror and adventure tropes into the chilling, often literal dissection of the Franklin expedition as Western civilization in a nutshell – or two nutshells, as it were: a civilization that stops at nothing to indulge its imperialist ideology, seeks to defy the forces of nature even in the face of certain doom, and finally turns on itself when there is nothing else left to devour.

Marc-Oliver Frisch is a freelance critic and translator and a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of North American Literature at Universität des Saarlandes.

IRTG Guest Lecture

Prof. Dr. Johan Schimanski (University of Oslo)

"Border Traumas, Aesthetics, and Memory"

Taking as its departure point the use of photographs in a novel by Swedish author Johannes Anyuru, this lecture examines the role of border traumas and memory objects in migration literature with help of border aesthetics. We ask whether published narratives of migrant border-crossing may involve the longer, ‘despectacularizing’ temporalities of cultural memory in diasporic and multi-generational contexts.

Johan Schimanski is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Oslo and at present Guest Professor of Border Studies at Saarland University. Recent publication include Grenzungen: Versuche zu einer Poetik der Grenze (2020) and, edited with Jopi Nyman, Border Images, Border Narratives (2021).

Guest Lecture in the Lecture Series "Memories of Diversity, Diversity of Memories" (Prof. Dr. Astrid M. Fellner / Dr. Magdalena Pfalzgraf)

November 3rd, 2021 - 10 am CET

live on MS Teams: shorturl.at/bjyFI

Guest Lecture

Dr. Ulrike Spring (University of Oslo)

"Diskursive und andere Grenzen zwischen Europa und der Arktis um 1900"

25. Oktober 2021 - 16:15 CEST

live on MS Team. Anmeldung: stephanie.blum@uni-saarland.de

Dr. Ulrike Spring, Historikerin an der Universität Oslo, trägt am Montag, den 25. Oktober 2021 um 16 Uhr im Rahmen der Ringvorlesung der Europäischen Kulturstudien: "Europa: Konzepte und Narrative" vor zum Thema "Diskursive und andere Grenzen zwischen Europa und der Arktis um 1900".

Populism Guest Lecture

Dr. Simon Strick (Freie Universität Berlin)

"Populism is over. Digital Fascism and Trump's Afterlives"

July 21st, 2021 - 6:15 pm CET

live on zoom: https://bit.ly/3tAM4OI

This talk argues that the concept of populism, insofar as it is used to describe rightwing opinionmongering on digital platforms, is no longer useful to describe the amorphous actors, algorithmic strategies or neofascist swarm-movements of the present. Analysing so-called memetic warfare, their exploitation of digital attention economies, and the affective strategies of the alt-right, this talk calls for a granular perspective on the contemporary far right. Rather than presenting a top-down authoritarian mindset or digital crowds seduced by aspiring totalitarians, the vernacular fascisms thriving in digital networks constitute bottom-up movements and user-driven dynamics: leaderless, volatile, consumer-oriented and embedded into the ordinary digital lifeworlds afforded by social media. This talk will present an affective model to think about contemporary rightwing agitations and movements, and argue for cultural studies as a prime methodology to explain the current turn to what I call "reflexive fascism".

Simon Strick is a scholar of Cultural, Media and Gender Studies. He received his phD from Humboldt University with a thesis on pain, sentimentalism and biopolitics; the book American Dolorologies was published with SUNY Press in 2014. He has held positions at Humboldt University, Paderborn University, JFK-Institute Berlin, ZfL Berlin and the University of Virginia.  In 2018 he received a grant by the VW-Foundation for his research project Feeling (Alt)Right: Affective and Identity Politics of Online Extremism. The monograph Rechte Gefühle: Affekte und Strategien des digitalen Faschismus is published by transcript in May 2021. He currently works at the ZeM Brandenburg. Together with Susann Neuenfeldt and Werner Türk, he founded the performance group PKRK, which is active in Berlin theatres since 2009.

Guest lecture as part of the lecture series "Populism," organized by Astrid M. Fellner, Eva Nossem, Luitpold Rampeltshammer, Thomas Schmidgall, and Erich Steiner. Please register here: https://bit.ly/3vxhZBK.

Fargo

Talk by Bärbel Schlimbach

Monday, 19 July 2021, 8 pm CEST

Kino Achteinhalb

Fargo is a crime drama anthology series with four seasons so far, the latest of which started to air in the U.S. end of September 2020. The first season premiered in 2014 on FX and was loosely based on the 1996 film Fargo directed by the Coen Brothers. Joel and Ethan Coen act as executive producers for the series along with Noah Hawley who is also the lead writer for all seasons. Typically for an anthology series, each season narrates a concluded story, set in a different time and location. Each season features a different cast of characters, although there are some characters who show up in several seasons which allows for interconnections between the different seasons. Although season 2-4 are not directly based on the movie Fargo, they convey intertextual/interfilmic references to several Coen Brothers movies. Among other aspects, my presentation will investigate these interconnections between movies and series, look at the genre »crime drama« and try to find explanations why this is one of the most popular genres. Moreover, I will consider possible functions of the black humor which is an essential feature of the series. 

more info: https://www.kinoachteinhalb.de/programm/3842/filmtalk-about-fargo-since-2014

Populism Guest Lecture

Dr. Giorgia Bulli (Università di Firenze)

"Rhetoric or reality? Populist parties between communication overpromising and policy making"

July 14th, 2021 - 6:15 pm CET

live on zoom: https://bit.ly/3tAM4OI

In September 2018, four months after the creation of the first coalition in Italy between the right wing populist Lega (League) and the “pure populist” Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S - Five Star Movement), the then speaker of the M5S, and Minister of Labour Luigi Di Maio announced the “abolition of poverty”. The resounding statement was pronounced from the balcony of the seat of the Italian government and received an extraordinary media coverage. The declaration announced the new economic course of the Italian government and the introduction of the new "citizens' income" provisions. After less than one and a half years, the coalition with the Lega collapsed, the "citizens’ income" norms can hardly be described as implemented, and the two parties are now supporting the new Cabinet led by Prime Minister Mario Draghi that followed the coalition between the M5S and the Partito Democratico (PD) established after the end of the “pure populist coalition.” The example above can be considered as the representation of the endemic crisis of political representation affecting Italy, as well as other European and non-European countries. Yet, it also can be understood as a typical manifestation of the populist overpromising strategy and of the difficulties that populist parties encounter when they face the passage from opposition to government. Starting from the scientific frameworks adopted to interpret populism and its relationship with the current forms of political communication, the talk will deal with the following questions: i) can populism be described as a communication strategy? ii) how does the populist rhetoric intercept the legitimation crisis that affects contemporary democracies? iii) how far are populist parties able to keep their promises in the policy making when they are in power, and how do they describe their political action in symbolic terms?

Giorgia Bulli is Lecturer in “Political Communication” and “Discourse Analysis” at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, University of Florence, where she teaches “Political Communication” and “Discourse Analysis”. She is the author of publications in the field of poulist and right-wing parties and movements.

Guest lecture as part of the lecture series "Populism," organized by Astrid M. Fellner, Eva Nossem, Luitpold Rampeltshammer, Thomas Schmidgall, and Erich Steiner. Please register here: https://bit.ly/3vxhZBK.

Populism Guest Lecture

Prof. Dr. Till van Rahden (Université de Montréal)

"Democratic Vistas: Transatlantic Anxieties in an Age of Populism"

July 7th, 2021 - 6:15 pm CET

live on zoom: https://bit.ly/3tAM4OI

After the Cold War ended, liberal democracy was taken for granted. Now it is in crisis: many citizens distrust parliamentary politics, the people's parties all over Europe are losing members and votes, Twitter and Instagram are crowding out public debates and civility. To invoke Walt Whitman is to challenge the sense of despair that informs recent conversations. “Democratic Vistas”, penned in 1870, against the background of the American Civil War, articulated a conception of democracy as a way of life. It “is only of use there that it may […] come to its flower and fruits in manners, in the highest forms of interaction between men, and their beliefs—in religion, literature, colleges, and schools—democracy in all public and private life.” Like Whitman, I will argue that it might prove useful to explore what keeps democracies alive. Postwar Germany’s democratic miracle provides us with a fascinating case study to think about democracy as a way of life and to better understand the cultural foundations of democracy in aesthetics and everyday life. I contend that no matter how stable a democratic government might appear to be, without forms and spaces that allow for democratic experiences in everyday life it will wither away.

Till van Rahden teaches modern European history at the Université de Montréal where he held the Canada Research Chair in German and European Studies from 2006 to 2016. Since January 2021 he is also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the “Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften,” an Institute for Advanced Studies of the Goethe University. In 2018, he was a LFUI-Guest Professor at the University of Innsbruck, and in 2016, he held fellowships at the “Leibniz Institute for European History” and the “Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen.” He specializes in European history since the Enlightenment and is interested in the tension between the elusive promise of democratic equality and the recurrent presence of moral conflicts.In 1993, he received an M.A. in American history from The Johns Hopkins University, and in 1999, he completed his dissertation at the University of Bielefeld which received the “Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History” and was published as Jews and other Germans: Civil Society, Religious Diversity and Urban Politics in Breslau, 1860-1925 (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008). He has co-edited Juden, Bürger, Deutsche: Zur Geschichte von Vielfalt und Differenz 1800-1933 (Mohr Siebeck, 2001), Demokratie im Schatten der Gewalt (Göttingen, 2010), Autorität: Krise, Konstruktion und Konjunktur (Fink, 2016); Emanzipation und Recht: Zur Geschichte der Rechtswissenschaft und der jüdischen Gleichberechtigung (Klostermann, 2021). Recent publications include: “Lumpen sammeln: Siegfried Kracauer und die Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts,” in Historische Zeitschrift 307 (2018), pp. 319-340, Demokratie: Eine gefährdete Lebensform (Campus, 2019), Vielheit: Juden und die Ambivalenzen des Universalismus seit der Aufklärung (Hamburger Edition, 2022).

Guest lecture as part of the lecture series "Populism," organized by Astrid M. Fellner, Eva Nossem, Luitpold Rampeltshammer, Thomas Schmidgall, and Erich Steiner. Please register here: https://bit.ly/3vxhZBK.

Prof. Dr. Astrid M. Fellner

Die Protestbewegungen und Gegenkulturen der 60er Jahre haben auf allen Gebieten der Kunst, Kultur und Gesellschaft in Europa ihre Spuren hinterlassen. Wo etwa Jugendkulturen sich formieren, Subkulturen sich wandeln oder Gender-Identitäten sich destabilisieren, dort kommt den aus den USA importierten kulturellen Texten, Bildern, Stilen und Praktiken nach wie vor eine entscheidende Rolle zu. Wird Populärkultur von der heutigen Jugend aber immer noch als „amerikanisch“ und „cool“ wahrgenommen? Gibt der Ausdruck ‚Cool’ als Indikator der Stärke des Affekts immer noch Auskunft über den transatlantischen Bogen, den kulturelle Texte, Musik, Produkte und Praktiken in lokalen Aneignungsprozessen in Europa durchlaufen?

Montag, 05. Juli 2021, 18:30 CET

Zoom:us02web.zoom.us/j/81130651635 , Meeting-ID: 811 3065 1635

Organisation: Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut Saarland (DAI Saarland), Kooperationspartner: Auswärtiges Amt

Vortragsreihe "Amerikanische Populärkultur"

UniGR-Center for Border Studies Guest Lecture

Dr. Daniela Johannes (West Chester University of Pennsylvania)

"Dust and Death: Politics of Nature at the U.S.-Mexico Border"

June 29th, 2021 - 4:15 pm CEST

live on zoom: https://bit.ly/3gJCRjT

Dust and death coexist in the Mexico-U.S. border region, a desert landscape that has become a signifier for remoteness, fear and fatality. This presentation draws attention to the agency of the Sonoran desert environment as a crucial aspect of U.S. securitization that begins a “nature politics” mode of sovereignty, a politics that controls death by natural causes as a way of conserving the life of the nation; this modern sovereignty finds ways of excluding bodies that are deemed unassimilable or unqualifiable for the nation without undertaking responsibility for deaths or disappearance. In this presentation I first show how the state in its nature politics relies on the presumably fixed equation of illegal-equals-brown-equals-deserving of death, to then exemplify representations of nature politics in literary accounts and determine whether literature holds the capacity contest the discourses of sovereign power by denouncing and dismantling official discourses.

Please register here: https://bit.ly/3gJCRjT

Contact:

Dr. Daniela Johannes | daniela.johannes@extern.uni-saarland.de

Eva Nossem | e.nossem@mx.uni-saarland.de | Tel.: +49 681 302-3573.

Don't miss Dr. Svetlana Seibel's presentation on Bones.

Tuesday, 29 June 2021, 8 pm CEST

Kino Achteinhalb

You'll need a negative coronatest to get in and please register in advance!

https://www.kinoachteinhalb.de/programm

Populism Guest Lecture

Dr. Yulia Stodolinska (Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University)

"Corona Discourses in the US: Multimodal Representation on University Websites"

June 26th, 2021 - 2:15 pm CET

live on zoom: https://bit.ly/3xteZqp

Guest lecture as part of the Proseminar "Of Anti-Maskers, Front-Line Workers, and Superspreaders: Critically Analyzing Corona Discourses," organized by Eva Nossem. Please register here:https://bit.ly/3xteZqp
.

Populism Guest Lecture

Prof. Dr. Ruth Wodak (Lancaster University)

"The Politics of Fear. The shameless normalization of far-right discourse"

June 16th, 2021 - 6:15 pm CET

live on zoom: https://bit.ly/3tAM4OI

Many context-dependent socio-political, economic, cultural, and historical factors, apart from the performance of allegedly charismatic leaders, lead to the rise of the populist farright, supported by conservative mainstream parties and the (social) media (Bevelander & Wodak 2019). Recently, huge scandals (such as in Austria – “Ibizagate”; Wodak 2019) illustrate that formerly taboo subjects and expressions in mainstream discourse are being accepted more and more (‘normalization’) and  have become part and parcel of mainstream politics. Such normalization goes hand in hand with a certain shamelessness’: the limits of the sayable are shifting regarding both the frequency of lies (Block 2019) and the violating discourse and politeness conventions – as well as regarding repeated attacks on salient democratic institutions. Discursive strategies of provocation, blame avoidance, denial, Manichean division, victim perpetrator reversal as well as eristic argumentation and conspiracy theories dominate official communication, accompanied by ever more nativist nationalism and the racialization of space.

In this vein, I claim that such rejection of dialogue relates to a ‘post-shame era’ rather than merely to a ‘post-truth era’ (e.g., Scheff 2000; Hahl et al 2018). For example, normalizing the assessment of migrants and refugees (all labeled as “illegal migrants”) as a threat to inner security, a burden on the welfare state and education system must be perceived as an international development – generally instrumentalizing a “politics of fear” and reinforcing a “coarse civility” [rohe Bürgerlichkeit] (Heitmeyer 2019; Wodak 2021).

Guest lecture as part of the lecture series "Populism," organized by Astrid M. Fellner, Eva Nossem, Luitpold Rampeltshammer, Thomas Schmidgall, and Erich Steiner. Please register here: https://bit.ly/3vxhZBK.

We're back!

Don't miss Isis Luxenburger's presentation on Modern Family.

Tuesday, 22 June 2021, 8 pm CEST

Kino Achteinhalb

You'll need a negative coronatest to get in and please register in advance!

https://www.kinoachteinhalb.de/programm

Don't miss Dr. Lisa Johnson's introduction to If Beale Street Could Talk.

Wednesday, 09 June 2021, 8 pm CEST

Introductory talk in German, followed by screening of the original version of the film (English).

Kino Achteinhalb

You'll need a negative coronatest to get in and please register in advance!

https://www.kinoachteinhalb.de/programm

Populism Guest Lecture

Prof. Dr. Julia Roth (Universität Bielefeld)

"Right-Wing Populism and Gender (Not Only) in the USA"

June 9th, 2021 - 6:15 pm CET

live on zoom: https://bit.ly/3tAM4OI

In current struggles over cultural hegemony, right-wing populist discourse is marked by an omni-presence of topics related to gender and sexuality. With particular focus on actors in the USA and the Americas, the talk thus discusses the ways in which diverse actors of what will be called the ‘right-wing populist complex’ use gender in order to catapult a variety of arguments into the public sphere. Suggesting a first set of Right-Wing Populist Patterns of Gendering, the talk pursues the question how seemingly emancipatory arguments function in right-wing populist discourse, especially in performing a modernization paradigm, while simultaneously, and in often paradoxical ways, promoting a program of re-traditionalization. Therefore, often, gender arguments – like the sexual freedom of  “autochtonous” women – are used to justify anti-immigration and racist politics, most famously Donald Trump with his claim to keep the “Mexican rapists” out of the US through his wall. One’s own society can thus be depicted as “already fully emancipated” in contrast to the alleged “backward” social order of (immigrant) Others. Through this ethnosexist twist, the talk argues that gender provides right-wing populist discourse a useful tool for affectively bridging seemingly paradoxical arguments around belonging, access to resources and welfare, anti-immigration and demography, and transferring them onto the gender hierarchy. Simultaneously, following the populist logic of polarization, feminists, gender scholars and LGBTQI activists are turned into “internal enemies” who allegedly provide a threat to children and the heteronormative family. Since they presumably keep the “right” women from reproducing, feminists and “gender ideology” are furthermore made responsible for endangering the (reproduction and homogeneity of) the nation and thus turn into an existential threat.

Julia Roth is Professor of American Studies with a focus on Gender Studies and Inter-American Studies at Bielefeld University, Germany. Previously, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the research project "The Americas as Space of Entanglements" in Bielefeld and in the interdisciplinary network "desiguALdades.net - Interdependent Inequalities in Latin America" at Freie Universität Berlin, as well as a lecturer at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Universität Potsdam, and Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico. Her research focuses on postcolonial, decolonial and gender approaches, intersectionality and global inequalities, anti-racist feminist knowledge from the Caribbean and the Americas, gender and citizenship, and right-wing populism and gender. In addition to her academic work, she organizes and curates cultural and political events (e.g., the theater festival “Women/Images of the Americas on the Move" in Berlin 2010; 2014 and 2016 BE.BOP - Black Europe Body Politics with Alanna Lockward, "De-Heimatize Belonging" at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin).  

Guest lecture as part of the lecture series "Populism," organized by Astrid M. Fellner, Eva Nossem, Luitpold Rampeltshammer, Thomas Schmidgall, and Erich Steiner. Please register here: https://bit.ly/3vxhZBK.

Populism Guest Lecture

Prof. Dr. Paula Diehl (Universität Kiel)

"Populismus und Massenmedien" (in German)

May 19th, 2021 - 6:15 pm CET

live on zoom: https://bit.ly/3tAM4OI

Wie erklärt sich, dass der Populismus so viel Aufmerksamkeit in den Massenmedien bekommt, und welche Konsequenzen hat dies für die Demokratie? Und was sind die Folgen? Ein wichtiger und doch weniger beachteter Faktor für den Erfolg des Populismus liegt in seiner Medienkompatibilität. Wer populistisch agiert inszeniert sich als schrille Gestalt, bricht mit Tabus und produziert Skandale. Populismus weckt Emotionen und dramatisiert Zusammenhänge, die zugleich als Schwarz-Weiß-Malerei präsentiert werden. Dadurch haben politische Akteure, die sich des Populismus bedienen, höhere Chancen, Medienaufmerksamkeit zu erzeugen. Es geht hier um eine systemische Begünstigung der populistischen Logik durch die Massenmedien. Dies kann auch im Fall des Rechtspopulismus beobachtet werden.

Paula Diehl ist Professorin für Politische Theorie, Ideengeschichte und Politische Kultur an der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel und assoziierte Professorin von Sciences Po in Paris. Unter anderen war sie Gastprofessorin an der Washington University (St. Louis), Sciences Po (Paris), École des Hautes Études, and Institute for Advanced Studies (Bologna). Ihre Forschungsschwerpunkte sind Demokratietheorie, Populismus, Politische Inszenierung und politische Repräsentation. 

Guest lecture as part of the lecture series "Populism," organized by Astrid M. Fellner, Eva Nossem, Luitpold Rampeltshammer, Thomas Schmidgall, and Erich Steiner. Please register here: https://bit.ly/3vxhZBK.

IRTG Guest Lecture

Dr. Lee Francis IV

"Indians in Space: Native Americans and Indigenous Representations in Sci-Fi and Pop Culture"

May 17th, 2021 - 6 pm CET

live on zoom: https://bit.ly/2Qfo4mI

Dr. Lee Francis 4 (Pueblo of Laguna) is the Head Indigenerd and CEO of Native Realities, the only Native and Indigenous pop culture company in the United States with the hope to change the perceptions of Native and Indigenous people through dynamic and imaginative pop culture representations. He has been published in multiple publications ranging from poetry to short stories. His first comic book Sixkiller which debuted June 2018 and Ghost River, which was published in 2019, have both been lauded throughout the US and abroad. He is a strong advocate for Native youth, with a focus on community literacy and entrepreneurship. He lives in Albuquerque with his family.

IRTG Guest Lecture

Dr. Benjamin Hoy

"Reaching into the Heavens: Creating the Canada-U.S. Border"

May 14th, 2021 - 5 pm CET

live on zoom: https://bit.ly/2QmmajQ

Between 1775 until 1939 Canada and the United States set out to build an international border across Indigenous lands. Federal administrators used deprivation, starvation, and coercion to displace Indigenous communities and undermine their conceptions of territory and sovereignty. The border they created never aimed to treat people equally. Instead, Europeans, African Americans, Chinese, Cree, and Haudenosaunee all experienced the border closure process at different times and in different ways. By reconstructing and mapping the spread of federal power across a continent, this talk showcases how regional conflicts, political reorganization, and social upheaval created the Canada-US border and remade the communities who lived in its shadows. 

Benjamin Hoy is an Associate Professor of History and the director of the Historical GIS Lab at the University of Saskatchewan. He has published on a wide range of topic including Indigenous history, borderlands, game-based learning, Indigenous representations in board games, and extradition policy. His first book, A Line of Blood and Dirt: Creating the Canada-United States Border across Indigenous Lands, examines the creation and enforcement of the Canadian-United States border between 1775 and 1939 and its impacts on the Indigenous residents whose land the border was created across.

Populism Guest Lecture

Prof. Dr. Arlie Russell Hochschild (University of California, Berkeley)

"The Surprising Journey of Grievance"

May 12th, 2021 - 6:15 pm CET

live on zoom: https://bit.ly/3tAM4OI

In the talk I would like to explore the “journey” of a grievance. Based on the reports of ardent Louisiana Trump supporters whom I’ve followed over a long period of time, I trace the various steps through which grievance can be transformed from

1. a local complaint to
2. a publicly legitimized grievance, mobilized by Donald Trump to
3. a legitimized and empowered grievance (at the time of January 6th, 2021)
4. de-legitimized (at the time of Trumps second impeachment) to
5. a state of de-mobilization  or re-assembly. There has been, for example, a decline in one right wing group, the KKK, but a rise in  another, the Three Percenters.

In this period of fractionalization, some believers intensify their anger and paranoia while others to varying degrees detach from their grievance. Can we think of these five stages as ways of holding grievance, and therefore as modes of emotion management in a changing context of feeling rules? 

Arlie Russell Hochschild is a professor (emerita) at the Sociology Department and the Graduate School of the University of California, Berkeley, USA. She has become widely known to a German readership through her book "Strangers in Their Own Land (2016)", translated into German by Ulrike Bischoff and published as "Fremde in ihrem Land. Eine Reise ins Herz der amerikanischen Rechten" (Campus). Work on the book took her to Louisiana during 5 years of intensive interviews with Tea Party enthusiasts. These encounters brought to light  feelings of frustration, exclusion and antagonism towards the state and its "elites" - part of the emotional "deep story" of the political Right in the US. This perceived reality is an important factor to be aware of, particularly in the context of any attempts at overcoming the extreme divisions of (US-)culture. Arlie R. Hochschild's recent sociological work has focused on various areas of culture, politics and emotionality. Further topics include the structure of families, public and private culture, global developments in care work and  in social psychology more widely. She is a prominent social scientist, and above all one who is willing and uniquely able to enter into dialogue with people beyond academia.

Guest lecture as part of the lecture series "Populism," organized by Astrid M. Fellner, Eva Nossem, Luitpold Rampeltshammer, Thomas Schmidgall, and Erich Steiner. Please register here: https://bit.ly/3vxhZBK.

Travel and Transformations: Investigating Transcultural Memory in Anglophone Literatures

IRTG Guest Lecture

Dr. Nadia Butt

"Travel and Transformations: Investigating Transcultural Memory in Anglophone Literatures"

June 22nd, 2020 - 4 pm CET

live on zoom: https://umontreal.zoom.us/j/365688569

This talk is part of the IRTG 2020 Spring Lecture Series, a series of transatlantic online talks on the topic of Memories of Diversity - the Diversity of Memories. Dr. Nadia Butt will give her talk on "Travel and Transformations: Investigating Transcultural Memory in Anglophone Literatures."

IRTG Guest Lecture

Michela Baldo

"Queering Food, Home and Memory in Italian-Canadian Women’s Writing"

June 8th, 2020 - 4 pm CET

live on zoom: https://umontreal.zoom.us/j/365688569

This talk is part of the IRTG 2020 Spring Lecture Series, a series of transatlantic online talks on the topic of Memories of Diversity - the Diversity of Memories. Michela Baldo will give her talk on "Queering Food, Home and Memory in Italian-Canadian Women's Writing."

Michela Baldo is an honorary fellow in Translation Studies at the University of Hull and holds a PhD in translation Studies from the University of Manchester. Her research revolves around two strands. One is the written and audio-visual translation into Italian of Italian-Canadian works. On the topic she has published various articles and authored a book, Italian-Canadian Narratives of Return: Analysing Cultural Translation in Diasporic Writing (2019). Her second strand of research concerns Italian queer drag performances and the role of translation in Italian queer transfeminist activism. On this topic she has published various articles and coedited a book, Il re Nudo. Per un archivio drag king in Italia (2014). She has also co-translated into English with Elena Basile the book Queer Theories, by Italian scholar Lorenzo Bernini, and is now coediting a special issue of TIS (Translation and Interpreting Studies) on translation and LGBTQ+ activism.

The IRTG at Saarland University is happy to welcome Michela Baldo, PhD, as an IRTG visiting scholar in June/July 2020 (COVID-19 permitted).

IRTG Visiting Scholar

Ewa Macura-Nnamdi (University of Silesia, Poland)

Ewa Macura-Nnamdi is assistant professor at the Institute of Literary Studies (University of Silesia, Poland). She holds a doctorate in English literature (New Woman fiction of the late-Victorian period). Currently, her main research interests include postcolonial Anglophone literatures of Africa and African diaspora, postcolonial theories as well as refugees and migration in cinema and literature. She has published articles on, among others, Dambudzo Marechera, Rawi Hage, Abdulrazak Gurnah and Omar Khadr. Her recent publications include “Mouthwork” (ARIEL: A Review of International English Literature) and “Omar Khadr, Guantánamo and Carceral Gastronomy” (European Journal of English Studies). She has just been awarded a research grant from the National Science Centre for her project on Fictions of Water: Refugees and the Sea.

Prof. Ewa Macura-Nnamdi will join the IRTG Diversity and North American Literary and Cultural Studies in Saarbrücken in January/February. During her stay from January 26 till February 16, 2020, she will give a lecture on “Fictions of Water: Refugees and the Sea” on February 4, 2020.