Conferences 

The Institute for American Studies holds conferences to encourage international and interdisciplinary knowledge and networks in order to enrich scholarship and dialogue about the United States in its historical, contemporary, transatlantic, and global context. The conferences are thus international meeting places for discussion and debate among scholars, students, and the broader community about America’s place in the world, and about the complexity, challenges, and controversies connected to American society, culture, and politics.

Below is a sample of recent and upcoming conferences at the Institute for American Studies in Leipzig:

• Hemispheric Encounters (2012)
• Toward a New Transatlantic Space? (2007)
• Ambivalent Americanizations (2005)

Hemispheric Encounters (2012)

The Early United States in a Transnational Perspective
April 25th - 27th, 2012

In the past two decades scholars in American literary and cultural studies have emphasized the necessity of transnational approaches to American history in order to overcome the residues of American Exceptionalism and to study American specificities in a comparative framework. One of the major results of this research has been a shift in perspective that has directed attention to the multiple connections the early United States had to other regions in the hemisphere. As has become visible, the formation and consolidation of national and collective identities in the early United States was not only impacted by the need to distinguish Americans from Europeans but also by its situatedness on the American continent.

The internatioanl symposium is organized by Professor Dr. Gabriele Pisarz-Ramirez (American Studies Leipzig / Minority Studies, University of Leipzig) and Dr. Markus Heide (Department of English and American Studies / American Studies, Humboldt-Universität Berlin).

On our homepage you find detailed information on the symposium's participants and their presentations, on travel recommendations and the conference locations, and on the program of our symposium (Please click here to read more).

Toward a New Transatlantic Space? (2007)

Changing Perceptions of Identity, Belonging, and Space in the Atlantic World
June 21-23 2007 (Read more here.)

With the end of the global dichotomy imposed by the Cold War, European perceptions of the Atlantic as the formerly dominant frame of reference have lost their immediate necessity. Simultaneously, the United States as the defining Atlantic power have shifted their geopolitical attention to other areas of the world, which appear to hold greater potential for cooperation than an increasingly self-confident European Union critical of the United States' role as superpower. The traditional transatlantic alliance is revived on instances like 9/11, but its structural, ideological, and intellectual basis seems to have weakened.

The American Studies Institute at the University of Leipzig and the German Historical Institute Washington will host the conference entitled "Toward a New Transatlantic Space? Changing Perceptions of Identity, Belonging, and Space in the Atlantic World", to be held in Leipzig, 21 June – 23 June 2007. (Please click here to read more.)

Ambivalent Americanizations (2005)

Popular and Consumer Culture in Central and Eastern Europe
24-26 November 2005 Leipzig University

The project explores the complex dynamics involved in the 'Americanization' of popular and consumer cultures across Europe with a focus on the years 1945-89. A central concern is to advance scholarship on 'Americanization' by asking for the experience of Central and Eastern Europe. Here 'Americanization' figured within a political, cultural, and economic context that defined itself in sharp contrast to 'America.' This perspective provides for a concept of 'Americanization' as a set of complex processes of cultural mixing and practices of cultural appropriation, underscoring the various ambivalences of boundaries, parameters and modes of engagement. (Please click here to read more.)

Please find more information, a conference report and audio files at the conference homepage www.ambivalent-americanizations.de.