PGF 2011

The 2011 Postgraduate Forum will be hosted by the English Department and the Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture at Justus Liebig University Giessen. On behalf of the organizers, we sincerely encourage young researchers and members of the German Association for American Studies to join us from November 4 to November 6, 2011. We welcome contributions from various disciplines such as the study of American culture, literature, history, and politics.

Preliminary Conference Program

Friday, November 4, 2011 (Margarete-Bieber-Saal)
13:00 – 14:00	Arrival/Registration
14:00 – 16:00	Opening Remarks
Keynote Lecture Prof. Dr. Greta Olson (Giessen) - "Political Positions in American Cultural Studies"
16:00 – 16:30	Coffee
16:30 – 17:30	Panel 1
Contemporary U.S. Literatures – Chair: Sophia Komor (Hamburg) Karolina Golimowska (Berlin), “British Laughter and US smartness / Transatlantic Perspectives on post-9/11 Fiction. A Close Reading of David Hare’s Drama ‘Stuff Happens’ (2004)” Tanja Reiffenrath (Paderborn), “’I Am Average Because…’ (Re)Constructing Normalcy in Steve Martin’s The Pleasure of My Company”
17:30 –18:00	Coffee
18:00 – 19:30	Panel 2
Film and the New Medias – Chair: Dr. Birte Christ (Giessen) Benjamin Betka (Frankfurt), “Blank Gaze & Vacant Skull – Cinema, Brains, (Dis- )Affection” Luisa Sehlleier (Köln), “Disability Imagery in Film: A Perspective from Psychoanalytic Disability Studies” Alexandra Herzog (Regensburg), “Author's Notes and Slash as Appropriative Strategies in Fanfiction Writing”
19:30 –open end	Dinner
Saturday, November 5, 2011 (Humboldthaus)
09:00 – 09:30	Coffee
09:30 – 10:30	Panel 3
Theoretical and Comparative Approaches – Chair: Susanne Leikam (Regensburg) Sebastian Huber (Munich), “Event(u)al Disruptions: Alain Badiou and Critical Theory” Dr. Karsten Senkbeil (Hildesheim), “Playing with God by their Sides. A Comparative Study of the Representation of Athletes’ Religiousness in American and German Sports Media”
10:30 –11:00	Coffee
11:00 – 12:30	Panel 4
Art Histories – Chair: Dr. Julia Faisst (Giessen) Susanne Scharf (Frankfurt), *“American Art Abroad: The 1910 ‘Ausstellung Amerikanischer Kunst‘* in Berlin and Munich“** Vincent Fröhlich (Giessen), “Suspense-Formulas of contemporary American TV-Serials: Cliffhangers light in The Sopranos” Katharina Fackler (Regensburg), “Picturing Poverty in the 1960s: The War on Poverty”
12:30 –14:00	Lunch
14:00 – 15:30	Panel 5
Shifting Identities – Chair: Ottilie Klein (Giessen) Carrie Khou (Mannheim), “Re-Writing Femininity: The New Woman as the Agent of Hybrid Identity in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘Turned’” Maria D. Blaim (Rostock), “Geographies of Diasporic Desire: Garden and Paradise in Iranian-American Self-Writing” Eva Brunner (Berlin), “The Poetics of Extreme Selves. Identity and Emotionality in Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Robert Lowell”
15:30 –16:00	Coffee
16:00 – 17:30	Panel 6
Historiographies – Chair: Andreas Hübner (Giessen) Andreas Beer (Rostock), “Southward the Course of Empire Took its way: The U.S. Filibusters in Nicaraguan and U.S. Newspapers“ Will Buckingham (New Orleans, LA), “Musical Training and Early Jazz in New Orleans’ Black Institutions of Education” Martin Eckstein ( Jena), “Between Race, Politics, and Self-Assertion: African-American Soldiers in Civil War Era Tennessee”
17:30 – 18:00	Coffee
18:00 – 19:30	Panel 7
African American Literatures – Chair: Daniel Holder (Giessen) Margaret Hunt Gram (Cambridge, MA), “’In the Name of the Law’: American Literature, Civil Rights, and the Idea of Government” Matthias Klestil (Bayreuth), *“Reclaiming the ‘Eye’ and the ‘I’: Panopticism, the Self, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved”* Silvia Chirila (Berlin), “Between the Double and the Shadow. Tension and Paradox in the Construction of Narrative Identity in the Novels of Toni Morrison”
19:30 – open end	Dinner and Film Discussion
Dr. Martin Lüthe (Munich), *"The Sword and the Sample": Jim Jarmusch's Ghost Dog: The Way of Samurai* and Hip Hop Culture"**
Sunday, November 6, 2011 (Humboldthaus)
10:00 – 10:30	Coffee
10:30 – 12:00	Panel 8
19th Century U.S.-American Cultures – Chair: Gero Guttzeit (Giessen) David Rose (Berlin), “Good Mob, Bad Mob: Violence, Community, and Western Pioneer Narratives” Elena Sawal (Mainz), “The Importance of “Authors’ Carnivals” in the Context of American Culture” Kate Dulmage (Bonn), “New England Transcendentalism and French Eclecticism: A Dialog of Bostonian and Parisian Philosophy”
12:00 – 12:30	Coffee
12:30 – 13:30	Group Discussion