Session I Thinking the Present
How do American Studies scholars working in the US and Germany understand recent and emergent reconfigurations of US politics and culture? To what extent has American Studies itself been transformed by these changes? Where are American Studies scholars finding resources for reading the particulars of the contemporary historical moment?
Session I – Optional Readings
Session II The Aesthetic, the Performative, and the Political
What are the aesthetic dimensions of the current conjuncture? How does attentiveness to the aesthetic and performative in critical thought and literary studies enter American Studies inquiry today? How are American Studies practices themselves forms of aesthetic production? How does thinking the aesthetic change the what and how of our research?
Session III Critical Idioms
If theorizing in American Studies has long been marked by changing terms or “terminological screens” (Kenneth Burke), and by changing “critical postures” (Hortense Spillers), what are the currently prevailing idioms and postures in American Studies? How are current terms or styles of thought useful (or not) for explaining the present moment? If yet newer terms or frames are needed, what might these be?
Session III – Optional Readings
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