Events, Lectures, News
Walter Benn Michaels
(University of Illinois, Chicago)
May 7, 2019
10 a.m.-12 noon, Philosophicum I, P109a
“The differentiation between left and right neoliberalism doesn’t really undermine the way it which it is deeply unified in its commitment to competitive markets and to the state’s role in maintaining competitive markets. For me the distinction is that ‘left neoliberals’ are people who don’t understand themselves as neoliberals. They think that their commitments to anti-racism, to anti-sexism, to anti-homophobia constitute a critique of neoliberalism. But if you look at the history of the idea of neoliberalism you can see fairly quickly that neoliberalism arises as a kind of commitment precisely to those things.” (Walter Benn Michaels)
Walter Benn Michaels is a Professor of American Literature and Literary Theory at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Michaels’s work has generated a set of arguments and questions around a host of issues that are central to literary studies: problems of culture and race, identities national and personal, the difference between memory and history, disagreement and difference, and meaning and intention in interpretation. He earned his Ph.D. in 1975 from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Michaels also taught at the Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Berkeley.
You can download the poster for the event here.
Events, Lectures, News
Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera
(University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez)
April 30, 2019
10 a.m.-12 noon, Philosophicum I, P109a
This talk is based on the monograph After American Studies, a timely critique of national and transnational approaches to community, and their forms of belonging and trans/patriotisms. Using reports in multicultural psychology and cultural neuroscience to interpret an array of cultural forms—including literature, art, film, advertising, search engines, urban planning, museum artifacts, visa policy, public education, and ostensibly non-state media—the argument fills a gap in contemporary criticism by a focus on what makes cultural canons symbolically effective (or not) for an individual exposed to them. The talk will address the limits of transnationalism as a paradigm, evidencing how such approaches often reiterate presumptive and essentialized notions of identity that function as new dimensions of exceptionalism.
Jeffrey Herlihy-Mera is a distinguished researcher and associate professor in the Department of Humanities at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez. He earned his Ph.D. in “Art, Literature, and Thought” from the Universidad Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. This semester he is Fulbright Distinguished Chair of American Studies at Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest.
You can download the poster for the event here.
News, Workshops
Career Workshop: American Art
February 8, 2019
Helmholtz Institute Mainz
Staudingerweg 18
55128 Mainz
Conference Room 1395-00-133/135 (Ground Floor), 10 a.m.–11 a.m.
Interested in studying American art, working in museums, applying for research funding, or pursuing an academic career? In this unique workshop, speakers from the symposium International Perspectives on American Art will share their varied career paths in an informal discussion with students.
Speakers:
Dr. Christian Berger, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz/The Courtauld Institute of Art, London
Prof. Dr. Winfried Fluck, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin
Prof. Dr. Ursula Frohne, Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Eleanor Harvey, Ph.D., Senior Curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Anna O. Marley, Ph.D., Curator of Historical American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia
Susanne Scharf, M.A., Frankfurt am Main
Space is limited. Please register by email to Dr. Allison M. Stagg: allstagg@uni-mainz.de by February 1.
You can download the poster for the workshop here.
Title image: George Caleb Bingham, American, 1811–1879; The Wood-Boat, 1850; oil on canvas mounted on board; 25 1/8 in. × 30 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase 14:1951
Conferences, News
International Perspectives on American Art
The symposium, International Perspectives on American Art, brings together scholars from the United States and Europe, from university departments of American Studies, Art History, Literature, and from museum curatorial positions, that are presently engaged in exploring American art within a broad context. Seeking to stimulate interdisciplinary exchange, the symposium is an opportunity to explore the reception and perception of American art outside of the United States in museum exhibitions, research, and in the academic classroom.
February 7, 2019
Helmholtz Institute Mainz
Staudingerweg 18
55128 Mainz
Conference Room 1395-00-133/135 (Ground Floor), 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
In November of 2018, an ambitious exhibition on American art opened at the Wallraf-Richartz Museum & Foundation Corboud in Cologne, Once Upon a Time in America: Three Centuries of American Art. On display in the galleries are over 100 loans of paintings, works on paper, and sculpture from American collections, the majority of which have never been on view in a German museum. It introduces to a primarily German audience important and well-known art objects from the 1700s to the mid-twentieth century, focusing on select periods that influenced and shaped art in America.
This exhibition, in addition to a number of other more focused thematic exhibits held recently in Germany, such as Constructing the World: Art and Economy (Mannheim Kunsthalle, 2018-2019) and From Hopper to Rothko: America’s Road to Modernism (Museum Barberini, 2017), highlights the strong interest found outside of the United States in understanding and interpreting past and modern American culture through visual material.
Speakers:
Dr. Christian Berger, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz/The Courtauld Institute of Art, London
Prof. Dr. Winfried Fluck, John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin
Prof. Dr. Ursula Frohne, Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster
Eleanor Harvey, Ph.D., Senior Curator, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
Anna O. Marley, Ph.D., Curator of Historical American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia
Susanne Scharf, M.A., Frankfurt am Main
A detailed program is available on the conference website.
Through the generosity of the Terra Foundation for American Art, stipends are available for early career scholars and students at all stages of academic study enrolled in German universities to help offset travel costs to and from the symposium. Only early career scholars and university students living outside of Mainz and Wiesbaden are eligible. To be considered, please submit a statement of 500 words explaining your interest in American art and the symposium. Email the application by 18 January to allstagg@uni-mainz.de; successful applicants will be notified by 22 January.
Title image: George Caleb Bingham, American, 1811–1879; The Wood-Boat, 1850; oil on canvas mounted on board; 25 1/8 in. × 30 inches; Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase 14:1951
This symposium is made possible through support from the
Lectures, News
Alfred Bendixen (Princeton University)
Tuesday, January 29, 2018; 6 p.m.–8 p.m. (c.t.) Philosophicum I, P15
Professor Alfred Bendixen of Princeton University explores the intersection of language and domestic space in establishing the feminist foundations of Mary Wilkins Freeman‘s strongest short fiction. Through the careful manipulation of dialogue and silence, Freeman investigates the struggle of women to achieve a meaningful voice. in her meticulous rendering of physical space, particularly the domestic spaces that women claim as their own, she defines the ways in which women can maintain or lose personal autonomy. The presentation focuses on three of Freeman‘s best stories: „The Revolt of ‚Mother,‘“ „A New England Nun,“ and „A Village Singer.“
Alfred Bendixen received his Ph.D in 1979 from the University of North Carolina and taught at Barnard College, California State University, Los Angeles, and Texas A&M University before joining the Princeton faculty in 2014. Much of his scholarship has been devoted to the recovery of 19th-century texts, particularly by women writers, and to the exploration of neglected genres, including the ghost story, detective fiction, science fiction, and travel writing. His teaching interests include the entire range of American literature as well as courses in science fiction, graphic narrative, and gender studies.
You can download a poster for the lecture here.
