June 27 – Guest Lecture “Playing at a Distance” 🗓

June 27 – Guest Lecture “Playing at a Distance” 🗓

Sonia Fizek
(Cologne Game Lab, TH Köln)

Playing at a Distance

June 27, 2023, 2:15pm, P 207 (Philosophicum)

 

Do we play video games or do video games play us? Is nonhuman play a mere paradox or the future of gaming? And what do video games have to do with quantum theory? In the talk based on her recent book Playing at a Distance (MIT Press 2022), Fizek will engage with these questions, proposing new ways to think about games and play that decenter the human player and explore a variety of play formats and practices that require surprisingly little human action. Idling in clicker games, wandering in walking simulators, automating gameplay with bots, or simply watching games rather than playing them— Fizek will argue that these seemingly marginal cases are central to understanding how we play in the digital age. Introducing the concept of distance, she will reorient the view of computer- mediated play. To “play at a distance”, as will be argued, is to delegate the immediate action to the machine and to become participants in an algorithmic spectacle. Distance has been conceptualized as a media aesthetic framework that may enable us to come to terms with the ambiguity and aesthetic diversity of play.

 

Sonia Fizek is a media and games scholar. She holds a professorship in Media and Game Studies at the Cologne Game Lab at TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences. Fizek is also a visiting professor at the University of Lower Silesia in Wroclaw (Poland) and a co-editor-in-chief of the international Journal of Gaming and Virtual Worlds. In her latest book Playing at a Distance (MIT Press 2022), she explores the borderlands of video game aesthetic with focus on automation, AI and posthuman forms of play. Fizek’s current research concentrates on the environmental aspects of video game development. Since 2021 she has been a principal investigator of “Greening Games” (greeninggames.eu), an international project on the sustainability of video games (funded by the German Academic Exchange Service EU/DAAD).

 

You can download the poster for the event here.

 

 

June 20 – Guest Lecture “The Racial Sellout: Language, History, and Popular Culture” 🗓

June 20 – Guest Lecture “The Racial Sellout: Language, History, and Popular Culture” 🗓

Associate Professor Ian Afflerbach
(University of North Georgia, USA)

The Racial Sellout: Language, History, and Popular Culture

June 20, 2023, 4:15pm, 00.212 (Philo II, Jakob-Welder-Weg 20)

 

What does it mean to “sell out” your race? This talk will examine the history of such accusations in the United States, moving from early 20th century debates over black leadership to contemporary scandals in popular culture. It will explain why ideas about racial “authenticity” and “solidarity” are so controversial, yet so vital. And it will explore both the unique language used to identify race traitors, such as “Uncle Tom” and “house Negro,” as well as the ways this anxiety about racial loyalty reflects a broader American anxiety with the idea of “selling out.”

Ian Afflerbach is Associate Professor of American Literature at the University of North Georgia, where his research and teaching focus on the history of ideas, modernist studies, African American literature, and popular periodicals. He recently completed his first book, Making Liberalism New (Johns Hopkins 2021) and has begun work on a second project—a cultural history of “selling out” in modern America. He is currently a fellow at the University of Regensburg, Germany.

You can download the poster for the event here.

 

May 16 – Guest Lecture Germersheim: “Margaret Atwood’s Venture into Graphic Novels” 🗓

May 16 – Guest Lecture Germersheim: “Margaret Atwood’s Venture into Graphic Novels” 🗓

Prof. Dr. Brigitte Johanna Glaser (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen)

May 16, 2023, 9:40am, N.106 (Stufenhörsaal)

“Margaret Atwood’s Venture into Graphic Novels: The Angel Catbird Trilogy and the War Bears Series”

Professor Glaser’s research focus is in Canadian Studies, Globalization and Transcultural Literature, Postcolonial Studies as well as 18th-Century Literature and Culture. Her publications include the co- edited volumes Shifting Grounds: Cultural Tectonics along the Pacific Rim (2020) and Transgressions / Transformations: Literature and Beyond (2018). Since February 2021, she has been the president of the Association for Canadian Studies in German-Speaking Countries.

You can download the poster for this talk here.

“One University – One Book” Shared Reading of THE WHALE RIDER 🗓

“One University – One Book” Shared Reading of THE WHALE RIDER 🗓

This summer term, all members of JGU – students, teachers, administrative staff – are invited to come together to immerse themselves into Witi Ihimaera’s novel The Whale Rider. The book tells the story of Kahu, the daughter of a respectable Māori family, who struggles to take her place in the iwi (tribe) and win the love and respect of her grandfather, the chief of the iwi. It is a story of rejection and reconciliation, of tradition and renewal – and last but not least, it is a story of the deep connection between humans and nature. The plot seems familiar and yet wants to be read in its very own Māori traditions.

To foster cross-cultural exchange about the novel at our university and beyond, we have planned a number of events: a hybrid lecture series (Wednesdays from 08:00 pm to 9:30 pm (CET), starting April 26th; PDF), Q&As with experts from Mainz and New Zealand, a screening and discussion of Niki Caro’s 2002 film adaptation of the novel, several social (digital) exchange formats including a “New Zealand-week” at the university canteen. The project, which received an award from the Stifterverband and the Klaus Tschira Foundation as part of the “One University – One Book” program, welcomes you all to embark on a multidisciplinary exploration of New Zealand life and literature in times of critical debates about postcolonialism, decolonization and climate change.

Read with us – Get creative – Share your ideas > Check out the program

Apr 25 – American Retail Capitalism (Guest Lecture) 🗓

Apr 25 – American Retail Capitalism (Guest Lecture) 🗓

Professor Kathleen Thelen

(Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA)

 

“Attention Shoppers:
American Retail Capitalism and the Rise of the Amazon Economy”

 

April 25, 2023, 4:15pm, Fakultätssaal (01-185, Philosophicum)

American Retail Capitalism traces the origins of the Amazon economy to the late 19C as large-scale retailers capitalized on the uniquely permissive regulatory landscape of the American political economy to outgrow the capacity of the government to regulate them. Thelen’s explanation focuses on features of the legal context, in particular a uniquely congenial competition regime, and on the impact of a fragmented regulatory landscape that invited regulatory arbitrage and outright rule-breaking. As they grew, America’s large retailers were able to assemble an ever- growing political support coalition that could be weaponized to head off the regulatory efforts they faced.

You can download the poster for this talk here.

Kathleen Thelen is Ford Professor of Political Science at MIT. Her work focuses on the origins and evolution of political-economic institutions in the rich democracies. She is the author, among others, of Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity (2014) and How Institutions Evolve (2004), and co-editor of The American Political Economy: Politics, Markets, and Power (with Jacob Hacker, Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, and Paul Pierson, 2022). Thelen has served as President of the American Political Science Association (APSA), Chair of the Council for European Studies, and as President of the Society for the Advancement of Socio- Economics. Thelen is General Editor of the Cambridge University Press Series in Comparative Politics, and a permanent external member of the Max Planck Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung in Cologne, Germany.

Mar 21 – “Materialism and Consumption: Circulating Christian Love with American Things” Presentation and Chapter Discussion 🗓

Mar 21 – “Materialism and Consumption: Circulating Christian Love with American Things” Presentation and Chapter Discussion 🗓

Prof. Hillary Kaell

(Anthropology/ Religious Studies, McGill University)

 

“Materialism and Consumption: Circulating Christian Love with American Things”

 

March 21, 2023, 3.00-4.30pm, 02.102 (Philo II, Jakob-Welder-Weg 20)

Please join us for a short presentation and discussion with Prof. Hillary Kaell (Anthropology/Religious Studies, McGill University) of the chapter “Materialism and Consumption: Circulating Christian Love with American Things” from her book Christian Globalism at Home: Child Sponsorship in the United States (Princeton University Press, 2020).

Materialism and Consumption: Circulating Christian Love with American Things

For two hundred years, Christians have run charitable projects to “sponsor” children abroad. Through these plans, individuals in the Global North—notably in the United States–send money to support an individual child in need. The popularity of these plans rested, in part, on how they offered donors what amounted to consumer choice: one could choose what type of child to support. However, by the 1970s Christian donors began to worry about their own “materialism” and its effects on child sponsorship. Based on my recent book Christian Globalism at Home (Princeton University Press, 2020), this presentation will explore the tight link between sponsorship and early forms of capitalism, along with the “anti-materialist” tactics that sponsors use to soften the ambivalence inherent in this form of global charitable giving.

If you’re interested in reading the chapter, please send an e-mail to Dr. Anja-Maria Bassimir.