Call for Papers: Funded by the Thyssen Foundation the conference “Obama and the
Paradigm Shift: The Measure of Change in the US and Germany” will take place at the
university of Giessen from June 30th till July 2nd, 2011.
The conference will investigate those areas of cultural politics in which Barack Obama’s
election to the US presidency was expected to affect the greatest amount of change. Within
the American context, these include racial politics, normative forms of masculinity and
femininity, and an abatement of the general divisiveness of the American political climate.
Outside of the United States, the conference questions the degree to which these
phenomena have had an effect on related areas within German culture.
Held two years into the Obama presidency and after the “shellacking” that the
president received in the midterm elections, this conference asks how the actuality of
effected change in key areas of political culture has measured up to the desire for and
promise of the new that marked the election period. The conference takes its geographical
position in Germany as an impulse to question the effect of key cultural issues involved in
the Obama presidency on Germany. The conference understands the following three topics
to be the most important ones for current American cultural politics and their transatlantic
reverberations: race, gender, political divisiveness and inclusiveness. It reflects on these
issues within the German context.
Keynote Speakers include Distinguished Service Professor of American and African American
History at the University of Chicago, Thomas Holt, author of The Problem of Race in the
Twenty-First Century (Harvard 2000) and Professor of Politics and African American Studies
at Princeton University, Melissa Lacewell-Perry, author of Barbershops, Bibles, and BET:
Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought, (Princeton 2004).
The organizers are looking for papers that deal with issues surrounding the following
topics and would like to specifically encourage Nachwuchswissenschaftler/innen to send
proposals:
The Obama Effect and German Multiculturalism
The ‘Obama Effect’ and Germany
Open topic on Obama’s effect on cultural politics in Germany
Please send an abstract of 500 words or less to Greta Olson (greta.olson@anglistik.unigiessen.de) and Birte Christ (birte.christ@anglistik.uni-giessen.de) by March 31st.
For information on participating in the conference please contact Birte Christ.