Conference Archive
May 25 - 27, 2023 | Conference
"'By the Mouth of His Holy Prophets': Sacred Discourse in Nineteenth-Century America"
Conveners: Jan Stievermann & Everett Messamore
Please pre-register with Everett Messamore: emessamore@hca.uni-heidelberg.de
"Natural Catastrophes in the United States – Making Sense of Risks and Vulnerability"
July 14 - July 16, 2022 | Conference
Conveners: Natalie Rauscher (HCA) & Welf Werner (HCA)
"James W.C. Pennington and the World of Transatlantic Reform"
August 20-21, 2021, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Conveners: Jan Stievermann (HCA) & Eddie Glaude Jr. (Princeton University)
This conference reassesses the life and work of the African American abolitionist and writer James W.C. Pennington (1807-70) in the context of nineteenth-century transatlantic reform movements. The roster of speakers includes leading experts of African American history, literature and reform, including Manisha Sinha, John Stauffer, William L. Andrews, Paul Harvey, and Eddie Glaude.

Supported by the Manfred-Lautenschläger-Foundation
"Participation in American Culture and Society"
67th Annual Meeting of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS; Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien, DGfA) (Online)
June 17-19, 2021, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Conveners: Manfred Berg, Ulrike Gerhard, Günter Leypoldt, Margit Peterfy, Jan Stievermann, Martin Thunert, Welf Werner
Generously Supported by the Jacob-Gould-Schurman Foundation
"Gendered Charismas: Historical and Transnational Perspectives"
International Conference (online)
19.-20. March 2021, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Conveners: Claudia Jetter and Benjamin Pietrenka
RESCHEDULED! | "Authority and Trust: Comparative and Interdisciplinary Perspectives"
October 16-17, 2020, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Conveners: Graduiertenkolleg "Authority & Trust" (GKAT)
"The Corrosion of the Liberal Democratic Order? Transatlantic Perspectives in Perilous Times"
International Conference and Annual Meeting of the Political Science Section of the German Society for American Studies
November 7-8, 2019, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Conveners: Florian Böller (Heidelberg Center for American Studies), Markus B. Siewert (Bavarian School for Public Policy / TUM School of Governance)
"A Hegemonic Transition? Reconfigurations of Global Economic and Security Orders in the Age of Trump"
October 4-5, 2019, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Conveners: Florian Böller (Heidelberg Center for American Studies), Welf Werner (Heidelberg Center for American Studies)
International Symposium: "Transatlantic Literary Authority: Material Networks, Symbolic Economies"
July 4-6, 2019, Heidelberg Center for American Studies / Internationales Wissenschaftsforum Universität Heidelberg
Conveners: Günter Leypoldt (HCA, English Department), Tim Sommer (HCA)
Conference: "NATO at 70: Trust and Mistrust among Allies"
April 8-9, 2019, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Conveners: Florian Böller and Wilfried Mausbach (HCA)
Workshop "The Shifting Patterns of Global Authority: Driving Foreign Policy Change?"
September 17-18, 2018, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Conveners: Florian Böller (HCA) and Sebastian Harnisch (Institute for Political Science)
Conference "Transcendentalist Intersections: Literature, Philosophy, Religion"
July 26-29, 2018, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Sponsored by the Anglistisches Seminar and Heidelberg Center for American Studies at the University of Heidelberg and the Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson Societies
Transatlantic Crossings:
A Symposium in Honor of Detlef Junker
June 14-15, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Conveners: Manfred Berg (History Department, Heidelberg University, and HCA) and Wilfried Mausbach (HCA)
Workshop "Crisis, the Politics of Resilience, and the Future of Transatlantic Relations"
March 16-17, 2017, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
This is a workshop for invited guests only; the panel discussion on Friday evening is open to the public. If you would like to participate in the workshop, please sign up by March 16 with hthiele@hca.uni-heidelberg.de
Conference "The United States and World War I: Perspectives and Legacies"
February 10-12, 2017, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
39th Annual Conference of the Historians in the DGFA/GAAS (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien/German Association for American Studies)
2017 will mark the centennial of U.S. entry into World War I. The war had a profound impact on the United States and on its global role. Well before the country entered the war, the U.S. had become a key supporter of the Allies, shifting the global balance of power to set the stage for what has been called the “American century.” This conference provides an opportunity to reassess the war’s significance in U.S. history by focusing on the historical context of an emerging American commitment abroad. While we invite contributions that reflect current scholarship on any political, economic, military, social, and cultural aspect of American history during World War I, we would like to draw attention to three distinct perspectives.
The first perspective concerns a reassessment of the neutrality period between 1914 and 1917. While important work focuses on transatlantic diplomacy and American politics to characterize the American response to the war abroad, more recent work has also emphasized cultural and intellectual responses to the “European War” in all areas of American society. The range of issues that could be addressed here includes reassessments of policy decisions, economic issues, as well as cultural phenomena such as a contemporary celebration of France by urban elites or support efforts by immigrant communities such as German and Italian Americans. All these developments were discussed and reflected upon by an emerging and invigorated cast of public intellectuals.
A second perspective concerns a reassessment of periodization. While the canonized dates of 1914, 1917, and 1918 provide the traditional framework, Adam Tooze has recently pointed to 1916 as a key year during which the U.S. became both the world’s largest economy and its banker, putting the country in a position to help define the postwar world order. Taking this observation as a clue, what historical trajectories emerge from the war’s diverse economic, political, social, and cultural dimensions?
A third perspective is provided by a global view on the United States. As a “world war,” the conflict had implications for regions and countries around the globe - developments caused or felt by the United States. What new perspectives on the war can we open up by broadening the traditional narrative to include wartime diplomatic or cultural relations with, for example, South America and Asia? In what way do global developments such as the influenza epidemic expand the story? And what perspective on American military history may be gleaned from a global perspective?
Finally, important questions must be asked about the legacy of World War I in the twentieth century and beyond. What is the legacy of the war as advocated by former protagonists such as veterans? Why has the First World War received comparatively less attention in the general public than among historians? What cultural memory has been associated with World War I, and how does it deviate from memories associated with other American wars in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries?
Conference "Multiple Modernities? Confessional Cultures and the Many Legacies of the Reformation Age"
September 22-25, 2016, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
The Second Colloquium of The Heidelberg-Notre Dame Dialog on the Legacies of the Reformation Age
Prof. Dr. Jan Stievermann (Faculty of Theology/Research Center for International and Interdisciplinary Theology/HCA), PD Dr. Paul S. Peterson (Faculty of Theology)
The panels and lectures are open to the public. If you are interested, please preregister with the conference organizers (paul.peterson@wts.uni-heidelberg.de).
On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, this interdisciplinary project is bringing together a group of theologians and historians from the universities of Heidelberg and Notre Dame, the leading Catholic university in North America. We will be meeting four times from 2016 to 2018 (in Rome, Heidelberg, Chicago und Jerusalem) to discuss the following questions: a) How do we interpret and assess the Reformation as a historical and theological event, as a historiographic category, and as a cultural myth from the perspective of different disciplines and confessional traditions? b) What are the long-term global legacies of the Reformation as manifest in the development of distinct Christian world religions and competing confessional cultures, producing different types of modernities? To compare different confessional modernities we will look at how Catholic and Protestant theologies and lived religions interacted with the development of modern empires and nation-states, with the emergence of the natural, historical and biblical sciences, as well as with divergent legal cultures and traditions in education and social welfare. c) Finally, the colloquia will also address the challenging question regarding how the Reformation should be commemorated (or can be celebrated) from an ecumenical perspective today.
Student Conference "Waking Up to Reality: America's Struggle to Realize the Promised Land"
July 1/2, 2016, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Interdisciplinary Conference for Undergraduate and Graduate Students
- Program and further information at the conference homepage
Rhein-Neckar Forum III:"The U.S. Elections 2016: Why Should We Care? Political and Economic Issues"
June 24, 2016, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
In cooperation with Deutsche Bank
The conference is part of our event series "The U.S. Presidential Election 2016 at the HCA."
Conference "Forging Bonds Across Borders: Mobilizing for Women's Rights and Social Justice in the 19th-Century Transatlantic World"
April 28-30, German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.
Britta Waldschmidt-Nelson (GHI), Anja Schüler (HCA), Sonya Michel (University of Maryland)
Workshop "The Challenges of Doing Biography"
July 3, 2015, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Prof. Dr. Manfred Berg (HCA/History Department)
Biography is among the most venerable and commercially successful genres of historical writing. General readers are fascinated with the life stories of major historical figures and they also cherish the human touch of viewing history through the eyes of ordinary individuals. Although critics have frequently assailed biography for celebrating “great men” and elevating “agency” over “structure,” none of the historiographical paradigm shifts over the past fifty years – from the new social history to the various cultural turns – has seriously damaged the popularity of biographies among general and academic audiences. Historians have continued to employ biographical approaches in nearly all subfields and disciplines, while the new cultural history with its emphasis on narrative has spawned lively theoretical debates. This workshop brings together scholars who are currently working on major biographical studies. Protagonists include Mary McLeod Bethune (Anja Schüler); Angela Davis (Sophie Lorenz), Felix von Luschan (John David Smith), Alexander von Humboldt (Andreas Daum), and Woodrow Wilson (Manfred Berg). The focus of this workshop are the practical challenges the participants face in their current research.
Conference "Contemporary Literature and the Culture of the School"
June 11-13, 2015, IWH, Heidelberg University
Prof. Dr. Günter Leypoldt (HCA/English Department), Dr. Philipp Löffler (English Department)
The conditions of literary authorship in the English-speaking world have undergone a remarkable change in the last fifty years. It seems that conventional literary historiography has not yet adequately explored the socio-institutional factors underlying this change, especially the increasing academicization of the literary field during the expansion of higher education between 1950 and 1975. This conference seeks to encourage reflection on these developments and on possible methodologies to explain them. In which ways, for example, has the rising “culture of the school” (Guillory) impacted the production of literary authority, produced new taste-making formations or modes of literary professionalism? How do these developments relate to the social, how can we grasp their global/transcultural dimension? (How, for example, has the “program era” changed US author’s sense of their place in the world? How has it affected the literary experience of non-US authors who participate in the creative writing programs in US based-research universities?).
Rhein-Neckar Forum I: "TTIP – Hope or Hype? A Look at the Proposed Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership"
December 13/14, 2013, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is being promoted by the Obama administration as well as by some EU governments as the best tool to stimulate not only free trade but also investment across the shores of the Atlantic. Our conference is meant to critically assess this undertaking, gauge the prospects for its realization, and foster a broader transatlantic dialogue about the promises and possible pitfalls of creating a free trade zone that would encompass the world’s biggest regional economies.
The conference is organized in close cooperation with Professor Eckhard Janeba and the Economics Department at Mannheim University.
It will bring together economists, political scientists, as well as transatlantic experts and policymakers but will also include stakeholders in particular from the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region, thus facilitating exchanges between academia, politics, and private enterprise, and inaugurating the Rhein-Neckar Forum on Transatlantic Economic Issues, which we hope to establish as a permanent fixture on the region’s cultural calendar.
Enjoy Jazz Symposium: "Vision, Perception, Friction: How Jazz Became Art and Attack(ed) – A Transatlantic Dialogue"
8./9. November 2013,
Heidelberg Center for American Studies
In cooperation with Enjoy Jazz
Supported by the Innovationsfonds Kunst and Friends of Enjoy Jazz
Sixty years ago, Joachim-Ernst Berendt’s Das Jazzbuch came out for the first time, Stan Kenton and Ella Fitzgerald were featured in cover stories of Der Spiegel, and Die Zeit called Jazz “the most interesting phenomenon of recent music history.” The “world’s biggest jazz concert” also took place sixty years ago in Germany: In 1953, Norman Granz’ concert series “Jazz at the Philharmonic” toured the country. Six decades later, distinguished experts, artists, and journalists will meet for an international symposium in Heidelberg to explore how the image of jazz has changed on both sides of the Atlantic. Which formats of presentation in journalism and academics seem to be adequate for the genre today? How do artists deal with the changing forms of production and reception? And to what extent can they determine the discussion about and the reception of their works? This symposium at the HCA will continue the transatlantic jazz dialogue established there in 2012 and will once more be a venue where intellectual curiosity and musical zest feel equally at home.
Conference "Urban Inequality in the Creative City"
July 19-20, 2013, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Prof. Dr. Ulrike Gerhard (HCA/Geographisches Institut), Dr. Michael Hölscher
The new social inequality in modern cities is the subject of this interdisciplinary symposium, co-hosted by the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA), the Institute of Geography and the Institute for Sociology. It is part of an international pilot study on comparative research of urban inequality in the knowledge society that explores the relationship between the sometimes very optimistic promise of the cultural and creative economy with respect to urban prosperity and the development of new social inequalities.
Conference: "Acquired Taste: Reading and the Uses of Literature in the Age of Academic Literary Studies"
June 20 - 23, 2013, IWH, Heidelberg University
Prof. Dr. Günter Leypoldt (HCA/English Department), Dr. Philipp Löffler (English Department)
The question of what constitutes good or bad reading has a longer history; yet it seems that the symbolic prestige of academic criticism in the second half of the twentieth century has helped to inscribe the distinction between “professional” and “lay” reading more deeply into the public mind than ever before. As a result, the varied uses of literature both within and without the academy tend to be differentiated along various scales of higher or lower readerly practice (academic/middlebrow, rigorous/sloppy, reflective/consumptive, creative/schematic, suspicious/naive, ethico-political/ aesthetic-therapeutic, etc.). This conference inquires into how the diverse reading practices in the United States relate to twentieth-century shifts in third-level education and literary institutions – the spread of academic literary studies, the rising influence of literary theory and criticism, the growth of college-educated readerships, the institutionalization of university-based networks of patronage (“Planet MFA”), etc. We wish to encourage reflection on how the manifest differences between reading cultures today relate to specific fields of practices or social locations; and on how claims about what constitutes legitimate reading translate into claims about cultural authority (about what sort of embodied practice, affective economy, or taste is associated with society’s cultural center).
ERP Conference: "Lessons from the North Atlantic Financial and Economic Crisis"
December 13 - 15, 2012, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Supported by the German Program for Transatlantic Encounters (Transatlantic Program) financed from ERP (European Recoery Program) funds provided by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi)
The conference is organized in close cooperation with Prof. Ernst-Ludwig von Thadden of the Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim and is meant to address the three intertwined upheavals that have coalesced into a grave economic and financial crisis of the North Atlantic world: (1) the housing bubble that burst around 2007; (2) the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the ensuing imbalance in the world financial system; and (3) the mushrooming sovereign debt that threatens to implode the Euro. We plan to look at both the economic and the historical and cultural underpinnings of the crisis and will attempt to draw some preliminary lessons for future transatlantic cooperation in the field of finance and economics. The conference will provide a unique opportunity to share and discuss different perspectives from both sides of the Atlantic.
Enjoy Jazz Symposium: "Lost in Diversity: Ein transatlantischer Dialog zur gesellschaftlichen Relevanz des Jazz"
November 8/9, 2012, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
In cooperation with Enjoy Jazz / Generously supported by BASF SE
Program | Press Release | Final Report
During the 2012 Enjoy Jazz Festival, distinguished experts, artists, and journalists will meet at the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA) to look at the diversity of jazz in Europe and the United States. They will discuss the social relevance of the genre on both sides of the Atlantic, similarities and differences of European and American jazz, and their effects on our societies. On the occasion of the initiation of the UNESCO World Jazz Day this year, the participants of the symposium will try to explore the political dimensions of a genre that was seen as the epitome of freedom in the 1960s and trace transatlantic reciprocities. With this symposium, the HCA, in cooperation with Enjoy Jazz, attempts to establish a venue where intellectual curiosity and musical zest will feel equally at home.
This symposium was conceptualized by Christian Broecking and is generously supported by BASF SE.
ERP Conference: "From Pentagon Papers to WikiLeaks: A Transatlantic Conversation on the Public’s Right to Know"
May 10 - 12, 2012, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Supported by the German Program for Transatlantic Encounters (Transatlantic Program) financed from ERP (European Recoery Program) funds provided by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi)
In 1822 James Madison wrote that “a popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both." In Madison’s day, the challenge was publishing such information. Today it is far more access to such information. This conference will explore the multiple barriers to an informed citizenry and the ways in which first and foremost the press but also other activists have challenged those barriers.
Conference: "Marginalized Masculinities and the Nation: Global Comparisons, 1800-1945"
March 15-17, 2012, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Historical scholarship has long established the inextricable interrelationship between gender and the nation. Feminist scholars in particular have demonstrated how male nationalists incorporated women as symbolic, cultural, and biological reproducers of the nation into their “imagined communities.” Most studies on the subject tend to focus on the tensions between women’s inclusion in nationalist discourse and their exclusion from political decision-making. Others have explored women’s active role in nation-building projects. Despite scholars’ insistence on the relational character of gender, however, masculinity continues to be neglected by scholars of gender and the nation. If masculinity is addressed, historians either overstate the cohesion of interests among men or focus exclusively on hegemonic models of manhood and the corresponding perpetuation of the nation-state and patriarchy.
This conference seeks to provide a fresh perspective on the interrelationship between gender and the nation by focusing on the role of marginalized masculinities in nation-building processes between 1800 and 1945. During that period, the emergence of particular forms of masculinity coincided with the founding of modern-nation states. Scientific racism, Imperialism, eugenics, and other forms of exclusion and subjugation became part and parcel of these gendered nation-building processes. Seeking to detect similarities/dissimilarities and continuities/discontinuities across space and time, the conference includes papers on North- and South America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, all of which shed light on the history of the interrelationship between marginalized masculinities and the nation in the nineteenth and first part of the twentieth century.
The conference organizers believe that the constructed character and function of manhood in people’s attempts to create “imagined communities” during that period cannot be fully comprehended if the exclusive focus of analysis is the subjugation of women or their resistance to and complicity in that subjugation. Concentrating exclusively on hegemonic masculinity in these processes seems similarly narrow. To understand hegemonic notions of masculinity and the nation, we need to explore the tensions and interrelationships between these dominant concepts and their margins. Studying the history of gender and the nation from the perspective of marginalized masculinities means focusing on the conflicts among competing concepts of manhood as well as on the differences between them. Far from being one ideologically monolithic bloc, men’s access to and interest in nation-building power varies considerably according to race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, religion, etc. The conference focuses on these various fragmentations and their role in the creation, expansion, consolidation, and decline of nations around the globe.
Conference "Religion and the Marketplace in the United States"
October 6-8, 2011, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
As decided at the 2010 meeting of the European Association of American Studies in Dublin, the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA), in cooperation with the American Studies Network (ASN), will host a conference entitled “Religion and the Marketplace: New Perspectives and New Findings.” The HCA will host the conference on October 6-8, 2011, as part of Heidelberg University’s 625 anniversary celebration.
This international and interdisciplinary conference aims to investigate and explain how the conditions of the marketplace have determined, influenced, and limited American religion in the past and present. Given the prominence of the Establishment and Free Exercise clauses in the American constitution, a broad-based ‘competition for souls and purses’ has historically helped define the contours of religion in America. This conference will build upon previous insights while probing further into the complex relationship between religion and the marketplace along the lines described below.
We invite scholars in American Studies and related fields (geography, history, law, literature, media studies, political science, religious studies, theology, etc.) to submit paper abstracts for this conference. Individual paper abstracts (200-250 words) should be specifically directed at one (or more) of the panel topics included in the CFP. Abstracts must be received by March 31, 2011. Participants will be notified by May 1, 2011. All questions and submissions should be sent electronically to: djunker@hca.uni-heidelberg.de.
We especially desire participation from European scholars working in these fields, but welcome submissions from all around the world. The HCA will cover travel expenses (economy), lodging and meals for conference participants.
ERP Conference: "Zeitenwende 9/11? Eine transatlantische Bilanz 10 Jahre danach"
September 9-11, 2011, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Supported by the German Program for Transatlantic Encounters (Transatlantic Program) financed from ERP (European Recoery Program) funds provided by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi)
More information: 9/11 Conference Website
ERP Conference: "Energy Policy and Energy Security - Transatlantic Perspectives"
May 27 and 28, 2011, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Supported by the German Program for Transatlantic Encounters (Transatlantic Program) financed from ERP (European Recoery Program) funds provided by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi)
Conveners:
Dr. Karen Smith Stegen (Jacobs University Bremen)
Dr. Martin Thunert (HCA, Universität Heidelberg)
Administration: Rebecca Zimmermann (HCA, Universität Heidelberg)
The Heidelberg Center for American Studies, with the generous support of the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, will host a workshop on Energy Policy and Energy Security - Transatlantic Perspectives. You are cordially invited to attend.
The workshop will address the following questions and issues: What are the likely future approaches of the US/Canada and of Germany/Europe to energy policy in general and to energy security in particular? As both the US and Europe are currently confronting similar energy and environmental dilemmas, such as increasing demand; decreasing indigenous production; fewer worldwide resources, 75% of which are owned by foreign governments; and climate change, which is caused by the burning of fossil fuels for energy, they would benefit from converging strategies and transatlantic cooperation. But, despite some efforts to strengthen cooperation, such as the creation of the EU-US Energy Council in November 2009, the differing priorities and interests of the two parties may pose challenges. It is these challenges that the workshop intends to explore.
ERP Conference: "Think Tanks and Foundations in the Transatlantic World – Past, Present and Future"
December 3-4, 2010, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Supported by the German Program for Transatlantic Encounters (Transatlantic Program) financed from ERP (European Recoery Program) funds provided by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi)
Think tanks and foundations can be important non-state players in global and national politics. Next to governments, parliaments and representatives of corporate interests, non-governmental study and discussion groups, think tanks and foundations have become important players in the transatlantic world. Think tanks and foundations organize transatlantic dialogues and try to contribute to the preparation of the decision-making process of national governments as well as of trans- and supranational bodies in the Atlantic world. Our conference will scan these actors and their activities on both sides of the Atlantic as wells as in different policy areas, analyze their role in transatlantic relations and evaluate some of their more recent contributions to transatlantic dialogue.
The conference has three objectives: Our first objective is to provide a thorough analysis of the role of think tanks and foundations on both sides of the Atlantic. Second, we would like to examine the role of think tanks, foundations and related non-state actors in transatlantic relations past, present and future. Third, we will discuss and evaluate actual contributions (policy statements, position papers etc.) of selected think tanks and foundations on transatlantic issues. In addition, we will ask two keynote speakers with extensive experience in transatlantic relations to reflect on the role of civil society organisations like the media and non-state actors in transatlantic relations.
To achieve our objectives, we have to chosen two formats for the conference: on day one and in the morning of day two we will assemble panels with experts on think tanks and foundations from both sides of the Atlantic. On the afternoon of the second day, we will conduct an open expert think tank on the past and future of transatlantic relations based on an assessment of recent inputs from think tanks and foundations on transatlantic issues.
Bosch Foundation Archival Seminar for Young Historians 2010:
"American History in Transatlantic Perspective"
September 6-17, 2010
German Historical Institute, Heidelberg Center for American Studies, University of Chicago
Conference "Toward an International History of Lynching"
June 4-6, 2010, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Conference organized by the Hamburg Institute for Social Research (HIS), the Heidelberg Center for American Studies (HCA), and the University of Heidelberg’s Transcultural Studies Research Group “Radical Nationalism and Gender in the United States, Germany, and Japan.”
Conference "Transatlantic Alliances and Networks in a Global Context"
April 30 - May 1, 2010, University of Wisconsin-Madison (UWM)
The conference is part of an HCA-UWM-led international research project that explores the Transcultural Atlantic as a realm of crosscultural interaction throughout the period of the Cold War and beyond. More precisely, it investigates various processes of transatlantic networking and community-building in the realms of business, academia, the media, popular culture, government, the military, and elsewhere. The project is neither limited to diplomatic history and political science studies dealing with alliance politics nor to cultural studies that have long focused on the construction of national identities. Instead, it aims at synthesizing both research areas, thus trying to arrive at a fuller understanding of processes of transatlantic community-formation since 1945. By covering a broad period of time, it will be possible to trace changes in the culture of different, sometimes competing communities in the Atlantic realm – to highlight continuities and ruptures; to show the effects of increased flows of goods, services, information, ideas, and identities; and to reassess the impact of major historical developments throughout the era of the Cold War, not least its unexpected end.
UNESCO History Conference: "UNESCO and the Cold War"
March 4-5, 2010, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
The International Scientific Committee for the UNESCO History Project
Conference "Transcultural Perspectives on Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Twentieth Century"
February 26-27, 2010, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Dr. Simon Wendt (Universität Heidelberg), Brian D. Behnken (Iowa State University)
EU-Marie Curie Conference and Training Series: Workshop "Arenas of Contestation"
February 18-20, 2010, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Dr. Martin Klimke (HCA), Dr. Joachim Scharloth (Universität Zürich), Dr. Kathrin Fahlenbrach (Universität Halle)
ERP Conference: "Cultures of Transatlanticism: The Impact of Lawmakers and Judges"
February 4-6, 2010, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Supported by the German Program for Transatlantic Encounters (Transatlantic Program) financed from ERP (European Recoery Program) funds provided by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi)
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Harnisch, Prof. Dr. Manfred Berg
Conference "Arnold Schwarzenegger: Interdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf Körper und Image"
September 18-20, 2009, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
Dr. Michael Butter, Dr. Patrick Keller und Dr. Simon Wendt
Symposium "Modernization and Intellectual Authority in US Literary Culture, 1750-1900"
July 2-5, 2009, IWH, Heidelberg University
Prof. Dr. Günter Leypoldt, Prof. Dr. Dietmar Schloss
Conference "Black Diaspora and Germany Across the Centuries"
March 19-21, 2009, German Historical Institute (GHI), Washington DC
Dr. Martin Klimke, Dr. Mischa Honeck, Dr. Anne Kuhlmann-Smirnov
Conference "1968 in Japan, Deutschland und den USA: Politischer Protest und Kultureller Wandel"
March 4-6, 2009, Japanese-German Center, Berlin
Wolfgang Brenn (Japanese-German Center, Berlin), Martin Klimke (GHI); Yoshie Mitobe (Meiji University, Tokyo), Joachim Scharloth (University of Zurich/ University of Freiburg), Laura Elizabeth Wong (Harvard University / HCA)
EU-Marie Curie Conference and Training Series:
"Confronting Cold War Conformity: Peace and Protest Cultures in Europe, 1945-1989"
August 18-25, 2008, Charles-University Prague, Czech Republic
Heidelberg Center for American Studies, Charles-University Prague, Czech Republic
Annual Meeting of the German Association for American Studies GAAS
(DGfA – Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien)
May 15-18, 2008, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
EU-Marie Curie Conference and Training Series: “European Protest Movements since the Cold War: The Rise of a (Trans-)national Civil Society and the Transformation of the Public Sphere”
Heidelberg University, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
International Conference “Global Dimensions of Racism in the Modern World: Comparative and Transnational Perspectives”
July 12-14, 2007, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg Center for American Studies
International Conference “State and Market in a Globalized World: Transatlantic Perspectives”
October 5-8, 2006, Heidelberg Center for American Studies