Faculty and Researchers

Florian Böller’s post-doctoral project investigates what role trust plays during crises of US authority within the transatlantic security community. The project thus links the two central concepts of GKAT and opens up the transatlantic and international dimensions of authority & trust. The aim is to develop a dynamic concept of intra-alliance conflict management which goes beyond static depictions of crisis and persistence of transatlantic relations. While politicians, pundits and scholars regularly point to the role of trust during periods of contestation, the interactions of trust-building, loss of trust, and trust-repair between Europe and the United States are yet to be examined in a systematic fashion. Empirically, the projects looks at three critical junctures in post WW-II transatlantic history: the “Gaullist” challenge of US authority during the 1960s, the delegitimization of US authority in the wake of the war in Iraq, and the Ukraine crisis as an external challenge to the security community.

In her PhD project, she investigates normative assumptions and their influence on the linguistic creation of ‘good’ places along Brooklyn’s longest street, Bedford Avenue. As processes of urbanization are affecting Brooklyn on many levels, linguistic representations and social actors’ perceptions of the ‘good’ place are naturally varied and contested. When social actors define themselves, they do so in relation to their spatial surroundings. Their underlying normative attitudes, which are adopted in the socialization process, are mediated by relations of authority and trust and thus also negotiated linguistically. Due to the dialectic relationship between discourse and extra-linguistic reality, these instantiations affect both the social and spatial sphere. Using a corpus of several types of linguistic data collected along Bedford Avenue, Kristin Berberich analyzes the linguistic strategies used in the construction of the ‘good’ place, more specifically, she looks at how social beings position themselves based on the norms that they have internalized, and how this is reflected in their linguistic portrayal of a ‘good’ city.

Her dissertation identifies voluntary simplicity as an emerging subgenre in contemporary American memoir and explores how the works that comprise this discourse advocate what might be called a “new traditionalism.” In this context, voluntary simplicity refers to the deliberate adoption of a lifestyle that is materially simpler than that which contemporary American culture typically encourages. While the extent and modes of adoption vary, these memoirs argue the need for a quiet form of subversion against mainstream authority by calling the value of consumerism and globalization into question. Voluntary simplicity does not, however, negate the value of authority or disdain contemporary culture in general: it instead shifts the placement of trust to alternative forms of authority by focusing on collaboration, community, and the revival of traditional skills. These memoirs provide a backdrop for the cultural history of voluntary simplicity as well as its ongoing shift from fringe status to acceptance by mainstream culture. In recent years, this acceptance has becoming so widespread that the movement itself is now subject to commoditization—a development that may well negate its original function. Finally, this project examines the impact that this mainstreaming effect has had on American consumption patterns in recent years, as well as public perceptions of what constitutes “the good life.”

David’s dissertation project is tentatively titled "Unburdened: American Civil-Military Relations and Literary Authority in Contemporary War Fiction." From the war in Vietnam to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, David intends to examine the dynamic between the military and American society and understand how that relationship has influenced the literary fiction written about the wars. By analyzing the portrayal of soldiers coming home from war in civilian- and veteran-authored fiction within the context of the surrounding cultural conditions, he hopes to address questions like: Who has the authority to tell a war story? How has the balance of that authority changed since the end of conscription and the shift to an all-volunteer force? With American society drifting further away from its military, is war literature a place to find common ground and build trust? Or is civilian appropriation of the veteran’s war story just another example of a cultural divide?

Claudia Jetter’s dissertation focuses on the dynamic transformation processes of religious authority in mid-nineteenth century America. During democratization processes of the religious realm, traditional scriptural and ecclesiastical authority had been increasingly challenged by several new prophets, emerging in the first half of the nineteenth century. Drawing chiefly on the new sacred writings of prophetic voices such as Joseph Smith Jr., Ralph Waldo Emerson or Philemon Stewart, this project seeks to examine and describe a new, democratized form of charismatic authority by disentangling the dynamic interrelations between prophets, their new sacred writings and their adhering communities.

Her doctoral project aims at investigating the transformation of authority and trust in American politics and society in the context of the 2016 U.S. presidential election and its aftermath. The United States has been shaped by a distrust of authorities and power since its inception, but the excessive lack of public confidence in national institutions, including news media, over last several years has confirmed how essential authority and trust are for the modern democratic state. This research is expected to contribute to the studies of authority and trust in the context of the rapidly evolving news media landscape of the United States in the times of country’s political and social upheaval. It intends to identify reliable and trustworthy news providers as well as determine their funding patterns and features of their journalistic practice. The results are expected to improve the understanding of what characterizes and constitutes news sources that can be trusted with providing a platform for an informative, healthy and constructive democratic conversation. This is of special importance in the face of the current uncontrolled proliferation of conspiracy theories and “fake news”, increasing political polarization, anti-establishment populism, and historically low American public confidence in the news media. As media’s performance both influences and is impacted by politics and society, the research will also address the fields of political and social sciences, which guarantees project’s interdisciplinary character.

In her dissertation, Aline Schmidt investigates the construction of a charismatic relationship between Donald Trump, his followers and the media from a linguistic angle. She draws on social-constructionist perspectives on Max Weber’s charisma concept, integrating language as a meaning-making resource that constructs and construes social reality and Weber’s classic framework of political authority. Charisma is conceptualized as a social relationship between leader, followers and media, which is ultimately negotiated in discourse. She uses quantitative and qualitative methods from corpus linguistics and critical discourse studies to identify discursive strategies, linguistic and other semiotic practices used by Trump, the charismatic community of practice, and traditional media outlets involved in the construction and deconstruction of charismatic authority. Her dataset is comprised of a number of ad hoc specialized corpora, spanning genres from, e.g., political speeches, televised debated and Trump’s tweets, to reddit posts and newspaper articles. Furthermore, she takes on a diachronic perspective by including a corpus of 20th century American presidential texts. She thus intends to integrate various dimensions of authority and trust in the Trump era that currently dominate American political and social life, and to contribute to the understanding of charisma in the postmodern US.

Tim Sommer’s dissertation project examines the transatlantic origins of authority and trust in nineteenth-century American literature and culture by retracing the many ways in which the emergence and subsequent trajectory of both concepts in the American context were shaped in response to European discourses, British ones in particular. Focusing on Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) and Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) as two representative figures and drawing on recent approaches in transatlantic studies, transnational theory, and cultural sociology to account for their cosmopolitan careers and writings, the project asks how literature in the nineteenth-century Anglo-American cultural sphere became a key arena for defining and debating authority and trust. It seeks to refine our understanding of the extent to which this development was intertwined with phenomena such as the rise of literary nationalism, the sacralization of culture, and the professionalization of authorship.

In his dissertation project, Sebastian Tants examines the writings of some of the key figures of the so-called American Renaissance with regard to questions of trust and state authority. Working from an understanding of literary texts as vehicles for – and mirrors of – social and political change, he studies selected writings by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, reading these authors as analysts, or theorists of trust and political authority. The aim is to establish the intellectual positions of these writers in the trust discourse of nineteenth-century America, in order to arrive at a clear picture of the critical as well as the invigorating potential for democracy that the literary period of the American Renaissance holds. To this aim, his dissertation will draw on pertinent sociological theories of trust, in particular the one outlined by Anthony Giddens in The Consequences of Modernity (1990). Focusing on an interpretative reading of the Renaissance writers, informed by historical context and present-day theory, the project thus seeks to shed new light on the cultural discourse about questions of trust and authority during the formative period of a modern society.

For her dissertation research, Cosima Werner shifted from urban farms to convenience stores – stores that do not provide any fresh goods or produce – in distressed and underserved neighborhoods of North American Cities. Since the turn of the century, in equality in American cities has also affected the food supply, resulting in so-called "food deserts" – urban areas with little access or no access to fresh foods. The lower purchasing power of urban inhabitants has caused many supermarkets to move to suburban areas, opening the market for convenience stores especially in underserved neighborhoods with a high share of ethnic populations. The poor nutritional value of foods available at convenience stores is often tied to the prevalence of obesity, diabetes, and other diet-related diseases in these neighborhoods. Cosima Werner’s dissertation contributes new insights about convenience stores as social spaces, which also means focusing on the perspective of the customers, for whom convenience stores serve as reference points for their everyday lives. The empirical research is embedded in a theoretical framework about space and everyday practices. The preliminary assumption is that relational space concepts are conducive to analyzing how convenience stores are perceived by their customers. In particular, this approach uses qualitative methods such as participant observation, interviews, and analysis of visual material.

Georg Wolff’s dissertation, which bears the working title “American Conservatism and the Struggle against Federal Authority,” aims to show how grassroots organizations partook in a coordinated effort to drastically reduce the impact of governmental action on the federal level. He examines the contradictions inherent in the ideological backgrounds of these groups, whose members shared their conservative identity, but were split mainly in traditionalists and libertarians, who had vastly different outlooks on topics such as Civil Rights or Counterculture. Drawing mainly from archival material and interviews, he aims to paint a more balanced picture of these crucial processes in American history and to challenge prevailing narratives such as the conservative pied piper.

Louis Butcher’s project is titled “Analyzing the Impact of Police Body Cameras in America: Has Increased Surveillance of Police Behavior Reduced Incidences of Excessive Force?” It will seek to determine whether the growing use of police body-worn cameras (BWCs) in the United States has reduced the police’s use-of-force – and excessive force, in particular – thus, positively impacting relations between the police and the public at large.

Further information and project description

In her dissertation project, Maren focuses on the impact of contemporary populist rhetoric and framing on people’s attitudes in the United States. Despite being a recurring feature of American politics, populism has perhaps reached an all-time high. In the aftermath of the Great Recession, increasing inequality and distrust of elites seem to have contributed to this development while the mass proliferation of digital media outlets and mobile devices has facilitated direct communication with a mass audience. Trump’s victory in 2016 is seen by many as the manifestation of this trend. In the contemporary United States, more and more mainstream actors of all ideological persuasions seem to be employing populist rhetoric to shape people’s attitudes and beliefs in their favor. In particular, framing has become a popular strategy to alter the ways in which information is being presented, in the hopes of influencing people’s attitudes. In her project, Maren will address the issue of contemporary populist rhetoric. She aims at understanding how and why framing, especially with an underlying populist notion, can influence audiences by focusing on the political discourse among stakeholders of different ideological backgrounds.