Graduate School of North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin

Making It Home
Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Recognition and Displacement in America

May 11 – 12, 2012

America’s understanding of home as both a national and domestic space of identification is currently being reconsidered. Home has traditionally been associated with ideas of belonging, community, domesticity, and safety. When social change occurs, these concepts must be re-evaluated; “Making It Home” implies returning to, adapting to, and creating ways of being at home in America.
This conference intends to illuminate the social, economic, political, and cultural conditions transforming the concept of home, and how these transformations are addressed in contemporary discourses. In the tradition of the Graduate School of North American Studies, we welcome  interdisciplinary papers contributing to a better understanding of what it means to make it home.

We encourage papers on a range of diverse topics. Possible paper subjects may include, but are not limited to:
 

●     America as the Home of Imperial Globalization? Democracy Promotion and US Foreign
       Policy

●     Whose Home? Gendered and Racialized Representations of Inclusion and Exclusion

●     Transnational Homes? Diasporas and Migrations

●     Exclusive Homes: Past and Present Forms of Social Marginalization

●     Narratives of Displacement and Homelessness

●     Winning American Living Rooms: The Media and Public Views of War

●     Housing and the Economy: A Safe Haven in Times of Crisis?

●     Living on a Borrowed Dime: The American Dream and Consumer Credit

●     Losing One’s Ground: Literature of Trauma and Grief in post 9/11 America

 

Abstracts should be limited to 250 words and be accompanied by the author’s name, e-mail address, institutional affiliation, and a short CV. The deadline for submissions is February 5, 2012. A confirmation email will be sent when we receive your abstract. Those selected to present will be notified by mid-March, 2012. Please submit all abstracts and questions to: gsnas.conference2012@gsnas.fu-berlin.de

 

The conference language will be English.

 

 

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