International Graduate Conference 2016
Flows and Undercurrents: Dimensions of Im/mobility in North America
June 2-4, 2016, John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin
From lived realities to theoretical discourses, issues of mobility are at the core of many contemporary debates both within North America and globally. (Im)mobility transcends disciplinary boundaries and topics, generating disparate perspectives surrounding movements of people, capital and ideas. Migration, in particular, has become the focus of much recent analytical attention. As movements of people continue to gain focus, practices of immobility and exclusion are underscored. This conference, hosted by the Graduate School of North American Studies of the John F. Kennedy Institute at Freie Universität Berlin, will examine mobility and explore its relevance across numerous disciplines.
Registration
We encourage you to register as early as possible. In order to do so, please send an email to gsnas.conference2016@gsnas.fu-berlin.de stating your full name, contact information, and institutional affiliation. There is no fee for registration.
Unfortunately, the Graduate School of North American Studies cannot provide any grants to cover your travel expenses.
If you have any questions concerning the registration process, please contact us at gsnas.conference2016@gsnas.fu-berlin.de.
Panel Structure and Conference Program
Conference Program [PDF, 700 KB]Thursday, June 2
| 2.00 pm | Registration/Coffe |
| 2.45 pm | Welcome and Opening Remarks: Ulla Haselstein (Freie Universität Berlin) |
| 3.00 pm | Keynote Address: Dr. Julia Leyda (Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, Potsdam / Freie Universität Berlin) |
| 4.00 pm | Coffee Break |
| 4.30 pm – 6.00 pm | Panel 1, Room 340 |
|---|---|
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Migration, Displacement, Confinement Panel Chair: Dr. Themis Chronopoulos (University of East Anglia) |
|
| Maciej Świderski, M.A. (Public Spaces Research Institute, Warsaw) |
“Don’t Go East of Troost!” – Influence of the Imaginary Urban Boundaries on Social Mobility in American Cities |
| Charlotte Bezamat-Mantes, M.A. (Université Paris 8 - Centre de Recherches et d'Analyses Géopolitiques / University of Manitoba) |
Urban Reserves in Canada: Shifting First Nations' Economies to the City? |
| Friedolin Merhout, B.A. (Duke University) |
Nein zum Heim? How Meaning Structures Inform Immigration Attitudes |
| 4.30 pm – 6.00 pm | Panel 2, Room 319 |
|
Locating Thought, Locating Literatures: Regions and Representations Panel Chair: Dr. Alexander Starre (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Dr. David Hadar (The Open University of Israel) |
Moving World Literature: Anton Shammas’s Arabesques between Iowa and the Galilee |
| Jurrit Daalder, M.A. (University of Oxford) |
Against the Grain: The Regional Dimensions of Jonathan Franzen’s Career Mobility |
| Richard Bachmann, B.A. (Leipzig University) |
The City of Hope - Grace Lee Boggs’s Detroit as a Topos of Thinking |
| 6.00 pm | Reception |
Friday, June 3
| 8.30 am | Registration/Coffee |
| 9.00 am | Keynote Address: Dr. Michelle Commander (University of Tennessee) |
| 10.00 am | Coffee Break |
| 10.30 am – 12.00 pm | Panel 3, Room 340 |
|---|---|
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Rights to the Streets: Transportation, Infrastructure, Politics Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. Boris Vormann (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Anna Davidson, M.A. (University of Oxford) |
Whose Streets? Mobility as Displacement in Los Angeles |
| Dr. Andrea Vesentini (Birkbeck, University of London) |
Together and Apart: Black Auto(im)mobility and Nuclear Segregation in Interwar and Postwar America |
| Dr. Gregg Culver (Heidelberg University) |
Streetcar Politics in the Making of the Creative City: A Conflict in Sustainabilities? |
| 10.30 am – 12.00 pm | Panel 4, Room 319 |
|
On the Road (Again): Kerouac on the Move Panel Chair: Dr. Sean Bonney (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Alina Cojocaru, B.A. (Ovidius University) |
Cosmopolitan Identity and the Urban Space: The Road as Mediator of Space and Place in Jack Kerouac's On the Road and The Dharma Bums |
| Adrian Matus, B.A. (Paris-Sorbonne University) |
Wandering Across the Iron Curtain: The Reception of the Novel On The Road in the USA and Eastern Europe |
| 12.00 am | Lunch Break |
| 1.30 pm – 3.30 pm | Panel 5, Room 340 |
|---|---|
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Media Movements: Perspectives from Cultural Studies Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. Martin Lüthe (Freie Universität Berlin) |
|
| Alice Morin, M.A. (University of Paris III: La Sorbonne Nouvelle) |
(Im)mobility through the Lens of Fashion Photography: The Example of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar U.S., 1960s-1980s |
| Imani Wadud, M.A. (University of Kansas) |
Decolonizing Aesthetics: Analyzing a Contested Site of Black (In)materiality Through Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby” |
| Gesine Wegner, M.A. (Dresden University of Technology) |
Disability in Motion: Reframing Notions of (Im)mobility in American Reality TV |
| Terence Kumpf, M.A. (Technical University of Dortmund) |
Migratory Ebb and Cultural Flow: The Fluid Dynamics of Transaesthetics in Bilingual Hip-Hop in the United States |
| 1.30 pm – 3.30 pm | Panel 6, Room 319 |
|
Transatlantic Tides: Narratives and Objects of Oceanic Travel Panel Chair: Katharina Metz, M.A. (Freie Universität Berlin) |
|
| Dr. José Antonio Gurpegui (Instituto Franklin de la Universidad de Alcalá) |
First ‘Immigrants’ in North America: Ideological Consequences of the British and Spanish Presence during the XVII and XVIII Centuries |
| Frances Molyneux, M.A. (Stanford University) |
Transported Places: The Transatlantic Im/mobility of Narrative |
| Lucas Hansen, B.A. (University of Hamburg) |
The Dichotomy of Drifting and Sailing – Seeing and (Mis)reading Black Agency through the Eyes of Captain Delano in Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno |
| 3.30 pm | Coffee Break |
| 3.45 pm – 5.15 pm | Panel 7, Room 340 |
|---|---|
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Moving Texts, Arresting Images? Narrative Documentaries of Forced Immobility Panel Chair: Dr. Birte Wege (Freie Universität Berlin) |
|
| Hannah Bailey, M.A. (University of Kansas) |
Unlikely Captives: Disruptive Narratives of Development in Prison Memoirs |
| Sarah Wolff, B.A. (Freie Universität Berlin / Columbia University) |
“Nowhere to Go But into the Tunnel”: Alien Bodies Contesting Urban Space in Pitch Black: Don’t Be Skerd |
| 3.45 pm – 5.15 pm | Panel 8, Room 319 |
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Nietsche, Dance, and American (Im)mobility Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. Sebastian Jobs (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Eric Fraunholz, M.A. (Leipzig University) |
The (Im)mobility of Nietzschean Thought |
| Nitya Koch, M.A. (Freie Universität Berlin) |
Money, Mobility and Movement in 1930s Musical Films |
| 5.15 pm | Coffee Break |
| 5.30 pm – 7.00 pm | Panel 9, Room 340 |
|---|---|
|
American Dreaming: Aspirations and (Im)mobility Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. James Dorson (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Mgr. Barbora Kučerová (Palacký University, Olomouc) |
California, Irresponsible and Influential: The Dream to (Re)place? |
| Bingxia Yu, M.A. (University of Leuven) |
‘Work Ethics’ Against ‘Intellectual Brilliance’: Struggles of the New Knowledge Class in John Williams’ Stoner |
| Arunima Dey, M.A. (University of Salamanca) |
The American-Bengali in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Fiction: Diasporic and Multicultural Identities |
| 5.30 pm – 7.00 pm | Panel 10, Room 319 |
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People, Goods, and Waste: Flows of Globalization Panel Chair: Dr. Beerd Beukenhorst (Freie Universität Berlin) |
|
| Chang Liu, M.A. (Jilin University) |
The Transnational Flow of Plastic Waste Between China and America: Retelling the Story of China's Dakou Generation and Environmental Justice |
| Michaela Beck, B.A. (Dresden University of Technology) |
Growing Roots en Route: Food and the Construction of Mobile Homes in US Locavore Narratives |
Saturday, June 4
| 8.30 am | Registration/Coffee |
| 9.00 am | Keynote Address: Dr. Themis Chronopoulos (University of East Anglia) |
| 10.00 am | Coffee Break |
| 10.30 am – 11.30 am | Panel 11, Room 340 |
|---|---|
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Poetics of Third Spaces: Negotiating Interstitial Identities Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. MaryAnn Snyder-Körber (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Dr. Lisa Marchi (University of Trento) |
The Airport as a Site of Tensions: Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye, Suheir Hammad, and Iman Mersal |
| Cecilia Cruccolini, M.A. (University of Bologna) |
Open City by Teju Cole: Urban Space and Fragmented Identity |
| 10.30 am – 11.30 am | Panel 12, Room 319 |
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Narratives of (Im)mobility in Black Modernism Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. Florian Sedlmeier (Freie Universität Berlin) |
|
| Ewa Adamkiewicz, M.A. (University of Graz) |
Take Me Some Place: Baldwin, Ellison, and Notions of (Im)mobility in Harlem |
| Florian Gabriel, M.A. (Freie Universität Berlin) |
Eugenic Discourse, Racial (Im-)Mobility and Naturalist Aesthetic in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man |
| 11.30 am | Lunch Break |
| 1.00 pm – 2.30 pm | Panel 13, Room 340 |
|---|---|
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Should We Make It New? Rethinking American Modernism Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. Ulla Haselstein (Freie Universität Berlin) |
|
| James Cetovski, M.A. (University of Oxford) |
Legacies of Modernism in Contemporary American Poetry, or What Happened to Universalism in the University? |
| Svenja Fehlhaber, M.A. (University of Osnabrück) |
Mobilizing Literary Form: The Dynamics of Self-Canonization at the Heyday of American Modernism |
| 1.00 pm – 2.30 pm | Panel 14, Room 319 |
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Tourism and its Discontents Panel Chair: Dr. Michelle Commander (University of Tennessee) |
|
| Sabrina Mittermeier, M.A. (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) |
Disney’s Theme Parks as Nodes of Mobility in a Globalized World [Online Presentation] |
| Nathalie Oelert, M.A. (University of Kassel) |
Visions of Paradise – The Simultaneity of Touristic Mobility and Immobility of Hawai'i as a Mental Construct |
| Olga Korytowska, M.A. (Graduate School for Social Research, Warsaw) |
Reproducing Bodies, Reproducing Citizens: The United States on the Map of Global Surrogacy Tourism |
| 2.30 am | Coffee Break |
| 3.00 pm – 4.00 pm | Panel 15, Room 340 |
|---|---|
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Moving Myths: Transnational Identities and Imaginaries Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. Frank Kelleter (Freie Universität Berlin) |
|
| Chiara Grilli, M.A. (University of Macerata) |
Mythical Immobility: The Institutionalization of Memory and Past in the Italian American Experience |
| Dr. Francesco Chianese (Freie Universität Berlin / Naples Eastern University) |
Representing Late Modern Family in Italian-American Culture: A Transnational Study |
| 3.00 pm – 4.00 pm | Panel 16, Room 319 |
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States in Motion: Force, Captivity, Objectives Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. Markus Kienscherf (Freie Universität Berlin) |
|
| Jean-Michel Turcotte, M.A. (Laval University) |
The Captivity of War as an Object of Mobility: The Western Inter-Allied Relations on German POWs during the Second World War |
| 4.00 pm | Closing Remarks |
