WORKSHOP 1 (201)

(Trans)National Counter/Publics and the Politics of Humor in US Culture 
Organizers: Erik Redling (Halle), Stefanie Schäfer (Erlangen)

Speakers: 
Allison Stagg (Mainz):
“Political Humor in Early American Caricature Prints”

Mischa Honeck (HU Berlin): 
“The Senator and His Satirist: Carl Schurz, Thomas Nast, and the Ethnicization of Political Humor”

Antje Dallmann (HU Berlin): 
“19th-Century Medical Humor, Professional Authority and Lay Audiences in Narratives by Henry Clay Lewis, Marcus Lafayette Byrn, and Silas Weir Mitchell”

Guido Isekenmeier (Stuttgart): 
“The (Counter)Public Burning: Cold War Politics and Frontier Humor in Robert Coover’s Magnum Opus”

Carsten Schinko (Stuttgart):
“Fun Rides in Lethal Rush Hours? Reflections on the Buddy Cop Movie”

Carsten Junker (Leipzig):
“Haunting the Monstrous President: Reinstating High-Culture Notions of Authorship in Contemporary Political Satire”

  

WORKSHOP 2 (203)
Early Mass Cultures as Counter/Publics 
Organizers: Aleksandra Boss, Kristina Graaff, Martin Klepper, Simon Rienäcker (HU Berlin)

Speakers:
Christina Meyer (Hamburg): 
“Middlebrow Publics? Reading Gender in the Serial Press, 1910-1930”

Mashid Mayar (Bielefeld): 
“‘our work is done and now for some fun and play’: Personal Fictions of the World and (Counter)Publics of Childhood”

Annabel Friedrichs (Hannover): 
“Drawing Appeals: Femininity and Feminism in Nell Brinkley's Graphic Art”

Luvena Kopp (Frankfurt): 
“Publics/Counter Publics: Billie Holiday and the Early War on Drugs”

Carmen Dexl (Erlangen-Nürnberg): 
“Negotiating the Boundaries between Consent and Dissent: Josephine Baker as a Cultural Icon, International Star, and Social Activist”

 

WORKSHOP 3 (319)
When the Beacon Breaks: The End of Mass Media and the Rise of the Niche 
Organizers: Torsten Kathke (Mainz), Sabrina Mittermeier (München)

Speakers: 
Martin Lüthe (FU Berlin): 
“When the Ticker Ticks: Telegraphic Fiction, Media Change, and Infatuating Communication”

John Munro (St. Mary's University, Halifax/Tübingen): 
“Fighting Fake News in the Age of McCarthyism: A Counter-Public Sphere at the Heart of Empire”

Sabrina Mittermeier (München): 
“‘From The WELL, Actually’: How Partisan Websites Flooded Public Discourse”

Kay Losey (Grand Valley State University, MI): 
“Trump in the ‘Twitter-verse’: Using Personal Style for Mass Appeal and Its Implications”

Stefanie Mueller (Frankfurt):
“@AltNatParkSer and @RogueNASA: Science, Nature, and Rogue Tweeting”

 

WORKSHOP 4 (340)
Muckraking 2.0: Activist Modes and Media of Documentary Revisited 
Organizers: Astrid Böger (Hamburg), Christof Decker (München)

 

Speakers: 
Ina Batzke (Münster): 
“‘Define American’: Undocumented Activism 2.0”

Julia Faisst (Eichstätt):
“Homelessness 2.0: New Documentary Modes of Precarious Habitats in Late Capitalism”

Lee A. Flamand (FU Berlin): 
“The Intermedial Aspirations of Documenting Dissent: Ava DuVernay’s 13th”

Anne Nassauer (FU Berlin): 
“Documenting Dissent - US Activists’ Capture and Representation of Protests”

Sarah Säckel (Stuttgart):
“Bursting the Fashion Filter Bubble: Activist Documentary Modes Presenting the Exploitation of Textile Workers and the Planet”

Babette B. Tischleder (Göttingen):
“The Inconvenience of Loving Gaia: On the Style and Sentiment of Ecocritical Documentaries”

 

WORKSHOP 5 (LIB)
The Ableist Public and Crip Counterpublics 
Organizers: Simon Strick (FU Berlin), Olga Tarapata (Köln)

Speakers: 
Sharif Bitar (Oldenburg): 
“Witches, Voodoo, and Down’s Syndrome: Disability as Intersectional Feminism’s Blind Spot in American Horror Story: Coven”

Tatiana Prorokova (Marburg): 
“Alcoholic, Mad, Disabled: Constructing Lesbian Identity in Ann Bannon’s Beebo Brinker Chronicles”

René Dietrich (Mainz): 
“Assimilation as Debilitation: Incapacitated Sovereignty, Ableist Settler Publics, and Bodily Refusal”

Gesine Wegner (Dresden): 
“Through Deaf Eyes": Losing and Reclaiming Public Space in Brian Selznick's Wonderstruck”

 

WORKSHOP 6 (SSC)
Rumor, Gossip, and Reputation in the American Counter/Public Sphere 
Organizers: Pierre-Héli Monot (München), Florian Zappe (Göttingen)

Speakers: 
Katrin Horn (Bayreuth): 
“Creating a Public (from) Scandal: The Gossip Circles of Town Topics: The Journal of Society (1887-1923)”

Sebastian Jobs (FU Berlin):
“Just Rumors and Gossip? Uncertain Knowledge from a Historian’s Point of View”

Marek Paryż (Warsaw): 
“The Social Dynamics of Rumor in Walter Van Tilburg Clark's The Ox-Bow Incident”

Maria Verena Peters (Hagen): 
“From the Whisper Network to #MeToo: Framing Gender, Gossip and (Sexual) Violence against Women”

 
WORKSHOP 7 (GSNAS)
Teaching Counter/Publics: American Studies and Digital Pedagogy 
Organizers: Ingrid Gessner (Regensburg), Uwe Küchler (Tübingen)

Speakers: 
Alexander Dunst (Paderborn): 
“Teaching Digital American Studies: Some Approaches, Tools, and Experiences”

Sebastian M. Herrmann (Leipzig): 
“Questioning the Authority of the Linear Form? Leipzig's Social Hypertext Reader SHRIMP and the ‘Introduction to American Studies’”

Horst Tonn (Tübingen): 
“New Formats for Digital Teacher Trainings”

Viola Huang (Passau): 
“Teaching the Black Power Movement, the Genre of Documentary Film, and Critical Media Literacy”

Joannis Kaliampos (Lüneburg) & Martina Kohl (Berlin): 
“‘I Think They Are Irresponsible’: Teaching Sustainability with (Counter)Narratives in the EFL Classroom”