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In an interview with Deutsches Haus NYU, Prof. Dr. Frank Kelleter discusses New York, U.S. media and culture, and his new research project "Civic Indignation" as well its connections to our present moment. 

The project examines a key feature of American literature at the time of the Revolution and the early republic: its rhetorical vaccilation between sentimentalism and indignation, or "civic indignation," as Keller terms. The project asks: what does it mean when colonial elites speak on behalf of – and even in the assumed role of – wounded humanity? What does it mean when a language of universal protest is also a language of white self-sentimentalization? Which rhetorical strategies and which emotional performances can we expect in such a situation?