Festakt to celebrate Prof. Dr. Susanne Rohr (Hamburg)
Organized by Marius Henderson, Julia Lange and Jolene Mathieson
This symposium explores current trends in contemporary American literature and examines American literature’s continued importance as a global cultural mediator. At a time when nationalist tendencies in the United States as well as in Europe intensify, fictional texts and their critical potential for reflection acquire considerable social significance, particularly as promoters of transnational exchange. A relevant question in this context is to what extent this millennia-old cultural technique can reflect profound social upheavals in light of changed media conditions. Nineteen renowned scholars in the field of American Studies and related disciplines address this question through readings of the following topics:
1) the legacy of postmodernism and its contemporary revisions,
2) new practices of adaptation and appropriation,
3) neorealism and its revisions of old realist conventions,
4) the new gender, class and race politics of reading and writing fiction,
5) new American environmental fiction, and
6) the relationship between philosophy and poetics.
For more information, please see the symposium website.
