The Revolution Will Not Be Peer-Reviewed
American Disconnects and the Production of Knowledge

Graduate Conference at the Graduate School of North American Studies
John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin – May 5 and 6, 2017

The conference will be held at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Lansstr. 7-9, 14195 Berlin-Dahlem (close to U3 station Dahlem-Dorf). All events will take place in Room 340 (top floor). Coffee will be provided during breaks.

Friday (May 5)
From 8:30 Welcome and registration
9:00 Opening remarks by Frank Kelleter (JFKI)
9:30

Panel: The Politics of Academic Knowledge

  • Heleen Blommers (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam): “Lyndon B. Johnson and the experts: How Academia shaped the War on Poverty”
  • Gonçalo Piolti Cholant (Universidade de Coimbra): “From Intersectionality to an Ecology of Knowledges”
  • Rahab Njeri (Universität Trier): “Reclaiming Black Spaces in German Academia”

Chair: Simon Strick, FU Berlin (Cultural Studies)
11:00 – break –
11:30

Panel: Poetics of Dis/Reconnection

  • Johannes Kohrs (FU Berlin): “The Black Radical in the Ivory Tower: Satire Satirized in Percival Everett’s Erasure”
  • Riley Nisbet (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg): “Radical Code Switching and Immigrant Identity in Junot Diaz’s ‘The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao’”
  • Najoua Stambouli (Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences, Sousse): “Postmodern Poetics in Adrienne Rich’s ‘Heroines’: A Step toward Social Change”

Chair: Birte Wege, FU Berlin (Literature)
13:00 – lunch break – (meal not provided but several options nearby)
14:00

Panel: Trump and the Circumstances: The Making of a New Populism

  • Katharina Thalmann (Universität Tübingen): “Conspiracy Theory in the Age of Trump(ism)”
  • Simon Schleusener (FU Berlin): “Political Disconnects: Donald Trump, the Cultural Left, and the Crisis of Neoliberalism”

Chair: Ilaria Scaglia, FU Berlin (History)
15:00 – break –
15:30

Panel: Disconnected: Questioning the Academic Production of Knowledge

  • Thorn Kray (JLU Gießen): “Unpractical, Inaccessible, Contentious, and Always Ready for Critique: Four Reasons Why the Humanities Are Disconnected From Civil Society”
  • Madita Oeming (Universität Paderborn): “Out of the Box – Lessons Learnt from Being a Porn Scholar”
  • Fabius Mayland (FU Berlin): “Attached You Find My Proposal”

Chair: Sebastian Jobs, FU Berlin (History)
17:00 – break –
17:30 Keynote: Larycia Hawkins (University of Virginia):

“Academic Freedom in the Iron Cage of the Ivory Tower”

Chair: Teresa de Lauretis (UC Santa Cruz/FU Berlin)
After Dinner (free buffet provided by GSNAS, set up outside Room 340)
Saturday (May 6)
From 10:30

Welcome and registration
11:00

Panel: Performing Politics: Activism in Popular Culture

  • Ewa Adamkiewicz (Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz): “Traditions of Black Dissent: Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar”
  • Teresa Teklic (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg): “The Stories We Tell: Cultural Activism in Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher’s Art Project Learning To Love You More”

  • Lee Flamand (FU Berlin): “Entertainment is the New Activism: The Impassioned Politics of Orange is the New Black”

Chair: Martin Lüthe, FU Berlin (Cultural Studies)
12:30 – lunch break – (meal not provided but several options nearby)
13:30 Panel: America in Global Perspectives

  • Karin Louise Hermes (HU Berlin): “’We are not Americans!’ – Indigenous Sovereignty in Hawai‘i in the Age of Trump”
  • Olga Korytowska (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw): “American studies and gender trouble: ‘gender’ as a foreign ideology in right-wing Polish discourse”
  • Muhammad Naseem Khan Achakzai (University of Management and Technology, Lahore): “’Foreign’ Perspectives on American Foreign Policy”

Chair: Nadja Klopprogge, FU Berlin (History)
15:00 – break –
15:30 Panel: Reconnecting: Movements in the University and Beyond

  • Amanda Priebe (Abolition Journal): “Against and Beyond Academia: the Abolition Journal Project“
  • Michael C. Gilbert (independent researcher): “The Third Sector Becomes Movement: Academia-in-Civil-Society at the Existential Abyss”

Chair: Markus Kienscherf, FU Berlin (Sociology)
16:30 – break –
17:00 “Media, New Authoritarianism, and the Trials of the Next Left”

A Roundtable Discussion with Chris Spannos (New Internationalist) and

Jerome Roos (University of Cambridge/ROAR Magazine)