Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies

The Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz offers a dynamic and wide-ranging program in both research and teaching for all students interested in topics related to the Americas in a global context. With a special focus on interculturality, transnationalism, and interdisciplinarity, our expertise lies in the fields of Early American Studies, Indigenous Studies, Life Writing/Life Sciences, Political & Intellectual History, Film & Media Studies, Religion and American Culture, and Materiality.

Life Writing in and beyond the Anglophone World

2017

Life writing and life-writing studies today seem to be closely connected to people and institutions in Anglophone countries, more specifically in the classical countries of immigration: America, Ca...

Research Rating Anglistik/Amerikanistik of the German Council of Science and Humanities

2016

The pilot study Forschungsrating Anglistik/Amerikanistik is the first implementation of the Forschungsrating in the humanities. This chapter presents the findings and conclusions of the rating. It consists of three parts: First, the results of the rating, first published in December 2012, are presented, as well as the conclusions drawn by the German Council of Science and Humanities. Second, Alfred Hornung who chaired the review board reflects on the Forschungsrating from the point of view of the chair of the review board as well as an Amerikanistik scholar. Third, Barbara Korte writes about the Forschungsrating from her perspective as a member of the review board and Anglistik scholar.

Maoism and Postmodernism

2015

In this essay I discuss the emergence of the Mao cult during the Cultural Revolution in China and its appropriation in cultural revolutions in Europe and the United States to show how this image resonated with similar cults of popular icons in the West and lent itself to the formulation of theories and practices of postmodernism. The image quality of these cults facilitated the rise of the Mao-craze in the late 1980s and 1990s when political pop productions of Mao by Chinese artists emerged in New York and were then transplanted to China where they met with transfigurations of Mao’s legacy in the People’s Republic. The final stage of postmodern variations of Mao is reached with the presiden…

Diversity and Life Writing in the Transnational Classroom

2018

For this chapter, Alfred Hornung locates the origin of Germany’s diversity studies in the postwar era, during which Germany experienced gradual transculturation, especially due to the presence of African American soldiers, but also due to the appearance of American cultures in the media, the introduction of American studies in German universities, and the teaching of multi-ethnic authors in American literature courses. On the basis of international pedagogical experience, Hornung demonstrates that life writing lends itself particularly well to the representation and recognition of diversity and suggests how inclusion can be furthered. The focus of this chapter’s transnational classroom comp…

XI IABA Brazil 2018

2019

Out of Life: Routes, Refuge, Rescue

2017

Migrations of people have influenced the history of humankind from early on. Today, we are experiencing an exodus of people from misery and war-torn regions in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to ...

Return Visits: The European Background of Transcultural Life Writing

2013

In this article I read autobiographies by East Europeans who immigrated to Canada in connection with the Second World War as examples of transcultural life writing. My focus on the representation of return visits of these loyal Canadian citizens to their country of origin after 1989 reveals the underlying intention of relating the experience of life in a multicultural democratic society to the emergence of a new political consciousness in Eastern Europe. In my analysis I distinguish four types of concerns which try to bridge the past of their childhood experiences with the formation of a transcultural life in the 21st century: 1. Anna Porter’s return visit to Hungary for family reunion and …

Le Pacte Philippe

2018

A Festschrift for Philippe Lejeune