"The Emergence of the New" - A Symposium in Honor of Heinz Ickstadt
Symposium “The Emergence of the New”
October 28-29, 2016, John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin
The cultural dictionary of modernity has long cross-referenced the United States as „the New World“ where (European) history would take a new start. As a place of eschatological hope for Puritan dissenters, or as a place with the potential of social mobility for immigrants, the newness of America was predicated on the dismissal of Europe as corrupt or mired in outworn traditions and on the construction of a historical telos to whose achievement America was to take the lead. At the same time, American agents of the new had to come to terms with resistances at home. Emerson and Whitman demanded a constant renewal of efforts of their fellow Americans to overcome the retrospection of their age to explore the countless possibilities for growth both in everyday life as well as in the world at large. Modernist writers such as Pound turned such admonition into a battle-cry, attacking what they regarded as a stale conservatism or a meek spirit of reform. With postmodernism however, the literary rhetoric of the new at least may have entered a twilight phase, due to its appropriation by the fashion industry as the latest retro style, and by the media as the latest format of entertainment. The oppositions appear clear-cut: the old vs the new, tradition vs innovation, continuity vs rupture, for the proponents of the new declare what must count as old, and have to muster support for their proposition in order to turn it into a performative speech act. Yet there have always been strong counter-currents in American literary and cultural history as well as in American pragmatist philosophy which have all deplored the disregard, neglect or destruction of (certain) American traditions. How is „the new“ envisioned, conjured up, legitimized and, above all, explained? How is „the old“ identified, disparaged, annihilated? What were such constructions “good for” in retrospect, and what counter-movements and dissenting voices challenged them? Which role do technological innovations and political confrontations play in the discourses of the new? Is there a rhetoric of utopia based on the idea of the old? To what extent can literary texts be described as hybrid forms that resist their authors’ rhetoric of the new? How does contemporary literature reflect and respond to the aging of the medium of the text? And is there perhaps a new sense of the world-making power of language?
Registration
The symposium can be attended free of charge. Please send an email to jfklit@zedat.fu-berlin.de in order to register.
Conference Program
Conference Program [PDF, 16 KB]Thursday, June 2
| 9.00 |
Welcome and Opening Remarks: Ulla Haselstein (Freie Universität Berlin) |
| 9:15 – 10:45 hours |
Panel 1 - Beginnings, Room 340 |
|---|---|
| Marc Chénetier (Paris-Diderot) | The Life and Times of Henri Moiville |
| Christa Buschendorf (Frankfurt) | The Power of Janus: Work on Myth in American Literature |
| Werner Sollors (Harvard) | The Same New Same New: Myths of a New Beginning |
| 8.30 am | Registration/Coffee |
| 9.00 am | Keynote Address: Dr. Michelle Commander (University of Tennessee) |
| 10.00 am | Coffee Break |
| 11.15 – 12:45 hours | Panel 2 - Returns, Room 340 |
|---|---|
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Rights to the Streets: Transportation, Infrastructure, Politics Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. Boris Vormann (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Anna Davidson, M.A. (University of Oxford) |
Whose Streets? Mobility as Displacement in Los Angeles |
| Dr. Andrea Vesentini (Birkbeck, University of London) |
Together and Apart: Black Auto(im)mobility and Nuclear Segregation in Interwar and Postwar America |
| Dr. Gregg Culver (Heidelberg University) |
Streetcar Politics in the Making of the Creative City: A Conflict in Sustainabilities? |
| 10.30 am – 12.00 pm | Panel 4, Room 319 |
|
On the Road (Again): Kerouac on the Move Panel Chair: Dr. Sean Bonney (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Alina Cojocaru, B.A. (Ovidius University) |
Cosmopolitan Identity and the Urban Space: The Road as Mediator of Space and Place in Jack Kerouac's On the Road and The Dharma Bums |
| Adrian Matus, B.A. (Paris-Sorbonne University) |
Wandering Across the Iron Curtain: The Reception of the Novel On The Road in the USA and Eastern Europe |
| 12.00 am | Lunch Break |
| 1.30 pm – 3.30 pm | Panel 5, Room 340 |
|---|---|
|
Media Movements: Perspectives from Cultural Studies Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. Martin Lüthe (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Alice Morin, M.A. (University of Paris III: La Sorbonne Nouvelle) |
(Im)mobility through the Lens of Fashion Photography: The Example of Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar U.S., 1960s-1980s |
| Imani Wadud, M.A. (University of Kansas) |
Decolonizing Aesthetics: Analyzing a Contested Site of Black (In)materiality Through Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby” |
| Gesine Wegner, M.A. (Dresden University of Technology) |
Disability in Motion: Reframing Notions of (Im)mobility in American Reality TV |
| Terence Kumpf, M.A. (Technical University of Dortmund) |
Migratory Ebb and Cultural Flow: The Fluid Dynamics of Transaesthetics in Bilingual Hip-Hop in the United States |
| 1.30 pm – 3.30 pm | Panel 6, Room 319 |
|
Transatlantic Tides: Narratives and Objects of Oceanic Travel Panel Chair: Katharina Metz, M.A. (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Dr. José Antonio Gurpegui (Instituto Franklin de la Universidad de Alcalá) |
First ‘Immigrants’ in North America: Ideological Consequences of the British and Spanish Presence during the XVII and XVIII Centuries |
| Frances Molyneux, M.A. (Stanford University) |
Transported Places: The Transatlantic Im/mobility of Narrative |
| Lucas Hansen, B.A. (University of Hamburg) |
The Dichotomy of Drifting and Sailing – Seeing and (Mis)reading Black Agency through the Eyes of Captain Delano in Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno |
| 3.30 pm | Coffee Break |
| 3.45 pm – 5.15 pm | Panel 7, Room 340 |
|---|---|
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Moving Texts, Arresting Images? Narrative Documentaries of Forced Immobility Panel Chair: Dr. Birte Wege (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Hannah Bailey, M.A. (University of Kansas) |
Unlikely Captives: Disruptive Narratives of Development in Prison Memoirs |
| Sarah Wolff, B.A. (Freie Universität Berlin / Columbia University) |
“Nowhere to Go But into the Tunnel”: Alien Bodies Contesting Urban Space in Pitch Black: Don’t Be Skerd |
| 3.45 pm – 5.15 pm | Panel 8, Room 319 |
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Nietsche, Dance, and American (Im)mobility Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. Sebastian Jobs (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Eric Fraunholz, M.A. (Leipzig University) |
The (Im)mobility of Nietzschean Thought |
| Nitya Koch, M.A. (Freie Universität Berlin) |
Money, Mobility and Movement in 1930s Musical Films |
| 5.15 pm | Coffee Break |
| 5.30 pm – 7.00 pm | Panel 9, Room 340 |
|---|---|
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American Dreaming: Aspirations and (Im)mobility Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. James Dorson (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Mgr. Barbora Kučerová (Palacký University, Olomouc) |
California, Irresponsible and Influential: The Dream to (Re)place? |
| Bingxia Yu, M.A. (University of Leuven) |
‘Work Ethics’ Against ‘Intellectual Brilliance’: Struggles of the New Knowledge Class in John Williams’ Stoner |
| Arunima Dey, M.A. (University of Salamanca) |
The American-Bengali in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Fiction: Diasporic and Multicultural Identities |
| 5.30 pm – 7.00 pm | Panel 10, Room 319 |
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People, Goods, and Waste: Flows of Globalization Panel Chair: Dr. Beerd Beukenhorst (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Chang Liu, M.A. (Jilin University) |
The Transnational Flow of Plastic Waste Between China and America: Retelling the Story of China's Dakou Generation and Environmental Justice |
| Michaela Beck, B.A. (Dresden University of Technology) |
Growing Roots en Route: Food and the Construction of Mobile Homes in US Locavore Narratives |
Saturday, June 4
| 8.30 am | Registration/Coffee |
| 9.00 am | Keynote Address: Dr. Themis Chronopoulos (University of East Anglia) |
| 10.00 am | Coffee Break |
| 10.30 am – 11.30 am | Panel 11, Room 340 |
|---|---|
|
Poetics of Third Spaces: Negotiating Interstitial Identities Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. MaryAnn Snyder-Körber (Freie Universität Berlin) |
|
| Dr. Lisa Marchi (University of Trento) |
The Airport as a Site of Tensions: Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye, Suheir Hammad, and Iman Mersal |
| Cecilia Cruccolini, M.A. (University of Bologna) |
Open City by Teju Cole: Urban Space and Fragmented Identity |
| 10.30 am – 11.30 am | Panel 12, Room 319 |
|
Narratives of (Im)mobility in Black Modernism Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. Florian Sedlmeier (Freie Universität Berlin) |
|
| Ewa Adamkiewicz, M.A. (University of Graz) |
Take Me Some Place: Baldwin, Ellison, and Notions of (Im)mobility in Harlem |
| Florian Gabriel, M.A. (Freie Universität Berlin) |
Eugenic Discourse, Racial (Im-)Mobility and Naturalist Aesthetic in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man |
| 11.30 am | Lunch Break |
| 1.00 pm – 2.30 pm | Panel 13, Room 340 |
|---|---|
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Should We Make It New? Rethinking American Modernism Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. Ulla Haselstein (Freie Universität Berlin) |
|
| James Cetovski, M.A. (University of Oxford) |
Legacies of Modernism in Contemporary American Poetry, or What Happened to Universalism in the University? |
| Svenja Fehlhaber, M.A. (University of Osnabrück) |
Mobilizing Literary Form: The Dynamics of Self-Canonization at the Heyday of American Modernism |
| 1.00 pm – 2.30 pm | Panel 14, Room 319 |
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Tourism and its Discontents Panel Chair: Dr. Michelle Commander (University of Tennessee) |
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| Sabrina Mittermeier, M.A. (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) |
Disney’s Theme Parks as Nodes of Mobility in a Globalized World [Online Presentation] |
| Nathalie Oelert, M.A. (University of Kassel) |
Visions of Paradise – The Simultaneity of Touristic Mobility and Immobility of Hawai'i as a Mental Construct |
| Olga Korytowska, M.A. (Graduate School for Social Research, Warsaw) |
Reproducing Bodies, Reproducing Citizens: The United States on the Map of Global Surrogacy Tourism |
| 2.30 am | Coffee Break |
| 3.00 pm – 4.00 pm | Panel 15, Room 340 |
|---|---|
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Moving Myths: Transnational Identities and Imaginaries Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. Frank Kelleter (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Chiara Grilli, M.A. (University of Macerata) |
Mythical Immobility: The Institutionalization of Memory and Past in the Italian American Experience |
| Dr. Francesco Chianese (Freie Universität Berlin / Naples Eastern University) |
Representing Late Modern Family in Italian-American Culture: A Transnational Study |
| 3.00 pm – 4.00 pm | Panel 16, Room 319 |
|
States in Motion: Force, Captivity, Objectives Panel Chair: Prof. Dr. Markus Kienscherf (Freie Universität Berlin) |
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| Jean-Michel Turcotte, M.A. (Laval University) |
The Captivity of War as an Object of Mobility: The Western Inter-Allied Relations on German POWs during the Second World War |
| 4.00 pm | Closing Remarks |
