New American Studies Research on Literature and Culture: A Graduate Symposium

This graduate symposium will give PhD candidates from diverse American Studies departments in Europe the opportunity to present their work (in progress) and to enter into discussions with one another. It will be an exciting day of new research and exchange, focusing on post-war U.S. literature and culture from an American Studies perspective.

Speakers’ projects interrogate such subjects as labor and gender in New Hollywood, the politics of literary MacArthur Fellows in the 2010s, Colson Whitehead and contemporary literary authorship, paranoia in US culture and the recent blooming of fictional podcasts, and the cultural impacts of the US interstate highway system. Speakers will present an aspect of their research in 15-20 minutes, followed by Q&A and discussion. All are welcome to join to enrich discussion and feedback.

The event will be followed by drinks.

Programme

11:00 – 13:00 : Panel session 1
Max McKenna (Freie Universität Berlin): “Interstates: California Noir and the Infrastructure of Neoliberalism, 1956-1992.”

Hanne Nijtmans (RuG): ““The Story is Bigger than Me”: Podcast Journalism, Emotional Labor, and The Fantasy of Exposure in Limetown.”

Harrison Whitaker (Cambridge University): “Hollywood's Grand Theories of Television.”

14:30 –16:30 : Panel session 2
Kai Hopen (RuG): “The Literary Politics of Jesmyn Ward, MacArthur Fellow.”

Valentina Lopez Liendo (Heidelberg University): “Navigating a Literary Debut: Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist.”

Irene Lopez Sanchez (University of Kent): "Work, Leisure, and Happiness in Emily Dickinson's Poetics."

Contact

All are welcome, but please register by emailing k.e.hopen rug.nl so that we know how many people to expect. Participation in the whole afternoon, not just one of the sessions, is encouraged.