Professor Lemke | Konferenzen/Conferences

 SUSTAIN*ABLE: A CULTURAL STUDIES APPROACH TO SUSTAINABILITY

LECTURE SERIES
University of Freiburg

Summer Term 2024, April 25 - June 27

This guest lecture series will introduce and discuss selected works of dystopian fiction, Cli-Fi, and Eco-cinema. To better understand these fictional projections of (un)sustainable life worlds, an emphasis is placed on eco-critical and eco-feminist perspectives. With a focus on Cultural Studies, we will tackle some of the following questions: How can cultural change move in the direction of sustainable development? What defines a “culture of sustainability”? What are the power dynamics at play?

Technology-oriented solutionists opt for renewable energy sources but ultimately seem to fall short of the mission to make the planet more sustainable. It takes a holistic, system-thinking approach that integrates contributions from cultural, social, and political sciences, jurisprudence, philosophy, anthropology, geography, pedagogy and psychology. Since Cultural Studies has always been a multi-disciplinary field, it plays a vital role in building a culture of sustainability. Such a culture would inevitably build up “personal sustainability.” The asterisk in the title of this lecture series signals that a cultural approach inadvertently acknowledges matters of diversity and mental health.

[DIS-]CONNECTION: ANALYSING CULTURES OF VIOLENCE AND ATTEMPTS TO CONNECT

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
University of Freiburg

December 8, 2023

This conference delves into the multifaceted manifestations and representations of personal, social, and environmental dis-/re-connection, and offers a platform for critical reflection and scholarly discourse. As we navigate an increasingly interconnected digital landscape, the consequences of this connectivity on human relationships, social structures, and our relationship with nature are profound. This event aims to shift the focus from the isolation and fragmentation that often accompany digital engagement to the possibilities of re-establishing meaningful connections. Through a concentrated examination of U.S. media and history, we will explore how past and present narratives influence our understanding of connection and disconnection.

At the heart of this conference lies the emerging academic field of interdisciplinary Connection Studies, which seeks to challenge the prevailing atomized worldview of human separation. By fostering discussions that emphasize inclusivity and community-centered perspectives, we aim to move towards a more cohesive and interconnected society.

CONNECTIVITY AND ITS OTHER

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
University of Freiburg

July 2, 2022

The ubiquity of digital connectivity and the subsequent diminishing of human connection have become truths of our time. This conference starts with the assumption that digital overload takes a toll on people’s ability to connect meaningfully with themselves or with others. As many studies have shown hyperconnectivity can lead to self-centered thinking, narrow-mindedness, and a lack of empathy. The attendant mindset can and often does propel contemptuous forms of social interaction.

While the downsides and risks of hyperconnectivity are well known and widely lamented, contemporary media criticism explores moments of “digital disentanglement,” i.e. users' deliberate strategies to disconnect. This would constitute a resistance or alternative to hyperconnectivity. The “other” of hyperconnectivity then does not only refer to forms of othering (e.g. cyberhate and populist vitriol), which drive polarization and undermine democratic and civil culture.

In this conference we will examine already existent counter-strategies such as digital minimalism, digital self-defense and the digital detox movement as well as the booming mindfulness movement and the emerging academic field of critical digital literacy that train (mental) skills to curtail the harmful effects of hyperconnectivity.

FROM RACIAL POLARIZATION TO BLACK LIBERATION

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
University of Freiburg

February 3, 2021 | via Zoom

Prof. Dr. Sieglinde Lemke and Luvena Kopp, M.A. were the organizers of a symposium which looked into the current Black movement, its repercussions and its potential to further social transformation. Guest speakers were Priscilla Layne, Ph.D. (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), Dr. Nicole Hirschfelder (University of Tübingen), and Courtney Moffett-Bateau, M.A. (University of Bremen).

Black Lives Matter has become the rallying cry of the largest protest movement in U.S. history. As people from various nations and races have joined its protests, the movement has become an indispensable force of social change. This comes at a time of extreme polarization, propelled by increasing political partisanship, wherein rising levels of violence, animosity, and contempt towards members of the other group exacerbate divisions in U.S. society. The recent upsurge of Black Lives Matter, in an era of COVID-19, exposes long-standing racial as well as economic polarization. Expediting the structures of neoliberal capitalism, the pandemic reinforces the precarity of the many while increasing profits for the few. As the pandemic converges with a tradition of racist police brutality, Black lives are the main victims of a dual crisis.

The resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement links the struggle for Black liberation to a broader struggle for systemic change. "Black liberation," Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor reminds us in From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, "is bound up with the project of human liberation and social transformation."

PRECARIOUS REPRESENTATIONS

CONFERENCE
University of Freiburg (FRIAS)

January 12 – 13, 2018

SCREENING CLASS: PRECARIOUS VISIONS AND AMERICAN STUDIES

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
University of Freiburg & Carl-Schurz-Haus

June 28 – 29, 2013

TOO BIG TO IGNORE: NARRATIVES OF INEQUALITY

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
University of Freiburg & Carl-Schurz-Haus

July 12 – 13, 2012

Five years into the crisis, and three years after taxpayer bailout, economicinequality in the U.S. is at an unprecedented high. The increase in national wealthover the past 25 years has, as many commentators have pointed out, almostexclusively benefited the top 1% of the American population. The society that haslong considered itself as classless, composed of a large middle class, faces theshrinking of precisely its defining group. What are the effects on its culturalidentity? How does economic inequality feature in the arts?

This conference takes the emerging critical discourse on class disparity andsocio-economic exclusion as its starting point to discuss questions ofrepresentation and the representability of economic injustice in different media:feature films, (graphic) novels, and documentaries.

PROGRAM

Thursday, July 12

• 6.00 – 6.15 pm
  Introduction by Sieglinde Lemke
• 6.15 – 8.15 pm
  Mark Hayward
  In the Aftermath of the Crisis: Race and Politics of Pop Sociology in Contemporary US Film

Friday, July 13

• 9.30 – 10.00 am
  Eric Erbacher
  Intersections of Class and Ethnicity: Narrative Reconstructions of Los Angeles

• 10.00 – 10.30 am
  Christine Vogt-William
  Applying Intersectionality Theory to Fiction on Incest: Bastard Out of Carolina and Push
• 10.30 – 11.30 am
  Forum & Coffee break
• 11.30 – 12.00 pm
  Johannes Fehrle
  Representing Poverty in Comic Books
• 12.00 – 12.30 pm
  Miriam Nandi
  Inequality in Postcolonial Fiction
• 12.30 – 2.30 pm
  Forum & Lunch break
• 2.30 – 3.00 pm
  Greta Olson
  The Class Trope and the 2012 Presidential Election
• 3.00 – 3.30 pm
  David Li
  Between Liberalism & Neoliberalism: The Phantom of Poverty in Theories of the 'Post'!
• 3.30 – 4.00 pm
  Forum
• 4.00 – 4.30 pm
  Michael Butter & Sieglinde Lemke
  Round table & closing discussion

ARM, NICHT SEXY:
REPRÄSENTATIONEN VON ARMUT IN DER AMERIKANISCHEN GEGENWARTSKULTUR

KONFERENZ & FOTOAUSSTELLUNG
June 21 – 23, 2011

University of Freiburg (FRIAS)

Den legendären Ausspruch des Berliner Bürgermeisters, dass seine Stadt arm, aber sexy sei, nimmt diese Konferenz zum Anlass über die fortschreitende soziale Verelendung in Deutschland und den USA nachzudenken. In den letzten fünf Jahren ist die Kluft zwischen arm und reich noch größer geworden. Mittlerweile lebt ein Drittel der amerikanischen Bevölkerung in prekären Verhältnissen. Während sich die Sozialwissenschaften diesem Problem bereits seit längerem widmen, haben die Kulturwissenschaften das Phänomen bis vor kurzem weitgehend ignoriert. In der Amerikanistik scheint diese Tendenz besonders ausgeprägt zu sein. Race und Gender haben seit Jahrzehnten Hochkonjunktur, Class dagegen war bis vor kurzem eine vernachlässigte, wenn nicht sogar verpönte Analysekategor

Ziel der Tagung ist es, dem emergenten Diskurs um Class weitere Impulse zu geben und die deutschen Amerikanistinnen und Amerikanisten, die sich für solche Fragen interessieren, stärker als bisher miteinander in Kontakt zu bringen. Der Fokus der Diskussion soll auf Repräsentationen von Armut aus den letzten zwanzig Jahren liegen. Wir sind besonders interessiert an exemplarischen Analysen zur Gegenwartsliteratur (z.B. zur urban novel), zum Film (z. B. Precious, The Soloist), zum Fernsehen (z.B. The Wire, South Park) oder zur Dokumentar- und Kunstfotografie. Zudem laden wir Forscherinnen und Forscher aus den Sozialwissenschaften, die an einem Dialog mit den Kulturwissenschaften interessiert sind, ein, ihre Herangehensweise an die relevanten Phänomene vorzustellen. Wir stellen uns der Herausforderung, Konzepte wie Armut und Class, die keine reinen Identitätskategorien sind, sich aber auch nicht in „harten" sozioökonomischen Fakten erschöpfen, intersektional mit anderen Kategorien wie Race und Gender zu verknüpfen.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS (PDF)

TRANSFORMATIONS: THEORIZING RACE & CLASS IN THE 21^st CENTURY

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
June 17 – 19, 2010

University of Freiburg (FRIAS)

sites.google.com/site/freiburgtransformations