Conference Program
Thursday, May 18
10:00-11:00 Registration
11:00-12:30 Conference Opening + Keynote Address
Opening: AYA and Kellee Farmer, Cultural Attaché/Public Afffairs Officer at U.S. Embassy Vienna
Keynote: Prof. C. Richard King, Washington State University
“Understanding America and/in Europe: Comparison, Circulation, and Contestation”
12:30-14:00 Lunch break
14:00-16:00 Panel I
Transnational Ideologies and Liminal Identities
Chair: Georg Drennig
Thomas Stelzl (Passau)
Same Same but Different? The Culture of US Foreign Policy and the Trump Administration
Betsy Leimbigler (Berlin)
Welfare and Health Care’s Role in Creating and Maintaining Inequalities
Jiann-Chyng Tu (Berlin)
Black American Berlin? Postwar Black American Literature and the Legacy of W.E.B. DuBois’s “Cosmopolitan Nationalism”
Rebekka Schuh (Graz)
Working on the Threshold: Liminality in Academia
16:00-16:30 Coffee break
16:30-18:30 Panel II
The Many Faces of American Literature
Chair: Susanne Hamscha
Maria Kaspirek (Erlangen)
“An Exposition of Our Science”: The (Ab)Uses of Literature in Nineteenth-Century Medical Writing
Alekszandra Rokvity (Graz)
Donald Barthelme’s Snow White: A Manifest of Postmodernism
Marie Dücker (Graz)
New Forms of Empathy in the Intermedial Contemporary American Young Adult Suicide Narrative
Tamara Radak (Vienna)
“Maybe the war will be over”: Discarded Future(s) and Equivocal Endings in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms
18:30-19:30 Wine Reception at Amerika-Haus
Ca. 19:30 Dinner
Friday, May 19
08:30 Coffee/Registration
09:00-11:00 Panel III
From Cinema to Seriality: America on Screen
Chair: Roberta Hofer
Irina Cruz Pereira (Barcelona)
Hollywood’s New Action Heroines: Third Wave Feminism or Postfeminist Utopia?
Christoph Straub (Salzburg)
Visions of Fourth World Femininity: Strong Women in Contemporary Indigenous Cinema
Manuela Neuwirth (Graz)
Post-Fact Society and the Revolutionary Potential of Affect in American Dystopian Cinema
Barbara Maly-Bowie (Vienna)
Dear White People: Netflix as Site of ‘Private Mobilisation’
11:00-11:30 Coffee break
11:30-13:00 Panel IV
Super Wo(Men): Visualizing Gender and Identity
Chair: Eugen Banauch
Elisabeth Krieber (Salzburg)
Tracing the Female Gaze: A Critical Visual Analysis of Phoebe Gloeckner’s Comics
Angelika Schneider (Klagenfurt)
Wonder Woman for President: Representation of Femininity in the Golden Age Period of Wonder Woman (1942-43)
Ranthild Salzer (Vienna)
Not Just for White Boys Anymore: Superhero Identity as Inclusive American Identity Performance
13:00-14:30 Lunch break
13:00-14:30 Panel V
Women of the Hour: Body Politics and Female Selfhood
Chair: Judith Kohlenberger
Elisabeth Lechner (Vienna)
Gross! On the New Visibility of ‘Disgusting’ Female Bodies in American Popular Culture
Anneliese Heinisch (Graz)
‘Out here...trash rises’: Bodily Fragmentation and Refiguring White Trash Female Identities in Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina
Alina Schumacher (Münster)
Disenfranchised Mothers and Maternity Insurance: Tracing Progressive Arguments in Ernest Hemingway’s Short Stories
16:00-16:30 Coffee break
16:30-18:00 Panel VI
Perspectives on/from the ‘Other’ Side
Chair: Leo Lippert
Rafaela Iacobescu (Graz)
The Return of the Prodigal ‘Other’: A Leitmotif in How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
Mona Raeisian (Marburg)
Modus Operandi: Ideology and Abjection in American Serial Killer Fiction
Maximilian Feldner (Graz)
Neocolonialism and Oil in Helon Habila's Oil on Water
18:00 Closing Remarks
Ca. 18:30 Conference Dinner