History of North America and its transcultural context

News

Jun.-Prof. Dr. Brückmann will leave Ruhr-University Bochum in August 2022 and take up a post as Associate Professor for African American History at Carleton College.

Jun.-Prof. Brückmann will be on research leave from Ruhr-University during the 2021/22 winter semester and the 2022 summer semester.

Call for Papers: Digital Symposium "Epidemics and Othering: The Biopolitics of COVID-19 in Historical and Cultural Perspectives"

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has impacted the globe for more than a year. This development sparked renewed interest in the historical, sociocultural, political, and economic aspects of epidemics and pandemics, currently evidenced by an outpouring of scholarship on the consequences of the current pandemic on the world’s population as well as social and economic structures. This symposium provides a forum specifically for the study of the sociocultural developments that lead to “Othering” in situations of a perceived crisis. Aiming at bringing together multi- and interdisciplinary, scholarly approaches to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, we invite papers that examine the processes of “Othering” in relation to a long human history of epidemics and pandemics and the myriad social, political, philosophical, medical, artistic, literary, filmic, and poetic representations and reactions that have produced and/or challenged such Othering dynamics.

This symposium aims at analyzing key factors and cultural narratives that contribute to Othering discourses in the course of Covid-19 and in previous pandemics and epidemics (“real” and “imagined”) from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. The symposium will put a geographical emphasis on North America, the Atlantic World, and transatlantic relations, but welcomes contributions that expand this spatial focus to different world regions in order to create a more globally representative and more nuanced knowledge on the historical and current cultural, sociopolitical, economic, and literary narratives and media representations of epidemics and pandemics.

The symposium is organized by Jun.-Prof. Dr. Rebecca Brückmann (Ruhr-University Bochum, History of North America and its transcultural context) and Jun-Prof. Dr. Heike Steinhoff (Ruhr-University Bochum, American Studies). It will take place digitally on Friday, October 1 and Saturday, October 2, 2021.

Please send 300 to 500 word abstracts (in PDF format) of proposed 15 to 20 minute papers to epidemics-and-othering [at] ruhr-uni-bochum.de by April 30th, 2021. You will be notified in mid-June. The symposium's language is English.

Please find the complete Call for Papers and further informationen on the event blog "Epidemics and Othering".
New Monograph: "Massive Resistance Southern Womanhood: White Women, Class, and Segregation"

You can find further information on this new monograph (published on January 1, 2021) in the homepage's section on current' research und at the University of Georgia Press.
RUBIN Magazine: "The racist violence of white women"

The RUBIN research magazine's November 2020 issue features an article about Jun.-Prof. Dr. Brückmann's research on white supremacy, the role of segregationist women, and her forthcoming book "Massive Resistance and Southern Womanhood" (University of Georgia Press), which will be published on January 1st, 2021. An online version of the article is available on RUBIN's homepage.

The US Presidential Election 2020

Instead of putting together an election night event during a pandemic and mail-in ballot voting, we put together a homepage on the presidential elections. Essays, videos, and topical articles on the election's manifold aspects are here to inform (and entertain) readers. We look forward to welcoming you at the RuhrCenter of American Studies special homepage.

Media engagement on the current US protests

For Hannoversche Zeitung, Jun.-Prof. Dr. Brückmann gave an interview about the historical roots of the current #BlackLivesMatter protests in the United States and transatlantic perspectives.

You can find more information here

You can find more information here.

Workshop: "Making Race and Health in Migration and Development"

In cooperation with Dr. Nina Mackert (Universität Leizpig) - postponed until spring 2021!

In 2013, the New York Times lamented the “health toll of immigration.” According to this narrative, formerly healthy immigrants—the article was talking about Hispanics, the largest group of immigrants in the US—were getting sick in the United States due to their changed consumption habits. Studies had shown that the longer they lived in the US, the shorter their statistical life span became. As an explanation, the studies suggested that, once in the US, Mexican immigrants switched from their “traditional Mexican foods like cactus and beans,” high in fiber and low in meat, to an American fare of giant hamburgers and fried chicken—because it was now available and affordable. Consequently, obesity and diabetes rates increased among immigrants and shortened their life span. The article highlighted how the changed food choices of Mexican immigrants made them sick. Such a newspaper story fits seamlessly into contemporary narratives of migration from countries of the global South to the global North. These narrative frames re-establish racial boundaries by depicting people from supposedly underdeveloped societies who struggle with life in industrialized and technological nations. Simultaneously, these narratives negotiate notions of health and belonging: By pitting traditional lifestyles against modern consumption habits, they not only determine what can be considered as a healthy diet but also flag health as a result of proper choices by responsible individuals in a society. Notions of racial difference and bodily health are mutually constitutive. This workshop explores the making and unmaking of race and health in globalization processes between the nineteenth century and the present day. Drawing upon newer research in postcolonial studies and dis/ability studies, the workshop aims to analyze health, migration, racialization and transculturation as historically contingent, fluid, and intersecting phenomena. In particular, the workshop analyzes the entanglements of race and health in migration and development in the 19th and 20th century by asking how health discourses and practices contributed to create racial boundaries, how racist concepts shaped notions of health, and how these discourses continue to be mutually constitutive to migration, citizenship, and belonging. You can find the workshop program here.
Charles Sealsfield Symposium "Master of the World? Charles Sealsfield's America Between Emancipation, Exceptionalism, and Globalization": Call For Papers

September 24-26, 2020

The Dortmund and Bochum Sealsfield Symposium will place an emphasis on American Studies. Symposia topics of the past decade have dealt with biographical questions and their implications for Sealsfield’s work; his place in the relevant spectrum of European 19th century novels including imagological issues; as well as transatlantic fields of research. Common to all has been a predominantly Germanist, Europe-centered orientation. The symposium will be organized in cooperation between American Literary and Cultural Studies (Walter Grünzweig, Dortmund) and the History of North America and its Transcultural Context (Rebecca Brückmann, Ruhr-Universität Bochum). Germanist/German Studies and Comparatist contributions will thus come into in dialogue with American Studies topically, methodologically and theoretically. Accordingly, the symposium will deal with aspects of ethnicity, race (especially slavery), gender, sexuality and the environment in Charles Sealsfield’s work. Beyond this focus on American society, it will take up the role of the United States as a composite nation in a global political situation, especially its exceptionalist position so characteristic of Sealsfield. The Symposium will evaluate Sealsfield’s position in an inclusive, American(ist), but also world literary canon and thereby also emphasize his role in a new, multiethnically and multiculturally oriented field and canon of German literature and literary studies. Sealsfield’s work is resonant with a series of current issues, including questions of climate (the representation of nature, especially the U.S. South, in Sealsfield’s works), the Trump presidency (particularly the significance of the personality and politics of President Andrew Jackson, an explicit role model for President Trump), or — connected to that presidency — the politicization of poor evangelical segments of the country. This symposium will offer a forum for dialog between a new generation of researchers and established Sealsfield scholars. Beyond this, one section of the symposium provides an opportunity for advanced students of all fields to discuss their interests and questions relating to Sealsfield’s work. The conference organizers will give financial support for students’ attendance and emphatically invite them to participate.

Proposals should be submitted by 1 May 2020 to the conference organizers, who are also glad to answer additional questions: Walter.Gruenzweig@udo.edu, Rebecca.Brueckmann@rub.de.
Blog Launch: "Feminismus - Beyond the Waves"

In cooperation with PD Dr. Charlotte Lerg

Students in Jun.-Prof. Dr. Brückmann's and PD Dr. Charlotte Lerg's seminars during the past semester completed their own research projects on the history and memorialization of women's movements in Great Britain and the United States. Their research results - on diverse topics such as suffrage, self-denfese movements, reproductive rights or dress reform - will be published digitally on "Feminismus - Beyond the Waves" (in German).
Summer School 2020: "Migration, Inclusion, Marginalization: Transnational Histories of Mobility."

Taught with Jun.-Prof. Dr. Juliane Czierpka

September 21 - October 09, 2020

You can find more information here.

Lecture Series: "Introduction to Postcolonial Histories and Theories," Winter Semester 2019/2020
Wednesdays, 4-6 P.M., HGA30

You can find the program of the interdisciplinary lecture series here.