Taking the twentieth anniversary of the World Toilet Organization and of World Toilet Day on 19 November 2021 as its occasion, this conference on “everybody’s business” - organized by Prof. Dr. Sabine Sielke and Prof. Dr. Eva Boesenberg at Humboldt University Berlin - explored the cultural politics of toilets and the topic of restroom cultures in transdisciplinary, intercultural perspectives and features contributions from the fields of literary and cultural studies, history, sociology, and other pertinent disciplines.
This international Canadian studies symposium examines the histories and forms of Canadian visual culture and discusses the manner in which attention is generated, sustained, manipulated, or relinquished by visual forms that are either produced in Canada or have this nation as its primary topic. Specifying a “problem” in this field of theory – rather than recapitulating the work of particular artists, schools of thought, or formal trends – the speakers present short provocations on photography, television, film, and issues of intermediality and raise the question how these forms are implicated in and at odds with the contemporary social, political, and economic forces of Canada.
62nd Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA/GAAS) | May 28–31, 2015 | University of Bonn
NOSTALGIE: Transdisziplinäre Perspektiven auf ein Phänomen der Moderne Symposium der Forschergruppe "Nostalgie: Modi. Funktionen. Effekte"
Knowledge Ecologies North America: from Metaphor to Method The interdisciplinary symposium took place on May 2-3, 2013, at Universitätsclub Bonn. “Knowledge Ecologies North America: Changing Patterns in a Global Dynamics” is a Bonn-based research project in which scholars from the Universities of Bonn, Cologne, and Mannheim cooperate with colleagues in the United States, Canada, Asia, and other parts of Europe. Our enterprise aims at providing a forum and institutional space for interdisciplinary research and debates on issues of knowledge, its production and flow as well as on processes by which knowledges get translated, adopted, and adapted. One of the central questions we raise is how to transform ecology from the key concept and metaphor that it has become for a multitude of disciplines into a methodological framework for research on the patterns of knowledge production in a global dynamics. The symposium was dedicated to debating this particular question.
Glimpsed from abroad Canada often resonates a certain tepid benevolence. Against nationalist agendas it promises a multicultural alternative that is inclusive, flexible and tolerant and seems to produce literatures that echo the official multicultural politics. Against aggressive militarisms it claims to intervene globally through a discriminate logic of peace and democracy promotion. Against corporate medicine it posits a health care system, organized around social care and equality. Given these coordinates, it becomes easy to allow a vision of Canada’s “liveable” cities to starkly contrast with projections of a squalid urban US-America.
To book historians, the book is not a mere object but organic material, germinating reciprocal relationships between authors and readers, editors and publishers, marketers and critics. The international symposium facilitates debate and discussion about the nature of book history, a discipline that weaves together social history, cultural studies, descriptive bibliography, and literary analysis. Our debates address Canadian publishing practices of large nationalist to small regional presses, international readership communities, and the manipulation of textual graphics. The presenters’ expertise stems from their diverse roles in the collaborative process of book production and reception, as authors, editors, reviewers, and critics.
