Tag Archive: ASCS

American Studies Colloquium Series

October 24: A Short History of Virality

October 17, 2019

Marta Figlerowicz from Yale University will discuss the phenomenon of virality and how it has been gradually theorized over the years. She will also explain how viral network events are represented in American cinema nowadays.

American Studies Colloquium Series

October 17: Objects and Technofeelia: Love in Contemporary Technoculture

October 10, 2019

It will be the first lecture from the American Studies Colloqium Series this academic year! Doctor Anna Malinowska from University of Silesia will explain the semiotic and material dimensions of love and how those two impact the ontologies of loving in technoculture.

American Studies Colloquium Series

May 16: Haunted by Hill House: Shirley Jackson, Housewife Horrors and the Politics of Fame

March 27, 2019

In this lecture Patrycja Antoszek from the Catholic University of Lublin will talk about Shirley Jackson’s personal experiences as a mother, full-time housewife and wife of a famous literary critic, that inspired her highly provocative and original stories, dominated by the Gothic tropes of haunted heroines, enclosed spaces and female madness.

American Studies Colloquium Series

April 25: Ghosts and Anchors: Translingualism in Contemporary US Poetry

March 27, 2019

This lecture considers translingualism as creative and dynamic experiment in contemporary U.S. poetry. Piotr Gwiazda from the University of Pittsburgh will discuss how it influences literary work of first- and second-generation immigrants to America.

American Studies Colloquium Series

March 14: Defining State-Private Network. American Freedom Committees During the Cold War

March 14, 2019

In this lecture Anna Mazurkiewicz from the University of Gdańsk focuses on the fate of the political exiles who had left the Communist-dominated regions and entered into complex relations with the Americans during the Cold War.

American Studies Colloquium Series

March 7: Transnational Identities and Behaviors among Solidarity Refugees in the US

March 1, 2019

Mary Erdmans during the presentation outlines the political transnational activities and identities of Solidarity refugees in the United States (mainly Chicago and California) during the late 1980s. She also focuses on several factors influencing the return of the Solidarity refugees, who re-migrated to Poland after 1989.

American Studies Colloquium Series

February 28: The Diva Project: Analyzing Stardom in American Pop Culture

January 28, 2019

This presentation discusses the films Mahogany and Dreamgirls, as well as analyzes female super stars, such as Diana Ross, Whitney Houston and Beyonce in order to highlight the connection between on-screen and off-screen performance. Jaap Kooijman examines the common trope in African American female superstardom that commercial success comes at the expense of “authentic blackness.”

American Studies Colloquium Series

January 17: Nuclear Afterlives: Toxicity and Nonhuman Embodiments in the Anthropocene

January 17, 2019

In this talk Alison Sperling focuses on environmental records made legible in the Anthropocene, namely the radionuclides, as the result of nuclear fission and thermonuclear explosions in the biosphere, which have since inscribed themselves into all bodies, human and nonhuman, biological and geological alike. She will attempt to challenge what it might mean to flourish in and despite of a toxic Anthropocene.

American Studies Colloquium Series

December 13: Humanities after Blackfish

December 13, 2018

Gerry Canavan in this talk discusses the anti-Sea-World documentary BLACKFISH, as a paradigmatic text of the Anthropocene and a fascinating story gesturing towards multiple possible futures for the relationship between humans and animals.