Talks, Lectures, Presentations
2018
“Sound Collectives: The Acoustics of the Social in American Film and Literature,” International Conference, Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, 7-8 December 2018.
- Simon Rienäcker: “Sounding and Silencing Modernity: Race and Mass Culture in Busby Berkeley’s Film Musicals of the 1930s”
“Body & Mind: Self-Help in 1920s/30s US Mass Cultures,” KOSMOS International Workshop, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 15-17 November 2018
- Aleksandra Boss: “Pulp Fictions of the Self: Biography and Self-Improvement in 1930s Pulp Magazines”
- Kristina Graaff: “The Promise of (Self-)Control: Able-Bodiedness and Able-Mindedness in Interwar Advice Literature”
- Martin Klepper: “‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way:’ Gender, Race, Mobility, and Self-Help at the Stratemeyer Syndicate”
- Simon Rienäcker: “Watching Dancers, Spectating Spectators: Uplift, Self-Reflexivity, and Modernity in the Films of Oscar Micheaux”
“Laboring Bodies and the Quantified Self,” Conference of the DFG-funded project ‘Probing the Limits of the Quantified Self: Human Agency and Knowledge in Literature and Culture of the Information Age,’ Universität Mannheim, 5-6 October 2018.
- Kristina Graaff: “12 Steps to an Optimized Self: Early Forms of Self-Monitoring in Self-Help of the 1920s/’30s.”
- Simon Rienäcker: “Bodies as Instruments of Labor and Leisure: The Absence of Blackness in Cinema and Mass Culture of the 1930s”
“Open Covenants: Pasts and Futures of Global America,” Annual Conference of the Swedish Association for American Studies, Stockholm, September 2018.
- Kristina Graaff: “Adjusting to Modernity: Self-Help in the Early 20th Century.”
American Studies Research Colloquium, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 15 May 2018
- Simon Rienäcker: “Self-Reflexivity and the Black Experience of Modernity in 1930s African American Cinema”
Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw, 10 May 2018
- Martin Klepper: “The Emergence of American Mass Cultures from the Spirit of Self-Help” (Guest Lecture)
American Studies Center, University of Warsaw, 9 May 2018
- Martin Klepper: “Race, Eugenics, and Mass Cultures in the United States”
“Foreign Bodies and Native Sons,” Annual Conference of the Irish Association for American Studies, University College Dublin, 28. April 2018
- Kristina Graaff: “Narratives of In/Exclusion: U.S. Self-Help Literature and Modern Capitalism.”
2017
“Bewegende Körper / Bodies in Motion,” Jahrestagung der Kulturwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft, Ghent University, 16-18 November 2017
- Simon Rienäcker: “Mobilizing Bodies: Swing, Tanz und die (mediale) Repräsentation von Körpern im afroamerikanischen Film der 1930er Jahre”
Managing Racial Capital: International Workshop Symposium, Freie Universität Berlin, 30 June – 1 July 2017
- Simon Rienäcker: “Mobilizing Bodies: Dance and 1930s U.S. Mass Culture” (Workshop Presentation)
American Studies Research Colloquium, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 20 June 2017
- Simon Rienäcker: “Bodies of Leisure/Labor: Dance and 1930s U.S. Mass Culture”
The Interwar Years: Cultural, Political, and Aesthetic Perspectives (International Workshop), Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 22-24 February 2017
- Martin Klepper, Kristina Graaff, and Simon Rienäcker: “Building US Mass Culture: Robert S. Abbott and Edward L. Stratemeyer”
2016
Fictions of Management: An International Conference, Freie Universität Berlin, 8-10 December 2016
- Martin Klepper and Kristina Graaff: “Self-Help: Black and White?”
Conferences and Workshops
2019
Panel Organization: “Pop Culture Goes Business: Self-Help, Advice, the Motivational Industry, and Positive Psychology,” 66th Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA), Universität Hamburg, 13-15 June 2019
2018
Organization: “Body & Mind: Self-Help in 1920s/30s US Mass Cultures,” KOSMOS International Workshop, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 15-17 November 2018
Panel Organization: “Early Mass Cultures as Counter/Publics,” 65th Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA), John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, 24-27 May 2018