AAAS Conference 2011

Is It 'Cause It's Cool? Affective Encounters with American Culture

Salzburg, November 4-6, 2011

Organized by:
University of Vienna & Saarland University
Astrid M. Fellner, Eugen Banauch, and Klaus Heissenberger

This conference intends to focus on the conjunctions between the appeal and the rejection of "American culture" in Europe since the end of the Cold War. It will explore questions such as: What happens when American culture becomes entangled in affective encounters with European consumers? What factors are there that make certain "American" products and texts popular or unpopular? How do audiences and consumers construct identities through their affective encounters with "American" culture? And in the process, what happens to the imaginary cultural descriptor "America" itself"?

See the full description and program on the left!

Publicity:

The conferenced is announced at Saarland University and the University of Vienna: Follow the links to the features publicized on the respective media portals.

               

Announcement (update Oct. 31): Guest lecture

Before the conference begins, Joel Dinerstein - one of our keynote speakers - will give a guest lecture at the University of Salzburg on "The Mask of Cool in Postwar Jazz and Film Noir.”

When & where:

Friday, 4 November 2011, at 11:30
Room 3.205 (Unipark, Erzabt-Klotz-Straße 1, third floor)

Everybody welcome!

Invited keynote and plenary panel speakers:

Jaap Kooijman, Amsterdam University
Author of Fabricating the Absolute Fake (2008)

Joel Dinerstein, Tulane University
Author of Swinging the Machine: Modernity, Technology, and African-American Culture Between the World Wars (2003)

Catrin Gersdorf, Free University Berlin
Team 'Coolness' in the research cluster Languages of Emotion
Research projects about "Coolness: Affect and American Literary Practices in the 19th and 20th Centuries"
 

Rob Kroes, University of Amsterdam
Author of "If You've Seen One, You've Seen the Mall: Europeans and American Mass Culture" (1996)

The conference will take place at a site which is itself an illustrative example of the global flows and appropriations of "American" and "Austrian" culture that come to constitute the cultural imaginary: Schloss Leopoldskron in Salzburg, which hosts the Salzburg Global Seminar. Click below or on the left to find out more about the location.

We would like to thank our sponsors:

University of Vienna:

Arthur Mettinger, Vice Rector for Educational
Program Development and
Internationalization

Department of English and American Studies




Saarland University




Austrian Federal Ministry for Science and Research



Österreichische Forschungsgemeinschaft / Austrian Research Association



US Embassy Vienna




Austrian Association for American Studies