International Conference: Alliances Un/Common Causes and the Politics of Participation

May 7–9, John F. Kennedy Institute, Freie Universität Berlin

Seventy years after the United States aligned themselves with the Soviet Union to move together against Nazi Germany, unusual alliances continue to shift power relations and fundamentally transform our societies. Born out of crises, such upheavals often extend beyond economics and national politics into the allocation of rights and issues of legitimacy, justice, and everyday livelihood. Recently, global events have prompted popular mobilization and participation across various cultural, socioeconomic, and political boundaries. Ferguson (Missouri), Tahrir Square (Egypt), Zucotti Park (New York), and Ayotzinapa (Mexico) have transcended different materialities, on- and offline, and turned into tropes for larger transformative demands, forging real and imagined communities in the process. On a different scale, global economic, environmental, and geopolitical challenges are fostering unusual bonds between unlikely allies. Evolving modes of collaborative production, such as crowdfunding, are changing the way we relate, create, and consume. Volatile web crowds and conflicting coalitions are contesting traditional notions of allegiance and loyalty while allowing for an astute discerning of historical patterns. All these developments call for an updated understanding of alliances in the field of North American Studies.

This conference explores the histories, presences, and futures of alliance making. Transdisciplinary and transnational in scope, it foregrounds the complex interplay between the imaginary and the material.

To find out more about the objectives of this conference and the requirements for proposals, please visit http://www.jfki.fu-berlin.de/graduateschool/events/conference/2015/index.html

Deadline for proposals: February 16, 2015.