Researcher in Residence

Researcher in Residence 2025: Jack Halberstam (Columbia University in the City of New York)

In the summer of 2025, we find ourselves facing political developments on both sides of the Atlantic that are threatening to undermine the foundations of what gender and queer theory have achieved in the past few decades. Jack Halberstam, Professor of Gender Studies and English at Columbia University, has not only been one of the leading experts concerning the discourses around ideas of gender, sexuality and queerness, he is one of the pioneering thinkers in this field. Among other publications, his award-winning book Female Masculinity (Duke UP, 1998) offered groundbreaking considerations on constructions of masculinity in pop culture and contemporary society at large. Halberstam developed the idea of a categorically different temporal and spatial framework outside of heteronormativity in his work In a Queer Time and Place (Duke UP, 2005), situating transgender theory at the center of his research. At Columbia, he is director of the Institute for Research on Women, Gender and Sexuality as well as the David Feinson Professor of Humanities. As a prolific writer, he has also published the notable monographs: Skin Shows (Duke UP, 1995), The Queer Art of Failure (Duke UP, 2011), Gaga Feminism (Beacon Press, 2012), Trans* (University of California Press, 2018) and Wild Things (Duke UP, 2020). His work has earned him much academic recognition, such as being awarded the Arcus/Places Prize in 2018 and the Guggenheim Fellowship for Theatre Arts and Performance Studies in 2024. In short, Halberstam is undoubtably one of the most distinguished queer theorists working today and his residency at FAU will give our research community the opportunity to form a transatlantic connection based on highly pressing academic and political questions.

Halberstam will spend the week of June 30^th to July 2^nd at FAU and host or participate in various teaching and discussion formats: He will give an Open Lecture on “Broken Windows: The Art of Demolition” on Monday, June 30^th . He will host a Masterclass on “Unworlding: Atopia, Dystopia, Queertopia” on Tuesday, July 1^st. Lastly, on Wednesday, July 2^nd, there will be an International Coffee open to all students and early career researchers. The International Coffee is an opportunity for students to ask Halberstam any and all questions they might have about his work, in terms of both content and context. You do not need to register for the Open Lecture. For the Masterclass or International Coffee, please register with Marlene Compton via e-mail (marlene.compton@fau.de). Students attending the Masterclass are expected to prepare with a reader provided to them after registration.

If you have any questions, please contact: Prof. Dr. Claudia Lillge (claudia.lillge@fau.de)

 

Open Lecture: “Broken Windows: The Art of Demolition”

Monday, 30.06.2025, 18-20, Alter Senatssaal Kollegienhaus

While New York City is a now thoroughly financialized and gentrified space, New York City in the mid-1970’s was the terrain for a competing set of relations to masonry, buildings, walls, glass and the business of art and architecture. Through a prismatic juxtaposition of artists who are rarely read in relation to one another, we can assess these competing visions of the city, some utopian and others dystopian, some committed to improvement, others to destitution. And while artists Gordon Matta-Clark and Beverly Buchanan, in very different ways, shared a love of decaying walls and crumbling brick and saw in them alternative forms of vitality, as we will see, businessman architect, Philip Johnson, entertained fascistic visions of social domination through architecture and of individual greatness through monumentality. A closer look at Johnson’s work demonstrates  that there is a potentially sinister side to improvement, expansion, repair and shiny surfaces. This talk examines the dynamics of building and unbuilding in relation to queer community, aesthetic practice and discourses of urban renewal.

Masterclass: “Unworlding: Atopia, Dystopia, Queertopia”

Tuesday, 01.07.2025, 16-18, Hörsaal Kollegienhaus 2.018 (registration necessary)

How do we unmake the structures, ideologies, modes of thought, epistemologies and ways of seeing that, in a Euro-American tradition, we currently call “world”? What is the world? Who is the world? Who must necessarily be excluded in order for worlds to exist, to thrive, and possibly to die? We will explore the making, unmaking, and dismantling of worlds, and the relation between aesthetic practice and un/worlding. The seminar emerges out of an interest in the challenges and pleasures of collective thinking and critical theory: in questions of negativity and a/dystopia, Blackness, queerness, transness and ontology, desire and its itineraries.

International Coffee

Wednesday, 02.07.2025, 10-12, Raum C 601, Bismarckstraße 1 (registration necessary)

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Researcher in Residence 2024: Prof. Dr. Henk de Berg (University of Sheffield, GB)

The Chair for English Cultural and Literary Studies is pleased to announce Henk de Berg as this semester’s Researcher in Residence. The Researcher in Residence is a format designed as an opportunity for students and staff alike to form connections with internationally renowned researchers. The idea is to go beyond the usual types of classes and to be able to get up close and personal with the researcher both on the topic(s) of their research but also their experience in academia in their field and their country.

This semester, Henk de Berg is visiting us from the University of Sheffield, where he has been a professor at the School of Languages and Cultures for nearly two decades. De Berg is director of the Prokhorov Center, which focusses on the intellectual and cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe. His research, which draws both on classical thinkers such as Hegel and Freud and on contemporary thinkers and debates, represents a cross-over between German studies, literary and cultural theory, and the history of ideas. Aside from co-editing seven works on critical theory, he has also written several books: Kontext und Kontingenz. Kommunikationstheoretische Überlegungen zur Literaturhistoriographie. Mit einer Fallstudie zur Goethe-Rezeption des Jungen Deutschland (Westdeutscher Verlag, 1995), Freud’s Theory and Its Use in Literary and Cultural Studies: An Introduction (Camden House, 2003), Das Ende der Geschichte und der bürgerliche Rechtsstaat. Hegel – Kojève – Fukuyama (Francke, 2007) and, most recently Trump and Hitler: A Comparative Study in Lying (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024), which will be at the core of our events during his residence at FAU.

Henk de Berg will spend the week of July 8^th through July 12^th at FAU and host or participate in various teaching and discussion formats: He will give an open lecture on “What Can Cultural Studies Tell Us about the Lure of Populism? Reflections on Trump and Hitler” on Tuesday, July 9^th from 18-20, in KH 1.012 and host an ExpertLAB on his newest research, which will transition into an International Coffee, open to all students. The International Coffee is an opportunity for students to ask de Berg any and all questions they might have about his work, in terms of both content and context. The event will take place on Wednesday, July 10^th from 10-12, in C 301 (Bismarckstraße 1). He will also give a presentation on how academia works abroad, followed by a Q&A, hosted by IZGDD’s Early Career Researchers on Thursday, July 11^th from 15.30-17, in C 201. You do not need to register for the events, you are welcome to just come around.

Open Lecture: “What Can Cultural Studies Tell Us about the Lure of Populism? Reflections on Trump and Hitler”

Tuesday, 09.07.2024, 18.15-19.45, KH 1.012

ExpertLAB and International Coffee

Wednesday, 10.07.2024, 10.15-11.45, C 301

Early Career Researchers Senior Service: Academia Abroad

Thursday, 11.07.2024, 15.30-17.00, C 201

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Researcher in Residence 2023: Prof. Dr. Kristin Mahoney (Michigan State University, USA)

The Chair for English Studies: Culture and Literature is pleased to introduce a new format with Kristin Mahoney as our first Researcher in Residence.

The Researcher in Residence is a format designed as an opportunity for students and staff alike to form connections with internationally renowned researchers. The idea is to go beyond the usual types of classes and to be able to get up close and personal with the researcher both on the topic(s) of their research but also their experience in academia in their field and their country. We are excited to launch this project this semester and look forward to many more Researchers in Residence in the future.

Kicking us off as our first guest is Kristin Mahoney. Mahoney is Associate Professor/Chair and Director of Literary Studies at Michigan State University and her research is focused on late-Victorian Decadence and its afterlives in the 20^th century. The author of two books, Literature and the Politics of Post-Victorian Decadence (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and Queer Kinship after Wilde (Cambridge University Press, 2022), she leaves behind the strict periodization of Victorianism vs. Modernism and explores, among other things, the topics of politics and sexology in literature and culture of the late 19^th and early 20^th century. To further research that resists these boundaries of periodization, Mahoney founded and is co-editor of the journal Cusp: Late 19^th-/20^th-Century Cultures (Johns Hopkins University Press). She is currently working on an upcoming collection with Dustin Friedman: Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1890s (Cambridge University Press).

Kristin Mahoney will spend a week at FAU from December 11^th through December 15^th and host or participate in various teaching and discussion formats: She will, among other things, visit a (closed) seminar on Victorian Poetry and host a Masterclass on the ekphrastic poems by Michael Field (pseudonym for Katherine Harris Bradley and Edith Emma Cooper), which will transition into an International Coffee, open to all students. The International Coffee is an opportunity for students to ask Mahoney any and all questions they might have about her work, in terms of both content and context. The event will take place on Wednesday, December 13^th from 10-12, in C 202 (Bismarckstraße 1). She will also give an open lecture on Laurence and Clemens Housman (“’Out and Out from the Family to the Community’: The Housmans and the Politics of Queer Sibling Devotion”) which will take place on Wednesday, December 13^th from 4-6, in KH 0.016. You do not need to register for the lecture or the international coffee, you are welcome to just come around.

Open Lecture: “‘Out and Out from the Family to the Community’: The Housmans and the Politics of Queer Sibling Devotion”

Wednesday, 13.12.2023, 16.15-17.45, KH 0.016.

Guest in the seminar Victorian Poetry 

Monday, 11.12.2023, 10.15-11.45, KH 1.012

Masterclass and International Coffee:

Wednesday, 13.12.2023, 10.15-111.45, C 202