On this page you will find information on:
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Depending on their academic backgrounds and fields of interest, each student can apply for one of the following seminars:

The modules are divided into keynote and plenary in the morning and seminars in the afternoon.

In addition to seminars and morning/evening lectures, students will also attend a transferable skills workshop. The aim of this workshop is to enhance generic skills and to help students improve their research undertakings. Moreover, it strengthens the multidisciplinary approach of different topics. Thus, students gain abilities which they can use in a wider range of activities, both in their studies and the future working environment.

Seminar 1: Film & Society

Film as a form of cultural expression occupies a pivotal role in terms of reflecting as well as interpreting crucial social, cultural,and political realities and ideologies that currently shape societies in the Americas. In this seminar, a variety of US-American, Latin American, and Canadian films that address the relationship between the Americas, as well as the U.S.'s representation of cultural and ethnic "Others" within their own geographical boundaries will be discussed. It will focus in particular on exploring ideologically inflected representations of cultural differences, the role of ethnic and racial stereotypes in the service of national identity constructions,the link between political, cultural, economic, and social debates dominating national / U.S. discourses and the realities of Inter-American relations, as well asthe precarious position of the medium film in between reinforcing dominant ideas and changing public opinion.

For more details on Seminar 1 please see <<weekly description >>.

Seminar 2: Literature

In this seminar will offer an insight into the historical development of a hemispheric approach to literature in the Americas, by analyzing literature from Latin America, the U.S., and/or Canada. Although the sessions will cover sources from different genres, time periods, and places, both weeks of the course emphasize that literature per se transcends linguistic, political, and geographical borders and that an Inter-American approach to literature provides a better understanding of it.

For more details on Seminar 2 please see <<weekly description >>.

Seminar 3: Identities & Gender

This course will focus on identity, sexuality and race, with an emphasis on literature and media from the Americas - U.S., Canada, Latin American, and the Caribbean.Gender studies and post-colonial feminism, sociology and sociobiology will be used as theoretical frames to read essays, fiction, short stories, and poetry, from the 19^th century to the present, as well as examples of other media and the visual arts. Topics to be discussed will be the deprivation of history and memory and the distortion in representation as well as the strategies of resistance and emancipation they arouse.

For more details on Seminar 3 please see <<weekly description >>.

Seminar 4: Economics

This seminar considers the economic development of the U.S. and the other countries of the Americas over the past century. The sessions will pay particular attention to the reasons why there has been sustained economic growth in some nations while others have faced repeated crisis, the changing character of economic relationships between countries through, for example, the signing of free trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, MERCOSUR, and CAFTDR), and the region`s resilience to the global downturn. The seminar will draw upon selected economics concepts and, on the basis of these, explore broader economic, political and cultural processes.

For more details on Seminar 4 please see <<weekly description >>.

Seminar 6: History and Migration

Societies are not stable entities. While the reasons for people to migrate from one country to another may differ and change over time, the American continent has largely been defined by immigration from Europe, Africa, and Asia. The United States views itself, moreover, as a society of immigrants still. In this module, we will focus on the history of immigration to the Americas.The seminar will address theories of migration, literary texts, as well as films and photographs to determine how patterns of immigration have forged the collective and individual identities in the Americas.

For more details on Seminar 6 please see <<weekly description >>.

Seminar 7: Politics

This seminar will focus on the politics of human rights in the Inter-American context. It will provide an overview of current and historical debates on human rights and their implications for politics. It will focus on case studies of human rights violations in the Americas and the attempts to bring the cases to justice on the national and international level, as well as will emphasize on the creation of international institutions dealing with international criminal law – like the International Criminal Court (ICC) – and the position of American countries towards them.

For more details on Seminar 7 please see <<weekly description >>.

Seminar 8: American Indian Studies

This seminar will examine indigenous societies from an Inter-American vantage point, both from contemporary as well as historical perspective. Students will be asked to re-conceptualize similarities and differences throughout the Americas, transcending linguistic, political and geographical borders. One of the topics will be how governments and societies reacted to the challenge of ethnic mobilization in the 1990s. This hemispheric mobilization was part of, and reinforced by, a tendency towards the politicization of ethnic identities and ethnicization of political agendas.

For more details on Seminar 8 please see <<weekly description >>.

Seminar 1: Film & Society

Week  1: Marietta Messmer (University of Groningen, Netherlands)

"Visual Negotiations of the U.S.-Mexican Borderlands"

Since the beginning of the movie industry, the US-Mexican borderlands have constituted a frequently depicted screenscape with multiple meanings and geopolitical significations, ranging from a legal and political divide that attempts to separate the first world from the developing world; a place of economic transactions that encourages the free flow of money and goods as well as the establishment of transnational corporations; a racialized and gendered symbolic landscape that strives to construct the U.S.’s national self in relation to its cultural others; as well as a unique contact zone that enables cultural encounters, intercultural exchange, and cultural hybridization.

This seminar will explore the representation of current political, legal, economic, cultural, and social issues along the U.S.- Mexican border in recent movies, including Hollywood blockbusters, westerns, and documentaries. We shall focus in particular on the following topics: the increasing militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border and its effects on the treatment and representation of undocumented migrants; the trans-border drug trade; the maquiladora industry and the legal status of workers in transnational corporations; the Juárez femicides; the negotiations of multiple, hybrid cultural identities by people living in the borderlands; and the symbolic significance of Mexico as the land of freedom, lawlessness and (sexual) adventure for U.S.-American border crossers. In addition, this seminar will also introduce students to relevant core concepts by major film theorists.

Week 2: Mirko Petric (University of Zadar, Croatia)

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Seminar 2: Literature

Week 1: Emron Esplin (Kennesaw State University, USA)

"Poe and La Plata"

In this seminar we will adopt an Inter-American literary studies approach to examine the influence and affinities between Edgar Allan Poe and several writers of the Río de la Plata region—Argentina and Uruguay—of South America. We will begin the seminar with a brief discussion of when and how Poe’s texts first arrived in Spanish America, a concise reading of several of Poe’s poems, and a discussion about the impact of "The Raven" on Spanish American literature in general. We will spend the rest of the week reading Poe’s fiction alongside the works of Argentine writers Jorge Luis Borges and Julio Cortázar and Uruguayan author Horacio Quiroga. Our primary themes will include the fantastic, analytic detective fiction, and revenge. We will examine how each of these writers from the Río de la Plata region was not only influenced by Poe but also influenced Poe’s reception in the Río de la Plata area and throughout Spanish America through their literary criticism and interviews on Poe, their translations of Poe’s work, and their own fiction.
The seminar will demonstrate that influence is not a one-way street and that literature, although connected to specific national and linguistic contexts, pays no heed to the political and linguistic borders which divide the Americas

Week 2: Simone Francescato (University Ca`Foscari, Italy)

"U.S. Travel Writing In Latin America"

The seminar offers an overview of U.S. travel writing in Latin America by examining a variety of significant texts ranging from the 1820s to the present day. Preceded by a short introduction to the characterics of travel writing in the U.S., each meeting of the seminar will involve the participants reading, commenting and discussing a selection of texts provided to them beforehand. The discussion will focus on both aesthetic and cultural issues: from the historical evolution of the literary genre to the different rhetorical strategies each author used to "otherize" the visited country and the natives within the contemporary socio-political context. The seminar will include, among others, works by H.M. Brackenridge, W. Herndon, J. Didion, M. Thomsen and P. Theroux.

Seminar 3: Identities & Gender

Week 1: Isabel Caldeira (University of Coimbra, Portugal)

"Reclaiming Silenced Voices in Contexts of Displacement"

Focusing on historical trajectories of displacement and the power relations affecting displaced people (forced by colonialism), this seminar aims at analyzing alternative discourses by means of which women resist the politics of silencing, asserting their identities with reference to gender and race. We shall use postcolonial feminism as a theoretical frame to study a few fictional texts and poems by women of African descent in the Americas (U.S. and the Caribbean) to search for the forms chosen to convey the violent deprivation of history, memory, and representation (or the feeling of unrepresentableness), and the strategies of resistance and emancipation leading to new expressions and new aesthetics invented to refigure their contingent ‘in-between’ space (Bhabha).

Week 2: Alexandra Berlina (University Duisburg-Essen, Germany)

"Close Readings in Gender Contexts"

This seminar shall deal with gender, identity and sexuality in diverse texts and other media. Close reading will be the main method, to be garnished by short forays into gender studies, sociology and sociobiology. It will focus on authors like Charlote Perkins and Tenesee Williams who represent and question the perception of femininity and masculinity in the late 19th century and in the 1950s respectively. Mexican-American, Dominican-American and Canadian female writers will be explored, concentrating on the stylistic and structural devices used to depict issues of gender and identity.

Excerpts from Michael Cunningham’s novels will be used to analyze what happens to gender in cultural and linguistic translation. The seminar will conclude with the analysis of very recent short stories by Shannon Cain, Katie Chase et al. in whose fictional worlds the questions of gender, sexuality and society are solved differently from the cultures in which we live.

Seminar 4: Economics

Week 1: Luis San Vicente Portes (Montclair State University, USA):

"Window into the Americas’ Economic and Social Environment"

This session will provide an overview of the Socio-economic indicators of the Americas and place the Hemisphere in perspective with the rest of the world. The focus will be on the Western Hemisphere’s economic development based on the countries’ economic size, income per person, wealth inequality, gender differences, and natural resources. Related topics such as institutional development and economic policies will be connected to the frequent economic/financial crises that Latin America has gone through, and their importance for economic growth. The lecture will finish with an assessment of the effects and regional response to the 2008 global recession.

Week 2: Luis San Vicente Portes (Montclair State University, USA):

"Trade and Financial Integration in the Americas"

This session will present a brief description of the main theoretical models of international trade, as a starting point in the discussion of the regional trade agreements in the Americas. An overview of international capital flows (borrowing and lending, and Foreign Direct Investment) and migration as complementary paths to economic integration will be provided. Once it is understood why countries trade, the discussion will shift to address the instruments of trade policy that countries use to promote (or protect) local industries. The core of the lecture will focus on the regional trade agreements in effect in the Western Hemisphere. The lecture will conclude with a discussion of the Doha round of trade liberalization and the –sometimes opposite- role played by Western Hemisphere countries in the debate.

Seminar 6: History and Migration

Week 1: Ulla Kriebernegg (University of Graz, Austria) and Gerald Lamprecht (University of Graz, Austria)

"To America!" – Jewish Migrations to the Americas in the 19^th and 20^th Century

In the first week of this team-taught seminar, we will discuss questions of cultural identity and migration to and within the Americas from the perspectives of history and literary/cultural studies. To begin with, the most important theoretical concepts will be introduced. Based on these theoretical backgrounds, we will focus on Jewish migrations in the 19^th and 20^th century, analyzing a range of sources including historiography, poetry, fiction, autobiography, and film in order to explore the historical, social, and cultural contexts of Jewish identities in the Americas.

Week 2: Liliane Weissberg (University of Pennsylvania, USA)

"Immigration and Exile: German and Austrian Jews in the United States 1933-1945"

The seminar will begin by reflecting the notion of "exile" in the context of migration studies, and then concentrate on one particular time in history. We will focus on the arrival of politically or ethnically persecuted Germans and Austrians in the United States during Hitler’s reign. By focusing on individual case studies and a choice of exemplary texts and other examples, we will discuss the careers sought and pursued by various immigrants in the sciences, politics, philosophy, and the arts.   We will also reflect on the influence of these immigrants on the population of their new temporary or permanent homeland.  Examples will include Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, Erwin Panofsky, and many others.

Seminar 7: Politics

Week 1: Georg Schendl (University of Graz, Austria)

This session will start with a short overview of the theoretical debate on human rights. Concepts of universalism and cultural relativism are the key for understanding current debates on human rights. Case studies from the Americas will provide an understanding of human rights violations and their use in times of political conflict. The limits of justice for victims will also be discussed before the background of attempts to bring violators before national or international courts.

Week 2: Georg Schendl (University of Graz. Austria)

This session will deal with the development of the international criminal law. Therefore concepts of International Relations will be applied to this fairly new kind of law and the institutions involved with it. After that historical milestones up to the creation of the International Criminal Court will be discussed. These developments will be analyzed from the perspective of different countries of the Americas.

Seminar 8: American Indian Studies

Week 1: Jochen Kemner (University of Bielefeld, Germany)

"Indigenous mobilizations in the Americas: 1992 and beyond"

20 years ago in 1992, indigenous organizations throughout the continent launched massive protest movements against the celebrations of the quincentenary of the "discovery of the Americas", which were organized by European and American governments. The hemispheric mobilization, ranging from the Canadian plains to the Andean Highlands was part of, and reinforced a tendency towards the politicization of ethnic identities and the ethnicization of political agendas. This seminar will take this anniversary as an opportunity to examine native societies from an Inter-American vantage point. From an comparative and integrative perspective, we will search for similarities and differences in the forms and ways of indigenous political mobilization but also for joint initiatives that transcend the boundaries of local identities, cultures and nation-states.

Week 2: James Blasingame (University of Arizona, USA)

“Twenty-two Nations: The Story of Arizona's Indigenous Peoples”

From Geronimo (Bedonkohe Apache) to Dr. Carlos Montezuma (Yavapai), Indigenous peoples of what is now called Arizona, have had a storied and dramatic past. Spanish, Mexican, and American invaders spent centuries attempting to subdue and colonize the peoples and land of Arizona, often finding both to be almost magically indomitable and resilient. Arizona holds the largest Indigenous sovereign nation in the United States, the Navajo Nation, home to more than 250,000 enrolled members. The San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe, recognized by the federal government in 1989, however, has only 254 enrolled members who reside in areas woven between Hopi and Navajo lands. This course will trace the evolution of Indigenous peoples of Arizona into modern day nations, attempting to separate fact from fiction.

Students are required to download the reading materials for their seminars prior to arriving at the summer school. Please note that you will not be able to print the reading materials once you have arrived in Seggau. Username and password required to log on to the download-server will be sent to all registered students.

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