Guest Lecture

Crisis Ordinariness Or Crisis Pervasiveness? American Studies and/as Twenty-First-Century Pop

Postgraduate Forum of the German Association for American Studies

Keynote

In this keynote, which forms part of the 35th Annual Conference of the Postgraduate Forum (PGF) of the German Association for American Studies, PD Dr. Martin Lüthe explores why North American Studies obsesses over "crisis" in our times and what we can learn from listening to US popular music in this context.

While embedded in the conference program, the keynote is open to all interested individuals, including students of American Studies Leipzig.

Speaker

PD Dr. Martin Lüthe

PD Dr. Martin Lüthe is an associate professor for American cultural studies at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. A former member of the PGF, his dissertation focused on Color-Line and Crossing-Over: Motown and Performances of Blackness in 1960s American Culture (2011) and his habilitation on Wire Writing: Media Change in the Culture of the Progressive Era (2025).

The keynote is organized by American Studies Leipzig with the support of the Graduate Academy Leipzig and DAIS.

Postgraduate Forum 2025

The 35th Annual Conference of the Postgraduate Forum (PGF) of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA/GAAS) is organized and hosted by doctoral candidates of Leipzig University's Institute for American Studies. It takes place on November 6-8, 2025, at the Graduate Academy Leipzig. The theme of this year's conference is "Crisis and Resilience in American Literature, Culture, History, and Politics."

From 6-8 November 2025, the Institute for American Studies at Leipzig University will host the Postgraduate Forum (PGF) of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS). The three-day conference will take place at the Graduate Academy Leipzig to bring together doctoral researchers in American Studies from all across Germany.