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Close the Transatlantic Gap: American Popular Music and German Culture since the 1960s

 

Speaker: Sascha Seiler, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany

Lecture title: Closing the Transatlantic Gap: American Popular Music and German Culture since the 1960’s

Date, time, place: Monday, March 5, 4:00 pm, Student Center 249

Abstract of the talk:

Today, American popular culture can be found everywhere in Germany, but this was not always the case. Especially German literature, and with it every other form of cultural articulation commonly regarded as ‘high art’, had its problems in accepting these new forms of music, film or writing that came from the USA. In fact, until the end of the 1960s there was such a strict division between what was considered highbrow and lowbrow that it took a major cultural scandal to open German culture up to the aesthetic possibilities that lay in American popular culture. For German intellectuals it was a long and hard way to realize that popular culture in general must be seen as an important aesthetic phenomenon that not only has a big influence on everyday life but also is a basic factor when we consider transatlantic cultural relations between Germany and the USA.

The talk analyzes the great influence that American popular culture had on German literature until the present day, starting with the problematic beginnings in the 1960s and ending with the ironic ‘Popliteratur’-movement that began to surface in the late 1990s.

 

Date:
-
Location:
Student Center Room 249

Shiping Hua, Year of China Lecture Series

Year of China Lecture Series

Shiping Hua

"China's Consitutionalism in the 20th Century"

Calvin and Helen Lang Distinguished Chair in Asian Studies

Director, Asian Studies Program

Professor, Political Science

University of Louisville

 

March 8, 2012

Whitehall Classroom Building Room 118

6:00-7:40pm

Free and open to the public  

Date:
-
Location:
Whitehall Classroom Building Room 118

The Queen With Six Fingers: Dispelling Historical Myths with Susan Bordo

Susan Bordo is a professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at UK. On March 20th, 2012, professor Bordo will present a lecture, “The Queen with Six Fingers: Origins of Popular Myths about Anne Boleyn.” The lecture will be at 4pm in the president’s room at the UK Singletary Center for the Arts, and will address popular myths about Anne Boleyn, one of the wives of Henry XIII.

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