Research Approach

Research at the Chair of American Studies encompasses a broad understanding of American cultures. We focus on the cultural patterns that shape realities through the lenses of genre, media, and categories of social stratification.

A particular emphasis is placed on the cultural study of structural violence and social inequalities. From both historical and contemporary perspectives, we examine normative gender orders, the legacy of settler colonialism in North America, and the apparatus of transatlantic enslavement. We conceive of these as a constitutive flip side of Western modernity and as a central epistemological challenge for the present.

Three focal fields structure the research at the Chair: formalizations, positionings, and normalizations. In the field formalizations, we examine the material and textual implementation of knowledge within the cultural sphere. We analyze modes of discursivizing social dynamics through specific forms of genre and media. In the field positionings, we investigate historically situated cultural processes of the subjectification of individuals and groups within scenarios of social inequality. This includes examining patterns in the formalization of diversity discourses and practices of cultural cooperation in times of crisis. In the focal field normalizations, we interrogate culture as a site for the regulation of epistemological orders. We examine so-called culture wars and the negotiation of ethical standards within scholarly practice.