Building the American Nation: Universality and Particularity in U.S. History

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Building the American Nation: Universality and Particularity in U.S. History

Veranstalter
Deutsche Gesellschaft für Amerikastudien (DGFA), Politische Akademie Tutzing, Zentrum für Nordamerikaforschung (ZENAF, Universität Frankfurt)
Veranstaltungsort
Politische Akademie Tutzing
Ort
Tutzing
Land
Deutschland
Vom - Bis
09.02.2007 - 11.02.2007
Deadline
01.02.2007
Website
http://dgfa.de/tagungen/andere_tgg_docs/Tutzing_2007_prog_worksh.pdf
Von
Axel Jansen

While the idea of nation-building is frequently used in the context of emerging nations and U.S. involvement elsewhere, this conference provides a platform for a consideration of the United States of America as an evolving nation from the colonial era to the present. U.S.-nation-building and the emergence of a national identity affirmed the structural coordinates of universalism and particularism. In its emerging political and social dimensions, the ensuing process of nationbuilding was shaped and complicated in various ways. Ideals of individual autonomy and independence were tied historically to an ambivalent relationship with the political nation-state. Sectionalism, furthermore, threatened the emerging nation-state’s fragile balance, a balance which tipped in 1861. The U.S. still considers itself to be a nation of immigrants. In the early twentieth century, decades of intensified immigration from Europe led intellectuals such as Randolph Bourne to conceive of the U.S. as a “trans-national” nation.
The conference will provide an opportunity to chart the emergence, the contexts and consequences, of U.S. nation-building, and to discuss points of transformation in this process. How did the colonial experience shape American state and communitybuilding at its inception, and how did this translate into lasting cultural perspectives on politics? What role did the professions, social movements, and political parties play in shaping and defining how the U.S. conceived of itself, and to what underlying notions have they responded? What has been the role of cultural institutions such as universities in American society and their relationship to the consolidation of the U.S. as a nation? And how has American diplomacy reflected a tension between particularism and universalism?

Programm

FRIDAY, February 9, 2007:

14.00 – 15.00 Arrival and Coffee

15.00 Welcome
Heinrich OBERREUTER
Saskia HIEBER
Akademie für Politische Bildung Tutzing
Marcus GRÄSER, Frankfurt
Axel JANSEN, Frankfurt/Los Angeles

15.15 Introduction
Building the American Nation: Universality and Particularity in U.S. History
Axel JANSEN

16.30 Coffee

17.00 The Religious Setting
Chair: Manfred BERG, Heidelberg
Trans-National Pietism and American Nation-Building. The Case of the Moravians
Gisela METTELE, Washington D.C.
German-American Lutherans and U.S. Exceptionalism Wolfgang SPLITTER, Philadelphia

18.30 Dinner

20.00 Keynote Speech
Nation and State in the Early American Republic
Peter S. ONUF, Charlottesville

SATURDAY, February 10, 2007:

8.15 Breakfast

9.00 Workshops

I. Politics & International Relations
Chair: Wilfried MAUSBACH, Heidelberg
Discussants: Daniel MAUL, Reinhild KREIS,
Gabriele G.E. PAULIX

II. Gender
Chair: Michael HOCHGESCHWENDER, München
Discussants: Tobias DIETRICH, Rudolf INDERST,
Wolf SERILER, Britta WALDSCHMIDT-NELSON

III. Race
Chair: Manfred BERG, Heidelberg
Discussants: Silke HACKENESCH,
Nora KREUZENBECK, Thomas LÖWER,
Dan. J. PUCKETT

10.30 Coffee

11.00 Local Allegiance and National Perspectives
Chair: Wilfried MAUSBACH, Heidelberg
The Local Side of Nation-Building: Connecticut`s Ratification of the Constitution, 1787-88
Markus HÜNEMÖRDER, München
Nation-Building in Reverse: Randolph Bourne`s Postcolonial
Vision of a Plural Beloved Community
Tom CLARK, Kassel

12.30 Lunch

15.00 The Professions
Chair: Michael HOCHGESCHWENDER, München
Chicago Sociologists and the Problem of Integrating a Nation
Markus GRÄSER, Frankfurt
Consolidating Professional Authority: Charles Peirce and the Community of Inquiry
Thomas HASKELL, Houston

16.30 Coffee

17.00 National Self-Perceptions in an International Context
Chair: Axel JANSEN, Frankfurt
Celebration and Performing Victory – U.S. Military Parades and Nation-Building in the 20th Century
Sebastian JOBS, Erfurt
Nation, nationale Selbstbestimmung und Nation-Building aus der Sicht der amerikanischen Außenpolitik im 20. Jahrhundert
Klaus SCHWABE, Aachen

18.30 Dinner

20.00 Business Meeting

SUNDAY, February 11, 2007:

8.15 Breakfast

9.00 Cultural Diversity and Citizenship
Chair: Marcus GRÄSER, Frankfurt
How to Deal with Cultural Diversity. The U.S. and the Habsburg Monarchy – a Comparison
Peter STACHEL, Wien
Citizenship and Nation-Building from the Perspective of Rights of Non-Citizens: The U.S. in the 19th Century
Birgitta BADER-ZAAR, Wien

10.30 Coffee

11.00 The Public Discourse in the 20th Century
Chair: Saskia HIEBER, Tutzing
Universality and Particularity in U.S.-College Education, 1918-1968
Katja NAUMANN, Chicago
History and Future. The American Nation in Public Debates
of the 1920s
Adelheid VON SALDERN, Göttingen

12.30 Lunch & Departure

Kontakt

Axel Jansen

Zentrum für Nordamerikaforschung (ZENAF)
J. W. Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

a.jansen@em.uni-frankurt.de

http://dgfa.de/tagungen/andere_tgg_docs/Tutzing_2007_prog_worksh.pdf
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