The inaugural ceremony of the RuhrCenter of American Studies took place on Wednesday, 27 October 2010. The event started at the Ruhr University Bochum with the signing of the cooperation treaty and concluded at the TU Dortmund University with a key-note address by Carol Kahn Strauss, Executive Director of the Leo Baeck Institute, New York, on European Emigrés and the Transformation of American Culture.
integrates the rich American Studies resources of Ruhr-University Bochum and TU Dortmund University. Our international Ph.D. program is open to young scholars from around the world. Research at the RuhrCenter of American Studies has both a transnational and a transatlantic perspective; it focuses on American History, Literature, and Culture as nationally diverse and multi-ethnic as well as globally contextualized and interconnected. We invite you to join our group of international and interdisciplinary young scholars. Together with you, we want to open up new and exciting areas in American Studies.
American Studies in Dortmund focuses on the manifold literary, cultural, and media texts in transatlantic narratives. We view American culture as a system of relationships and investigate the extensive discursive networks in which it is embedded – both on a national and an international level. As researchers we deal with 19th, 20th, and 21st century American spaces, media, and technologies. Our main objective is to understand the many stories that are shared and contested across the Atlantic Ocean and how they manifest themselves in all kinds of texts from novels, poems, essays, and histories to paintings, films, or computer games. In our project-oriented courses we promote individual research interests and encourage cooperative work. Our American Studies program interacts with many other departments and programs at TU Dortmund University, including religion, journalism, urban/regional planning, marketing and engineering. Members of these programs frequently participate in the weekly meetings of the doctoral research group as well as in collaborative projects. We maintain student and research exchanges with fifteen colleges and universities all around the United States offering students and researchers direct and privileged access to overseas academic resources and networks.
American Studies in Bochum follows a historical as well as a literary and cultural studies trajectory. Our interdisciplinary transnational approach to North America’s history and culture focuses on the effects of globalization, migration, diaspora, international relations, economy, social processes, and transatlantic exchange. We do not only build on the insights of American Studies but also of postcolonial and globalization theory, sociology, anthropology, and political science in order to pinpoint the changes and the changing meanings of such different realities and concepts as "nation – home – foreign," "ethnicity – race – identity," "youth – beauty – body", or "poverty" and their effects on U.S. and/or Canadian culture, economy, and politics. Our open and interactive modes of research and teaching engage students, young doctoral researchers, and colleagues alike. Talks, lectures, and courses by American Studies specialists from the U.S., Germany, and other countries enrich the regular departmental curricula and offerings. America-related events for after-course hours are open to everyone interested to engage with this historically grown, dynamically developing, and ever newly surprising region of the world.