Conference on the US

27 May 2009

Most people agree that the inauguration of President Obama has changed the way the rest of the world look at the US. The transition that takes place in the US at the moment is to be discussed at an international conference held at the Faculty of Humanities from 28 to 30 May.

The conference presents debates such as the Superhero after 9/11 focusing on the films 'Batman Begins' and 'The Dark Knight'; the nazification of Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s; Barack Obama and the future of American liberalism; masculinity in American literature post 9/11, and the myth of the US as a 'melting pot'.

Cosmopolitanism

The theme of the conference is 'cosmopolitanism'; the idea that all people and populations – irregardless of how different they may seem – belong to a single community. Two of the conference organisers PhD Anne Dvinge and Assistant Professor Martyn Bone explains why cosmopolitanism was chosen as a theme:

- Cosmopolitanism is part of the American soul and is one of the basic prerequisites for the founding of the United states of America where people came together across national, cultural and geographical boundaries. But apart from being rooted in the past, cosmopolitanism is also very much a forward-looking theme. The classic American isolationism that we know from the Bush-government is an outdated approach to the world, which is also demonstrated in the current change in American politics. Today one doesn't operate with small, nationally isolated problems; for instance, when the US exceeds their CO2 quotas the problem becomes an international problem. The same can be said about the world economy and a long row of other issues that cannot be isolated to only one country.

The conference is organised by NAAS - the Nordic Association for American Studies.