Das komplett englischsprachige Buch vereinigt Beiträge zur visual culture internationaler junger Wissenschaftler/innen aus verschiedenen Disziplinen wie Philologie, Sozialwissenschaften, Medienwissenschaften, cultural studies, Philosophie, Theaterwissenschaften und Kunst und Kunstgeschichte und dokumentiert die Tagung gleichnamigen (Buch)Titels vom April 2005 im Institut für Nordamerikastudien an der Freien Universität Berlin. Eine bedeutsame Frage lautet z.B.: Läßt sich generell von visual culture sprechen und diese definieren - oder muss es beim Plural bleiben: visual cultures (vgl. auch den Buchtitel). Und wie hängt visual culture zusammen mit der sich in Deutschland neu etablierenden Bildwissenschaft? Dabei wird deutlich: Wir leben im visuellen Zeitalter und Bilder spielen eine immer größere Rolle in unserer Kultur; die Kommunikation verlagert sich – angesichts des sich abzeichnenden Endes der Gutenberg-Galaxie – immer mehr in den visuellen Bereich.

Thomas Bernhard, lehrerbibliothek.de

Autoren / Herausgeber

Ralf Adelmann works currently in a research project of the German Government about »Visualizations in Scientific Communication«. University studies in media studies, philosophy, sociology and art history at the universities of Erlangen and Bochum, Germany. Dissertation thesis: Visual cultures of control society. On the Popularization of Digital and Videographic Visualizations in Television (2003). His fields of academic interest are audio-visual cultures, media theory, media economies in popular culture, documentary formats in television.

Jessica Buben is a digital media artist and sole proprietor of Girl A Micromedia, a multimedia production and visual research laboratory based in Chicago.
E=MC2: Image Equivalency and Pop Metaphysics is a digital media document produced during her doctoral work with The Committee on the History of Culture at The University of Chicago in the area of Interdisciplinary Studies in Visual Culture. Jessica worked in traditional media from the late 1980s until the late 1990s, when she completed her Master’s degree in studio art. Her first film, Gâteau (1999), a »synthetic double biography« of Marie Antoinette and Jayne Mansfield funded, in part, by The American Association of University Women has been screened at various venues including The MadCat International Film Festival in 2001 and traveling program Is This Desire? in 2002. Her next project, Manchurian Candy, is an experimental documentary of conspiracy theory figure Candy Jones, a World War II pin-up-girl-turned-CIA-operative.

Birgit Däwes studied English, American, and German Literatures at Mainz University, University College Galway, Ireland, and Middlebury College, Vermont. She received her M.A. degree from Mainz University in 2000 and her Ph.D. from Würzburg University in 2006. Her dissertation on Native North American Theater in a Global Age: Sites of Identity Construction and Transdifference will be published by Universitätsverlag Winter (Heidelberg) in early 2007. Further research interests are Native American and First Nations literatures, globalization and transnationalism, issues of cultural memory as well as discourses of terror (Gothic or political) in fiction. She has also co-edited a volume on Global Challenges and Regional Responses in Contemporary Drama in English and currently teaches American Literature and Culture at Würzburg University.

Andreas Fahr *1966; Andreas Fahr’s scholarship focuses on mass communication, mainly from a media psychological perspective. As a quantitatively-oriented social scientist he has mainly used content analysis, surveys, and experiments in his research. Andreas studied communication, psychology & economics between 1989 and 1995 at the Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany. In 1996 his master-thesis about »Tandemspots – boosters of advertising?« won the annual research prize from the German professional association of market and social researchers (BVM). Between 1995 and 2000 he worked as research associate at the Media Institute Ludwigshafen (applied media studies). Since 2000 he is working as assistant professor at the department for communication and media research at the Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich. In his doctoral thesis (2001) he examined the perfomance of news coverage about catastrophies.

Ingrid Gessner is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Regensburg. Her major interests in research and teaching include American literature, memory studies, visual culture studies, and the digital turn in American Studies. She is the author of Kollektive Erinnerung als Katharsis? Das Vietnam Veterans Memorial in der öffentlichen Kontroverse (2000) and the award-winning From Sites of Memory to Cybersights: (Re)Framing Japanese American Experiences (2007). Her other publications include articles on cultural memory and on teaching American Studies. Ingrid Gessner has taught at the University of Mainz and the University of Michigan. She is assistant editor of Amerikastudien/American Studies and editor of the e-journal COPAS (Current Objectives in Postgraduate American Studies).

Steven Hoelscher is a cultural geographer with research interests in the intersection of race and photography. During 2004, he was a Senior Fulbright Scholar at the Nordamerikastudienprogramm at the University of Bonn, where he taught courses on cultural memory and U.S. cities. His books include Heritage on Stage and Textures of Place, and he has published articles in the American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, American Quarterly, the Journal of Historical Geography, Ecumene, Geographical Review, and the Public Historian. He lives in Austin, where he Associate Professor of American Studies and Geography at the University of Texas.

Ines Katenhusen is associate professor at the Institute of Political Sciences, University of Hannover. As such, she is the coordinator of the interdisciplinary Masters program in European Studies and, among other subjects, teaches the history of European integration in the twentieth century. Her dissertation on arts and politics in the 1920ies was published in 1998. Since 2000, she has been working on the German-American art historian and museum director Alexander Dorner. In this context, she has been awarded several research fellowships by US-American and German institutions, such as the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies/DAAD/Johns Hopkins University, the Fulbright Commission, the German Historical Institute, Washington, and the Terra Foundation for American Arts/John F. Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien, FU Berlin. In spring 2005, she has been guest professor at the Université de Paris 7. Articles and essays on Dorner have been published in German, US-American as well as French and Russian journals and books. Recent articles also include art historical, cultural historical, and urban historical issues. Furthermore, she has published on various issues of European history.

Janusz Kazmierczak holds the position of assistant professor at the School of English, Department of Polish-British and Polish-American Cultural Relations, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland. His research interests include the literary image of Britain and America in Poland; cultural theory; and propaganda and persuasion, especially in visual communication. Among his recent publications are »John Bull Debunked: Stalinist Visual Propaganda,« Between Two Cultures: Poland and Britain, ed. Peter Leese (Poznan: British Council, 2004) 77-104, and »Raymond Williams and Cartoons: From Churchill’s Cigar to Cultural History,« International Journal of Comic Art 7.2 (2005): 147-163.

Nic Leonhardt studied Theatre Studies and Audiovisual Media, German Philology and Art History at the Universities of Erlangen-Nürnberg and Mainz. In her PhD-thesis, Piktoral-Dramaturgie (Pictorial Dramaturgy), she explored the interplay of Visual Culture and Theatre in 19th Century Germany (1869-1899). She worked as a research assistant and associate instructor at the University of Mainz, and the University of Music in Köln, and received grants from the University of Mainz, the DAAD, and the Fulbright Commission. Nic Leonhardt is currently holding a position as research assistant at the University of Music and Theatre, Leipzig.
Her research interests and publications include theatre and media history, visual culture, popular culture, censorship, acting theory, and telenovelas. She is currently working on a book on stereography.

Dimitri Liebsch Education in philosophy, history, and German literature. Ph.D. in philosophy (Ruhr-University Bochum, 1999). Working experience as assistant professor, lecturer (in philosophy and social sciences), and journalist. Academic and professional interests: Aesthetics, theory of media, social theory, visual studies, philosophy of film.
Publications: Die Geburt der ästhetischen Bildung aus dem Körper der antiken Plastik (2001), Philosophie des Films. Grundlagentexte (ed., 2005), articles on aesthetics, theory of perception, philosophy of film, Rudolf Arnheim, September 11.

Bettina Lockemann born in 1971 in Berlin, lives in Cologne and Berlin. 1990-93 Vocational training as photographer. 1994-99 Studies of art photography and media art at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. 2000-04 Research and teaching assistant in the project Visual Competence in the Media Age, State Academy of Visual Arts Stuttgart (ABKS). Since 2003 work on the dissertation project Seeing the Other. The European View on Japan in Contemporary Artistic Documentary Photography (ABKS). Since 1996 individual exhibitions and participation in major group exhibitions, e.g.: 2000 Positions, Attitudes, Actions, International Photography-Biennial Rotterdam, Netherlands; 2001/02 Trade. Commodities, Communication, and Consciousness in World Trade Today, Photography-Museum Winterthur, Switzerland; Nederlands Foto Instituut, Rotterdam, Netherlands; 2003 Code Orange, GEDOK-Art Gallery, Stuttgart (individual); 2003 Fringes of Utopia, Büro Spors, Berlin (individual); 2004 Research - discovered! Image Archives of the Invisibilities, International Photography Triennial Esslingen; 2005 Trial of Power, Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin; 2005 Pingyao International Photography Show Pingyao, China; 2006 Jahresgaben, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart. Further information: www.archivalien.de

Walter Metz is the Interim Department Head and an Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Theatre Arts at Montana State University—Bozeman, where he teaches the history, theory, and criticism of film, theatre, and television. His first book was Engaging Film Criticism: Film History and Contemporary American Cinema (Peter Lang, 2004). His book on the American television situation comedy, Bewitched, is forthcoming (Wayne State University Press, 2007). His previous publications involve genre and intertextuality in cinema, for such journals as Film Quarterly, The Journal of Film and Video, Film Criticism, and Literature/Film Quarterly. During the 2003-2004 academic year, he was Fulbright Guest Professor in American Studies at the John F. Kennedy Institute at the Free University in Berlin, where he taught graduate seminars on whiteness and masculinity theory, and undergraduate courses on television history and film genre.

Claudia Olk teaches Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Modernism and Cultural Studies at the Humboldt- University of Berlin. Her PhD-Thesis explored the development of fictionality in Medieval and Renaissance Travel Narratives, and her Habilitation was on the Aesthetics of Vision in Modernism. PD Dr. Olk taught at the Universities of Münster and Osnabrück, and received fellowships from Harvard University, the University College London, and The Renaissance Centre at the University of Massachusetts. She briefly quit the academia to work for the Bertelsmann Foundation as a Program director for the State and Public administration division, and she is presently also a consultant to the President of the Max-Planck-Society in research policy. Claudia Olk’s research interests and publications include Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Modernism, aesthetics and contemporary writing.

Stefanie Schneider studied History, English, Education, French and Social Psychology at the University of Bochum and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. She completed her »Erstes Staatsexamen« and her M.A. in English and History in June 2000 and was awarded the Prix d`Excellence de Québec for her M.A. thesis on a comparative socio-historical analysis of wills in a ninteenth-century bilingual Canadian village. She has worked as a research assistant at the universities of Bochum and Erfurt, where she completed her PhD dissertation on the symbolic representation of Anglo-American relations in nineteenth-century political cartoons at the Max Weber Research Centre for Social and Cultural Studies in 2004 (»summa cum laude«). She will soon finish her »Zweites Staatsexamen« as a teacher trainee at Hittorf-Gymnasium, Recklinghausen in July 2005. Her main fields of research are Anglo-American history, cultural history, Canadian history and the teaching of history.

Genevieve Susemihl born in 1972 in Rostock, studied American Studies Sociology and Educational Science at the University of Rostock in Germany, as well as at Connecticut College and Long Island University. In 2003 she received her doctorate degree with a dissertation on The Assimilation and Integration of German-Jewish Hitler Refugees in New York and Toronto. Since 1998 she has been working as an Assistant Professor at the English Department at the University of Rostock, doing research and teaching in the fields of North American history, culture and literature, migration studies, Jewish studies, Native studies, regional studies, popular and visual Culture, and media studies. In 2003 she has participated in the Notebook University Rostock-Project, designing and creating a CD Rom on Canadian Popular Culture. Besides working on a publication of interviews with German-Jewish immigrants to North American, she is currently organizing the international, interdisciplinary symposium »Canada – A Country with Many Faces« in Rostock. Susemihl has received various honors and awards, among others she was the recipient of the John G. H. Halstead-Memorial Fellowhip of the Stiftung für Kanada-Studien in 2000 and of a travel grant of the Government of Canada in 2003. For numerous years she has also been working as a freelance journalist and dance instructor.

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