The 35th Annual Conference of the Postgraduate Forum (PGF) of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA/GAAS) is organized and hosted by doctoral candidates of Leipzig University's Institute for American Studies. It takes place on November 6-8, 2025, at the Graduate Academy Leipzig. The theme of this year's conference is "Crisis and Resilience in American Literature, Culture, History, and Politics."
Below please find the Call for Papers, our contact details, and further information on the 2025 PGF Conference. Speakers at the conference will have the opportunity to publish their papers in the next issue of COPAS: Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies.
The full conference program as well as registration information will be released after the submission deadline.
Crisis and Resilience in American Literature, Culture, History, and Politics
35th Annual Conference of the Postgraduate Forum (PGF) of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS/DGfA)
The organizers of the 2025 Postgraduate Forum are pleased to announce the annual call for submissions for this year’s conference hosted at Leipzig University from November 6-8, 2025. Since its inception in 1989, the PGF has been a platform for early-career researchers in the broader field of American studies, offering them the opportunity to present and discuss their ongoing projects and to engage in critical conversations with scholars working in a range of disciplines.
Our current social and political climate is characterized by the international rise of fascism, populism, and nationalism, growing socioeconomic inequality, and ongoing global catastrophes. Despite the seeming omnipresence of crisis there are efforts of resilience and reasons for optimism spanning from grassroots groups to popular cultural productions and political movements, presenting a variety of solutions, strategies, and coping mechanisms.
This year’s PGF conference invites critical reflections and interdisciplinary contributions that explore how cultural texts, individuals, communities, and social movements challenge systems of oppression and imagine alternative futures. We seek to examine the role of crisis, resistance, and resilience in literature, culture, media, history, and politics and how American studies methodology can help understand these practices and discourses.
We invite emerging scholars from all American studies disciplines, including but not limited to literature, cultural studies, history, sociology, political science, didactics, and media studies, to submit proposals for 20-minute papers. We also welcome presentations on (or related to) your PhD project, not necessarily related to the conference topic if within the field of American studies. We also welcome alternative formats such as roundtables, workshops, and creative contributions that engage with the conference theme.
Questions and topics include but are not limited to:
- How do individuals and communities respond to crises?
- How do cultural productions function as interventions in times of crisis?
- How might alternative forms of texts such as manifestos, pamphlets, and performances provide innovative ways of addressing crises?
- What are rhetorics of resilience?
- What practices of resistance have emerged in present and past times of upheaval?
- What is the role of cultures of care, self-help, and mutual aid in approaching crises and global challenges?
- How can community-building and solidarity provide examples in change-making practices? How might these foster cross-cultural collaboration?
- How do we archive and build upon efforts of resilience for future generations?
Please submit abstracts of 250–300 words and a short bio (100 words) to pgf@dgfa.de by August 17, 2025.
Conference date: November 6-8, 2025
Location: Leipzig (hybrid attendance possible, financial travel aid possible to the extent that our budget permits)
The 2025 Postgraduate Forum Conference includes a keynote lecture by PD Dr. Martin Lüthe.
Martin Lüthe is an associate professor for American cultural studies at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. A former member of the PGF, his dissertation focused on Color-Line and Crossing-Over: Motown and Performances of Blackness in 1960s American Culture (2011) and his habilitation on Wire Writing: Media Change in the Culture of the Progressive Era (2025).
The 2025 Postgraduate Forum Conference will host a career roundtable featuring a panel of former American studies doctoral students who today are employed in a wide range of fields in and beyond the university system.
The panelists will share their professional paths, answer questions by attendees, and be able to discuss various post-PhD career options.
The conference is scheduled to include catered sandwiches, snacks, and drinks as well as self-pay meals.
We are able to provide limited financial assistance (capped travel reimbursements to the extent that our budget permits) to conference presenters and attendees who wish to travel to Leipzig and who do not have institutional travel funding.
The 2025 Postgraduate Forum Conference is organized by doctoral students at American Studies Leipzig:
- Ella Ernst
- Peter Hintz
- Leonie Kratzenstein
- Milo Miller
- Laura Pröger
- Annika Schadewaldt
- Samir Taher
For any questions regarding the conference or the Postgraduate Forum in general, please contact us at pgf@dgfa.de.
The conference site is located near the city center of Leipzig, close to the university library Bibliotheca Albertina, and next to the Federal Administrative Court (tram stop Neues Rathaus, approx. 6-8 mins. from Leipzig Hauptbahnhof by public transport):
Graduate Academy Leipzig
Villa Tillmanns
Wächterstraße 30
04107 Leipzig
Conference Location: Graduate Academy Leipzig (Villa Tillmanns), Wächterstraße 30, 04107 Leipzig