The Americas: Perspectives from the Western Hemisphere

The cluster "The Americas: Perspectives of the Western Hemisphere" brings together research activities focusing on North, Central and South America as well as the Caribbean. It is not only about visualizing projects in the humanities, cultural, social and natural sciences, but also about interregional and interdisciplinary links and cooperation. The aim is to work out the historical, political, economic, ecological, social and cultural contexts of these region(s) and thus contribute to a theoretical (re-)conceptualization of Area Studies / Regional Studies. In doing so, the continent is seen in its entirety and not its sub-regions as separate and uninfluenced by each other. An important innovation in the approach is also to look at the Americas not from the traditional perspectives of "Europe-Canada", "Europe-USA" or "Europe-Latin America", but to adopt a hemispheric perspective, which in turn enables a new form of critical transatlantic dialogue.

Current and potential research fields of the cluster:

• Inter-American Studies and Transnational American Studies

• Historical, cultural, and social interdependencies and intersectionality 

• (Inter-American) literary and cultural studies 

• Plurilingualism, translanguaging, and translation studies 

• Nation-state, human rights, legal pluralism, and regional political factors

• Critical border studies (legal, economic, ecological, cultural), migration and diaspora phenomena

• Camps, carceral imaginations, (in)justices, and abolitionism  

• Inter-American perspectives on the climate crisis 

• Indigeneity and post/de-colonialism

• Social movements from the Americas

• critical race, feminist, and queer theory from the Americas 

• Popular and digital cultures from the Americas 

• Intercultural communication, scientific exchange, and educational co-operation