America’s understanding of home as both a national and domestic space of identification is currently being reconsidered. Home has traditionally been associated with ideas of belonging, community, domesticity, and safety. When social change occurs, these concepts must be re-evaluated; “Making It Home” implies returning to, adapting to, and creating ways of being at home in America. This conference intends to illuminate the social, economic, political, and cultural conditions transforming the concept of home, and how these transformations are addressed in contemporary discourses. In the tradition of the Graduate School of North American Studies, we welcome interdisciplinary papers contributing to a better understanding of what it means to make it home.

We encourage papers on a range of diverse topics. Possible paper subjects may include, but are not limited to:

America as the Home of Imperial Globalization? Democracy Promotion and US Foreign Policy
Whose Home? Gendered and Racialized Representations of Inclusion and Exclusion
Transnational Homes? Diasporas and Migrations
Exclusive Homes: Past and Present Forms of Social Marginalization
Narratives of Displacement and Homelessness
Winning American Living Rooms: The Media and Public Views of War
Housing and the Economy: A Safe Haven in Times of Crisis?
Living on a Borrowed Dime: The American Dream and Consumer Credit
Losing One’s Ground: Literature of Trauma and Grief in post 9/11 America

Abstracts should be limited to 250 words and be accompanied by the author’s name, e-mail address, institutional affiliation, and a short CV. The deadline for submission is January 31, 2012. A confirmation email will be sent when we receive your abstract. Those selected to present will be notified by mid-March, 2012. Please submit all abstracts and questions to: gsnas.conference2011@gsnas.fu-berlin.de For further information on the conference, please see http://www.gsnas.fu-berlin.de/en/conference/index.html

The conference language will be English.