This talk will situate two Austrian horror movies within the context of Anthropocene horrors: Blood Glacier (2013) and Attack of the Lederhosen Zombies (2015). Both films struggle with global warming’s effects on alpine regions, but in different ways. Lederhosen Zombies’ titular monsters emerge in response to trying to counter global warming’s expected effects on winter tourism. In the process, the always-hungry undead come to embody capitalism’s insatiable hunger, which ultimately destroys that which nourishes it. Blood Glacier, on the other hand, revolves around the idea that global warming will set free microorganisms that have lain dormant in permafrost for hundreds of thousands of years. While much of the film’s runtime focuses on how humans fight the monstrous hybrids that the prehistoric microorganisms create, a humanoid hybrid emerges as humankind’s hope for future existence (in altered form) on a human-altered planet.
News and Events
Current News and Events ♦ Past News and Events 2023 ♦ Event and News Archive
Current News and Events
Gender Research Day 2024
The Department of English and the Department of American Studies are organizing their first Gender Research Day and are inviting you to learn about and discuss various approaches to gender in cultural and literary studies, as well as linguistics.
Jan. 12, 2024| Ágnes-Heller-Haus, Room 14 | 9:30- 14:30 | No registration needed
Past News and Events 2023
Call for Applications - Study Abroad at Utah State University WiSe 2024/25
Want to study abroad? Apply to study at Utah State University during the fall/winter semester 2024/25. Click on the links for detailed information about the application process and what it means to be an Aggie.
Application Period: Nov. 15, 2023 to Dec. 1, 2023
Hearings: Postdoctoral Associate ("Laufbahnstelle – QV")
You are cordially invited to attend the public lectures by the candidates for the position as Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of American Studies.
November 20, 09:00 am, HS 5| November 21, 09:00 am, HS F
"The Alps and the Horrors of the Anthropocene" by Michael Fuchs
November 9, 2023 | 15:00-16:30 pm| FSP-Tag: Imaginarien des Alpinen | Künstlerhaus Büchsenhausen (Weiherburggasse 13, Innsbruck)
"Haunted Media: Remediating Videogames in Horror Movies" by Michael Fuchs
From Friedrich Kittler to John Durham Peters and from Roland Barthes to Siegbert Solomon Prawer, scholars have frequently associated media with ghosts. Horror, Adam Daniel has remarked, “has historically infected both emerging forms and the technologies which deliver them, parasitically preying upon the fears that emerge from these developments.” Accordingly, it is not surprising that horror has engaged with digital media and technologies in various ways. This talk will focus on the depiction of videogames in horror movies such as Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare(1991), Stay Alive (2006), Livescream (2018), and Choose or Die (2022). All of these films grapple with various fears and anxieties connected to digital technologies (and videogames, in particular), but some of them also acknowledge the values of digital technologies for community-building and marginalized communities.
October 10, 2023 |12:00–1:30pm | HS5 | Lecture Series “Comparative Perspectives on New Media: Game Studies”
Welcome Event for First-Year BA Students in English and American Studies and the Teacher Training Program Subject English
The Departments of English and American Studies invite all first-year BA students to their joint welcome event. New students will have a chance to learn more about both departments, meet their instructors, and ask questions. No registration required.
October 10, 2023 |6 pm| HS 5 3/4
Presentation: Innsbruck University Movie Database (IUMD)
The IUMD is a meta-search engine that enables a film search in all media collections of the Faculty of Language, Literature and Culture and the University Library Innsbruck (ULB) and covers almost the entire stock of films that can be checked out by teachers and students at the University of Innsbruck. IUMD searches the holdings of the following archives: Sonja Bahn Video Archive of the Department of American Studies, Media Collection of the Department of English Studies, Media Archive of the Department of Slavic Studies, ULB Innsbruck (including the film holdings of the Department of Romance Studies, the Innsbruck Newspaper Archive and the Faculty of Theology).
During the presentation, Christian Quendler (Department of American Studies) and Eva Binder (Department of Slavic Studies) will offer a brief insight into the history of these media archives and pay tribute to important pioneers of university AV collections. Afterwards, Raphael Unterweger, the developer of the metasearch engine, will introduce the IUMD.
May 25, 2023 | 5:15 pm| HS 6
Screeing of Brainwashed: Sex - Camera - Power and Audience Discussion
A special preview screening of Nina Menkes’ documentary Brainwashed (2022) will take place at Leokino in Innsbruck. Menkes’ documentary uses clips and scenes from around 200 films to illustrate how women have been objectified by the male gaze across cinema history from Vertigo to Lost in Translation. It features interviews with prominent women filmmakers, actors, and film theorists. The screening will be followed by an audience discussion with Katherine Dahlquist-Bauer (Comparative Literature) and Ben Robbins (Department of American Studies, University of Innsbruck).
May 24, 2023 |8 pm| Leokino
Literary Quartet
This semester's Literary Quartet organized by the Department of English will take place on May 24. Anja Hartl (Dept. of English), Christoph Singer (Dept. of English), Ulla Ratheiser (Dept. of English), and Sandra Tausel (Dept. of American Studies) will discuss four novels: Natasha Brown, Assembly; Jonathan Coe, Bourneville; Gabriela Garcia, Of Women and Salt; and Ingrid Persaud, Love After Love
May 24, 2023|7 pm | Studiabuchhandlung (Innrain 52) | Free admission
Project Presentation: "Queer Exile Literature and the Island of Capri" by Ben Robbins
Ben Robbins (Department of American Studies) will offer an introduction to his research project on “Networked Narratives: Queer Exile Literature 1900-1969,” which is funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). The event is organized by the university research centre Cultures in Contact (KiK). Robbins will particularly focus on Anglophone writers who relocated to Capri in the early decades of the twentieth century, a period when many queer men and women left Northern Europe and the United States due to the criminalization of homosexuality. The lecture will be followed by a discussion.
May 24, 2023| 3:15-4:45 pm | Room 40904, Geiwi-Turm (9th floor) and online
Guest Lecture: "Filmfestival im Waldhüttl" by Matthias Windischer & Susanne Meier
This guest lecture is part of Prof. Quendler's class "Film Culture and Film Education" (610022).
May 11| 12:00-1:30 pm | SR 40130 (Geiwi-Turm, 1st floor)
ZIAS-Lecture Series - Inside Mountains: Material Extractions & Mythical Exploits in the Americas
April 20, 6 pm, HS 2 | April 27, 6 pm, HS 2 | May 11, 6 pm, HS 2 | May 22, 10:15 am, 50109/3 SR | June 5, 6 pm, HS 2
From Nixon to Trump: Changes in US Media Coverage - A Two-Part Event
Part 1: Guest Lecture by Dr. Ardoin; April 19, 2023, 6 pm, HS 7
Part 2: Screening of The Post; May 10, 2023, 6:15 pm, Leokino
Welcome Event for First-Year BA Students in English and American Studies
The Departments of English and American Studies invite all first-year BA students to their joint welcome event. New students will have a chance to learn more about both departments, meet their instructors, and ask questions. No registration required.
Mar. 16, 2023 |6 pm| HS 5 3/4
Welcome Event for First Semester MA Students at the Faculty of Language, Literature, and Culture
Feb. 14, 2023| 2:00 pm | via Zoom (no registration necessary)
Guest Lecture: Sandra Tausel on "Freedom in the Homeland of the Free? Reading Narratives of Japanese American Incarceration
In the Interdisciplinary Lecture Series: "Positionen der Literaturwissenschaft"
Jan. 24, 2023 |10:15-11:45 am| GeiWi-Turm, HS 4
Vortragsreihe: Gaming & Wissenschaft: Disziplinäre Zugänge zu den Game Studies
Seminarraum 40935, GeiWi-Turm | jeweils mittwochs
Welcome to Visiting Professor Dr. Phillip J. Ardoin
The Department of American Studies is thrilled to welcome Dr. Phillip J. Ardoin (Appalachian State University) as a visiting professor during the spring/summer semester 2023.