This conference will address the trajectory of these recent controversies about modes of policing in the U.S. by focusing on phenomena and institutions that highlight the long history of policing and resistance in the United States and North America at large. We invite scholars to contribute their insights on the topic of policing in fields from legal history to social history, cultural history, and neighboring disciplines. We are especially interested in submissions that foreground historically marginalized knowledge and standpoints, and that are self- reflexive in their framing.
Law and Order: Modes of Policing and Resistance in American History
Annual Conference of the Historians of the German Association for American Studies (GAAS/DGfA)
Some of the most controversial debates in American politics over the past several years have revolved around modes of law enforcement and policing. Abortion has been rendered illegal in numerous U.S. states since the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Teaching critical race theory (CRT), which draws connections between racism and American legal institutions, has been criminalized in states across the country. Violent practices of policing Americans who are Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) have led some to demand defunding the police. Opponents of antiracist teaching, meanwhile, have criticized the insights of Black Studies, African American Studies, Pan-African Studies and Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual (LGBTQIA+) Studies as left-wing attempts to police and suppress freedom of speech and have dismissed them as mere political correctness or wokeness.
This conference will address the trajectory of these recent events by focusing on phenomena and institutions that highlight the long history of policing and resistance in the United States and North America at large. We invite scholars to contribute their insights on the topic of policing in fields from legal history to social history, cultural history, and neighboring disciplines. We are especially interested in submissions that foreground historically marginalized knowledge and standpoints, and that are self- reflexive in their framing.
Programm
Friday
2:30–3:00 p.m. Opening Remarks
Helen Gibson, Sebastian Jobs, John Woitkowitz (Berlin)
3:00–5:30 p.m. Policing Gender and Sexuality
Chair: Nadja Klopprogge (Tübingen)
Nicole Sara Colaianni (Heidelberg)
No Checks and Balances: Corporate Policing of ‘Sexual Harassment’ after the Faragher and Ellerth Supreme Court Decisions
Mona Raeisian (Marburg)
From Welfare to Warfare: Legal Sterilization as Policing in Care and Reform Institutions
Ted Richthofen (Bonn)
Policing Gender: Bootleggers, Policewomen, Crossdressing, and the KKK during Alcohol Prohibition in Colorado
Andrew Wells (Kiel)
Cato’s Rape: Race and the Policing of Sex in Colonial New York City, 1664-1763
6:30–8:00 p.m. Keynote
Chair: Helen Gibson (Berlin)
Mia Bay (Cambridge, UK)
The Streetcar Wars: Everyday Violence in Making American Segregation
Saturday
9:30 a.m.–10:30 a.m. Roundtable: Precarious Archives – Accessibility, Erasure and Opportunities
Chair: Sebastian Jobs (Berlin)
John Woitkowitz (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) and Kristen Iemma (Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Berlin)
11:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. Early Career Scholars Forum
Panel 1 (Adolf von Harnack-Saal)
Chair: Andreas Etges (München)
Sujato Datta (Berlin)
Bombs, Bureaucracy and Business As Usual: The British Indian Agent-General in Washington
and the Second World War
Richard Julius Lange (Heidelberg)
More than Paradise and Power? Accessing the Origins of Post-Cold War Transatlantic Differences
Anja Stopfer (Regensburg)
Of Pastors and Presidents, of Providence and Patriotism – The “Christian” and the “National” in American Christian Nationalism
Lesar Yurtsever (Berlin)
The Sound of Liberalism: Music and U.S. Turkish Relations from 1927 to 1960
Panel 2 (Wilhelm von Humboldt-Saal)
Chair: Jessica Gienow-Hecht (Berlin)
Katharina Isaak (Münster)
Caught between Revolution and Repression – The Russian-Language Press in the United States during the First Red Scare
Lisa Gersdorf (Erfurt)
Singing, Hiking and Politics: German Youth Movement in North America, 1920–1940
Caroline Bühler (München)
Women Making Money: Labor Unions and Feminized Professions in U.S. Economic Culture (1960–1990)
Alexander Brackebusch (München)
Morality Amendments: Interest Group Collaboration, Moral Panics and Conservative Backlash in the Second Half of the 20th Century
Panel 3 (Theodor Fontane-Saal)
Chair: Manfred Berg (Heidelberg)
Jana Huneke (Köln)
High School Bully, Boss Bitch, and Angry Black Woman: Figurations of Mean Femininity in the United States, 1950–1990
Iremsu Kul (Frankfurt)
The National Black United Front and the Struggle Against Racial Violence
Ylva Kreye (Mainz)
Whose Surveillance Is It Anyway? The Role of Migrant Knowledge and Visions of Autonomy in Progressive-Era Social Reform Efforts
Lea Kröner (Berlin)
Indigenous Missionaries and Colonial Power in Nineteenth-Century British Columbia
3:00–5:30 p.m. Policing Migration and Empire
Chair: Mischa Honeck (Kassel)
Grit Grigoleit-Richter (Passau)
Racialized Law and Order: Historicizing Border Enforcement at the Texas-Mexico Border
Layla Koch (Heidelberg)
(Un-)Lawful Fathers, Infant Nation: Paternalist Narratives of Law and Order in the 1830s Cherokee Deportation Crisis
Charlotte Lerg (München)
Orange Jump Suits and Sketchy Legality. The Trials before the Guantanamo Bay Military Commission in Visual Journalism
Silke Hackenesch (Köln)
Ideal Immigrant, Precarious Citizen: International Adoption and U.S. Immigration Policy in the Late 20th Century
7:00–8:30 p.m. Business Meeting
Sunday
9:00–11:00 a.m. Concepts and Theories of Policing
Chair: Marlene Ritter (Berlin)
Anthony Obst (Berlin)
The Mythical Foundations of “Law and Order”: From Thomas Hobbes to John Adams
Felix Krämer (Erfurt)
Racial Capitalists’ Constitution? Whiteness as Property, the American Revolution and Beyond
Vanessa Vollmann (Passau)
Resisting the Allegation of “Wokeness” through Critical Race Theory Counter-Dialogue
11:15 a.m.–12:30 p.m. Policing of Order
Chair: Silvan Niedermeier (Erfurt)
Nina Mackert (Hamburg)
Risk, Race and the Policing of Disease in Early 20th Century Public Health
Julian Windhöfel (Erfurt)
“Policing Black Labor for White Property” – Planter Class and Freedmen’s Bureau during early Reconstruction in Louisiana, 1864–1868