Talk about the crisis of liberal democracy, the decline of the West, and the end of transatlantic relations as we knew them is ubiquitous these days. It is largely triggered by the election of Donald Trump to the office of U.S. president and the tumultuous turmoil European-American relations were thrust into by it.

A closer look, however, reveals that the much quoted „Atlantic Drift“ set in shortly after the end of the Cold War already, that the history of European-American relations during the Cold War was one of conflict and confrontation just as much as it was one of cooperation and unity, and that the further back in history one goes, the more ambivalent and contradictory European-American relations appear.

Taking the complexity, multi-dimensionality, and ambivalence of European-American relations throughout the ages as points of departure, and pursuing a historical perspective encompassing the early modern and modern periods, the Annual Conference of the Bavarian American Academy seeks to critically re-assess the topics, dimensions, processes, and problems of transatlantic relations from a multi-disciplinary angle. It will thematize the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of European-American relations from the seventeenth century to today, and reflect them in categories of cooperation and conflict, convergence and divergence. Its overall scholarly aim is to arrive at a deeper and fuller understanding not only of transatlantic relations as such but also of the situation we are currently acting in.

The Bavarian American Academy invites relevant contributions from the fields of history, literary criticism, geography, the arts, and cultural studies addressing issues of transatlantic relations from the early modern period to today.

We are especially interested in papers dealing with

- transatlantic (auto)biographies, person-to-person contacts, literary and social movements, institutions and networks
- the circulation and transfer of knowledge, concepts and ideas across the North Atlantic
- the multidirectional exchange of books, songs, movies, and material artifacts between Europe and North America
- systems of meaning mapping the North Atlantic world and framing the relationships between Europe and America

Please send your abstracts of not more than 500 words by February 15, 2019 to:

Margaretha Schweiger-Wilhelm: schweiger-wilhelm@amerika-akademie.de
Volker Depkat: Volker.Depkat@sprachlit.uni-regensburg.de