The Territorialities of U.S. Imperialisms: Conflicting Discourses of Sovereignty, Jurisdiction and Territory in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Legal Texts and Indigenous Life Writing

My dissertation project is concerned with the negotiation of indigenous land rights in North America and the Pacific during U.S. continental expansion in the 19th century as well as during Hawaiian annexation in 1898. In both cases, my project focuses on strategies to legitimize the incorporation of indigenous territories into U.S. national territory and consolidate national identity and nationals borders, and indigenous strategies to affirm indigenous sovereignty and legitimacy. As part of this focus, my project reads U.S.-American legal texts as well as Life Writing texts by Native Americans and Native Hawaiians together and analyzes them for their respective strategies to (de)construct utterances of legitimacy and sovereignty. Based on the work of Amy Kaplan, Mark Rifkin, and John Carlos Rowe, my project is in intervention in current discussions in Native American studies, the study of U.S. imperialism, (trans)Pacific Studies, law and literature, Transnational American Studies, and Native Hawaiian studies.

Conceptions of Planetarity and the (Extra)-Terrestrial in Representations of Space Exploration and Colonization in North American Literature and Culture

This project aims to explore how the imaginaries of the colonization of alien planets (especially, but not exclusively Mars) in literature, visual media, scientific data, popular culture, and the law, also serves as a commentary on the current climate crisis on Earth, as well as on how this crisis propels and challenges conceptions of globalization and planetarity. Based on recent scholarly debates on ecocritical frameworks of the anthropocene, planetarity (Heise), and the extraterrestrial (Latour), my project analyzes how the alleged inevitability and salvational character of a near-future of space colonization obscures the extent and the dystopian realities of our current climate crisis, as well as belies the actual state of technology to tackle either the crisis on Earth or to make a home for humanity on another planet.

Jens Temmen

 

Contours of the U.S. Nation State (WT)

This project is situated in the context of contemporary critical discussions on the nation-state, transnationalism, and globalization, but insists on a longer historical perspective and places its focus specifically on the United States. Building on the work of scholars such as Amy Kaplan, John Carlos Rowe, and Mark Rifkin, we examine how the historical specificities of U.S. nationhood—a long period of continental expansion, the foundational conception of the “frontier” and the constant and ongoing Native American challenge to U.S. sovereignty from “within” its perceived borders, and a history of “fuzzy” outer boundaries due to the strategies of American imperialism(s)—are instrumental in explaining the current contours of the U.S. nation-state in a globalized world.

Jens Temmen and Nicole Waller 

Website Nicole Waller

Special Forum "American Territorialities"

Connections between Atlantic Studies and (Trans)Pacific Studies (WT)

This research project was initiated by a joint workshop on “(Trans)Pacific Knowledge Landscapes” at the 62nd Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA) in Bonn, Germany (May 28-31, 2015). Standing on the shoulders of critics such as Yunte Huang, Rob Wilson, and Arif Dirlik, and rejecting the imperial notion of the Pacific as “America’s Lake,” this workshop inquired how the notion of a transpacific epistemology re-negotiates, contests, or contributes to North American knowledge landscapes and complicates the monodirectional trajectory of imperial knowledge progression by foregrounding local, indigenous, Oceanic/Pacific, Asian (American), ecocritical, transnational, and/or transpacific knowledges. Building on this workshop, our project is currently exploring connections and reciprocities between Atlantic studies and a transpacific approach to Pacific studies in a forthcoming special issue of Atlantic Studies: Global Currents by the title of “Across Currents: Connections between Atlantic Studies and (Trans)Pacific Studies.” This special issue will discuss the potential discursive, topical, and historical overlaps of the two fields to carve out mutual concerns and theoretical affinities, but also divergent approaches and differences. It aims to examine how both Atlantic and Pacific Studies are part of global currents, overlapping in topics, approaches, discourses, and goals, without glossing over fundamental differences that characterize the individual fields. 

Jens Temmen and Nicole Poppenhagen (Flensburg)

Website Nicole Poppenhagen 

Open Access special issue intro

Edited Volumes and Journals

with Nicole Waller. Eds. “American Territorialities.“ Special Forum of the Journal of Transnational American Studies (JTAS). Forthcoming 2019.

• Access the CfP via: www.uni-potsdam.de/americanterritorialities

with Nicole Poppenhagen. Eds. Across Currents: Connections between Atlantic Studies and (Trans)Pacific Studies. Abingdon: Routledge, 2018.

• Contributors: William Boelhower, Juliane Braun, Keith Camacho, Pilar Cuder-Dominguez, Alexandra Ganser, Craig Santos Perez, John Carlos Rowe, Nicole Waller, Steven Yao
• https://www.routledge.com/Across-Currents-Connections-Between-Atlantic-and-TransPacific-Studies/Poppenhagen-Temmen/p/book/9781138332768

with Nicole Poppenhagen. Eds. “Across Currents: Connections between Atlantic Studies and (Trans)Pacific Studies“. Spec. Issue of Atlantic Studies: Global Currents. 15.2 (2018). Print.

• Access to full special issue: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjas20/15/2?nav=tocList

Articles and Book chapters

 "From HI-SEAS to Outer Space: Discourses of Water and Territory in U.S. Mars Exploration and U.S. Pacific Imperialism." Under review. Print.

with Nicole Poppenhagen. “Introduction: Across Currents: Connections between Atlantic Studies and (Trans)Pacific Studies“. "Across Currents: Connections between Atlantic Studies and (Trans)Pacific Studies“ Nicole Poppenhagen and Jens Temmen. Eds. Spec. Issue of Atlantic Studies: Global Currents. 15.2 (2018): 149-159. Print.

• Access the introduction via: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14788810.2017.1394131

“’So it happens that we are relegated to the condition of the aborigines of the American continent’: Disavowing and Reclaiming Sovereignty in Liliuokalani’s Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen and the Congressional Morgan Report.” Postcolonial Justice. Eds. Anke Bartels, Lars Eckstein, Nicole Waller, Dirk Wiemann. 2017. Leiden and Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2017. 333-356. Print.

with Sonja John. “Biopolitics – Geopolitics – Sovereignty – Life: Settler Colonialisms and Indigenous Presences in North America”, 25.06.2015 – 27.06.2015 Mainz, in: H-Soz-Kult, April 8th,  2015, <http://www.hsozkult.de/conferencereport/id/tagungsberichte-6116>. Web.

“Overriding/Overwriting the Reservation: John Rollin Ridge‘s The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit.“ Rural America. Eds. Antje Kley and Heike Paul. Heidelberg: Winter Verlag, 2015. 131-148. Print.

Reviews

Rev. of The Unsettlement of America: Translation, Interpretation, and the Story of Don Luis de Velasco, 1560-1945, by Anna Brickhouse. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik ZAA 65.1 (2017): 117-120. Print.

Workshop co-organizer (with René Dietrich); "The Popular Culture of Settler Colonialism." 66. Annual Conference of the German Association of American Studies (DGfA/GAAS), Hamburg, June 13-15, 2019.

Book launch and guest lecture co-organized with Nicole Poppenhagen (Flensburg); Book launch Across Currents: Connections Between Atlantic and (Trans)Pacific Studies. Guest lecture by Prof. Dr. Keith L. Camacho (UCLA), "Sāmoan Youth Gangs and the Transoceanic World: A Commentary on Indigeneity, Power, and Race." Conference Minor Cosmopolitanisms Weekend, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. December 8th, 2018.

Panel discussion co-organized with Julia von Sigsfeld (FU Berlin), Anja Schwarz and Nicole Waller (both Potsdam); Panel "Indigenous Nationalisms vs. Indigenous Cosmopolitanisms?".  Conference Minor Cosmopolitanisms Weekend, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. December 6th, 2018.

• Panelists included: Benjamin Inuca, Katerina Teaiwa, Hinemoana Baker, and Tony Birch

Summer school organizing team; "Minor Cosmopolitan Justice and Aesthetics." Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. February 12th - 17th, 2018.

Lecture series organizing team; "Minor Cosmopolitan Theory." University of Potsdam, Potsdam, April 20th - June 29th, 2017.

Symposium co-organizer (with Nicole Waller); "American Territorialities." University of Potsdam, Potsdam, July 6, 2016.

Workshop co-organizer (with Nicole Waller); "Rethinking 'Territory': Territorial Rights and Water." 63. Annual Conference of the German Association of American Studies (DGfA/GAAS), Osnabrück, May 19-22, 2016.

Workshop co-organizer (with Nicole Waller); ""Views from Different Shores": Future Directions in Transpacific Studies." University of Potsdam, July 17, 2015.

Workshop co-organizer (with Nicole Poppenhagen); "(Trans)pacific Knowledge Landscapes." "Knowledge Landscapes North America." 62. Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA/GAAS), Bonn, May 28-31, 2015.

Conference organizing team; "Postcolonial Justice." 25. Annual Conference of the German Association for New English Literature (GNEL/GAPS) and the 14. Biannual Conference of the German Association for Australien Studies (GASt), University of Potsdam, Potsdam, 2014.

Conference organizing team; "American Lives." 59. Annual Conference of the German Association for American Studies (DGfA/GAAS), Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, May 31-June 3, 2012.

Workshop series organizing team; "Mapping the World, Mapping Literature." American Studies Division, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, June 24 – July 30, 2011.

Conference organizing team; "Life Writing & Ecology." American Studies division, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Mainz, June 24 – June 27, 2010.

Undergraduate Seminars

Cultural Studies I - American Studies. Introductory undergraduate seminar. American studies division, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany. Winter term 2012.

Cultural Studies I - American Studies. Introductory undergraduate seminar. American studies division, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany. Winter term 2012.

"Locating Native Americans." Undergraduate seminar. Department of English and American studies, Potsdam University, Germany. Summer term 2013.

"Food Culture." Undergraduate seminar. Department of English and American studies, Potsdam University, Germany. Winter term 2013/2014.

"Graphic Novels." Undergraduate seminar. Department of English and American studies, Potsdam University, Germany. Summer term 2014.

"Introduction to Native American Studies." Undergraduate seminar. Department of English and American studies, Potsdam University, Germany. Winter term 2014-2015.

"Transpacific Literature and Culture." Undergraduate seminar. Department of English and American studies, Potsdam University, Germany. Summer term 2015.

"Asian American Literature." Undergraduate seminar. Department of English and American studies, Potsdam University, Germany. Winter term 2015.

"Hawai'i in American Literature." Undergraduate seminar. Department of English and American studies, Potsdam University, Germany. Summer term 2016.

Graduate Seminars

"Cherokee Removal and the Mexican-American War." Righting Wrongs. Graduate seminar. Department of English and American studies, Potsdam University, Germany. Summer term 2014. June 25, 2014.

"Controlling Space in Joaquín Murieta." Righting Wrongs. Graduate seminar. Department of English and American studies, Potsdam University, Germany. Summer term 2014. July 2, 2014.

"Writing and the Law in Joaquín Murieta" Righting Wrongs. Graduate seminar. Department of English and American studies, Potsdam University, Germany. Summer term 2014. July 9, 2014.

"The Great Māhele, Hawaiian Annexation, and the Hawaiian Sovereignty Movement." American Territorialities. Graduate seminar. Department of English and American studies, Potsdam University, Germany. Summer term 2016.

Lectures

Lecture, "Re-locating Hawai'i: Raum, Gesetz und Literatur im Zusammenhang der Annexion Hawaiis, 1898." Der Pazifik in englischer und deutscher Literatur. Graduate seminar. University of Potsdam.  May 27, 2014.

Lecture, “Native American Literary Theory.” Working With Theories in American Studies. Introductory Lecture, University of Potsdam. June 14, 2013.

Lecture, “Locating Geronimo: Spaces of Removal and Resistance.” Introduction to Native American Studies. Introductory Lecture Series, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz. December 20, 2012.

For guest lectures see Selected Conference Papers & Public Lectures

Thesis supervision

I have supervised a number of term papers, bachelor and master theses. I have also conducted and co-conducted a number of oral exams as part of an obligatory master thesis defence.